Clarence Page | ‘Defund the police’ is bold, but might bring necessary change

When my youth consultant, aka my son, told me that the Black Lives Matter movement had come up with the slogan #DefundThePolice, I thought sarcastically, “Great, what a terrific gift to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.”

Full disclosure: I said the same thing about the name of Black Lives Matter itself. In both cases, I soon was proved wrong. Sure, Trump made hay out of using both to smear Democrats and other liberals up and down, like Sen. Joseph McCarthy hunting Commies under every bed in the 1950s.

But his approval ratings have generally continued as they did before, wavering between his rock-hard base of about 40% and occasional peaks of about 49%, while the movements for black lives have moved to the center of public attention.

In other words, the Overton Window has moved again.

If you haven’t heard of it already, you’re probably not a policy wonk. The Overton Window of Political Possibilities was created in the 1990s by the late Joseph Overton at Michigan’s libertarian Mackinac Center for Public Policy to describe the range of policies that are politically acceptable — whether from the right or the left — for discussion in the mainstream population.

For example, even though I supported same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, I thought both were outside the window of acceptable mainstream discourse — until state by state, they both became legal.

Overton’s window gained a surge of popularity when commentators were trying to figure out the rise of Trumpism and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ socialism, among other fairly recent cases of the public surging ahead of the pundits.

Now the window has come back to mind with “defund the police,” a slogan that seems to have leaped through Overton’s window ahead of “abolish the police,” which seems to have lost traction — understandably in my humble opinion. (I am reminded of Richard Pryor’s penitent observation after visiting a penitentiary: “Now I know why we need penitentiaries.”)

Like “abolish ICE” and “health care for all,” I view “defund the police” as sounding poorly timed, at first, but less alarming with more information and compelling news events, like George Floyd’s death.

Video showing Floyd being held for more than eight agonizing minutes under a Minneapolis police officer’s knee seemed to shake up the nation and the world more than the equally horrifying deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, gunned down while jogging in Georgia, and Breonna Taylor, an innocent Louisville, Ky., EMT killed in a no-knock police raid at the wrong address, or Chicago’s Laquan McDonald, fatally shot by a police officer on video without visible provocation.

National outrage over the Floyd’s death crossed racial, partisan and geographic lines in a way that has drawn long-standing but unresolved criminal justice issues into the presidential race and onto the floor of Congress.

Suddenly what once seemed to be a potential gift to Trump’s reelection now looks more like a gift to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Caught between the need to answer protesters’ calls for a law enforcement overhaul (“defund the police”) and the danger of alienating moderate voters, I think he chose the best course, consistent with his beliefs and those of most Americans.

He boldly chose the middle ground of supporting more spending to improve law enforcement, community policing and social services to answer the many other social and mental health needs that can attack crime problems at their root causes.

Community policing, in particular, is an often underappreciated set of strategies for getting police out of their squad cars and into the communities they are sworn to serve. Improving community relations and violence-reduction programs helps police work with victims and witnesses more closely and, in turn, reduce crime rates.

Of course, the devil is in the details as to what Biden and his congressional allies can win legislatively. Lawmakers have been pulling an array of law enforcement and criminal reform proposals off of their dusty shelves amid the new explosion of interest in improving police practices and fighting systemic racism.

But with even President Trump, no softy on crime, promising a conversation about ideas for policing “better and how we can do it, if possible, in a much more gentle fashion,” the Overton Window is opening so wide that some overdue revamping of law enforcement just might slip through.