“Reimagining Safety,” a new (2024) documentary on Amazon Prime.
In it, ten experts discuss how policing and incarceration create more harm than good, why the system persists, and what changes can be made to make everyone safe. The following is from their website.
Worldwide protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd included calls to defund or abolish the police until a sharp rise in crime gave politicians and police supporters the fuel they needed to suppress the movement. Unfortunately, a detailed conversation about transforming public safety was never had. In this film (shot on iPhone), 10 experts discuss how policing and incarceration create more harm than good, why the system persists, and what changes can be made to make everyone safe.
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, director Matthew Solomon returned to school to earn a master’s degree in Public Administration in order to better position himself to use his privilege and access to help work towards positive social change. In his MPA program, Matthew began applying the coursework regarding sustainability and workable societies to the issues with policing and incarceration. He thought this would be a step away from filmmaking, however, his academic advisors suggested he create a documentary film for his thesis project. “Reimagining Safety” is that film.
Interviews include:
Dr. Jody Armour – The Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California
Nikki Blak – Sociologist, anti-racism educator, and Inglewood born and raised
Sennett Devermont – “Mr. Checkpoint,” police auditor and founder of the AFTP Foundation
George Gascón – Los Angeles County District Attorney
Jose Gutierrez – Licensed social worker, therapist, and Restorative Justice practitioner
Dr. El Jones – Professor and co-author of “Defunding the Police – Planning the Way Forward for the HRM”
Hadiya Kennedy – Former detective, The Los Angeles Police Department
Hawk Newsome – Co-founder of Black Lives Matter NY and Black Opportunities
Gina Viola – former LA Mayoral candidate who ran on an abolition platform
Alex S Vitale – Professor, law enforcement expert, and author of “End of Policing”
Here’s a trailer:
You can view the full film on Amazon Prime.
Then, let’s talk.
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 
Here is a conversation starter for you David. Thanks for the link to this film, the following is my humble critique of it.
Reimaging Safety
Critique
I viewed this as an opportunity to hear a reasoned set of justifications for Anti-Police Activism and I was glad to shell out the $5 to gain a deeper understanding of this viewpoint. While I am in full agreement with the opening premise that more police and prisons will not make us safer, they did not validate this premise logically. Instead, we are left with the assumption that less police and prisons will have a positive impact on public safety, and this is utter nonsense.
Unfortunately, this film was just another condescending, emotionally laden diatribe from self-interested political actors, wannabe politicians, and shallow minded activists. The blatant racism here makes me wonder when more wise people of color will stand-up and vocally object to being patronized like this.
Overall, I found this to be a one-sided overview of the ideological perspectives that have been driving the most destructive political narrative since the French Revolution.
It took no time to land on the theme of American policing having its origins in the Southern slave patrols of the eighteenth century. The fact that the first police agencies here in the United States did not appear until the mid-nineteenth century, patterned after those in Great Britain not slave patrols, is ignored. There is also no evidence offered that these early police agencies ever engaged in slave hunting, even though the fugitive slave law justified it. The fact that this law was ignored by police in the North was an impetus for the Southern revolt. Slave patrols were merely thugs paid by Southern elites who sought the return of their property, these were never state sanctioned entities, even in the racist South.
This argument is often used to support Neo-Marxist ideology where the oppressed and victimized group holds virtue over the white oppressors/victimizers. Anyone who claims that people today need to apologize for sins of the past is seeking virtue by speaking to this ideology. This is anything but virtuous because it only promotes resentment, victimhood, and hopelessness for people of color. Pitying people, by apologizing for past injustices, denies them dignity today by inferring that they are disadvantaged and in need of help. This is not true, Black people today are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves, they don’t need help, or pity, from white people. Those who argue that Black people, by virtue of their race, are not capable, and need help are…racist.
The film then embarks upon another common activist theme, peoples tragic “lived experiences,” vis-a-vis the police and the systemically racist criminal justice system. There is a claim that society is indifferent to the suffering experienced by Black people. That is absolutely correct, society is indifferent, it always has been and always will be. There is no reason why any individual or group should feel that society should care about them. No one is entitled to unconditional love or respect, especially due to their victimized or marginalized status.
This idea is firmly countered by Howard Schwartz in his 2016 book “Political Correctness and the Destruction of Social Order.” People earn love and respect through virtuous conduct, using the historically victimized status of groups of people to advance oneself denies those people dignity and leads to the chaos we now see in “disadvantaged communities.”
The world is governed by objective rationality, not subjective attitudes, viewpoints, and feelings. Objective rationality is the basis of the law. It can be no other way. This is why it has been said that the law doesn’t care about your feelings. When we preach to people that society should care, we are enabling perpetual adolescence and hindering adulthood. This is a foundational idea put forth by Michelle Alexander (2010) “The New Jim Crow.”
The idea that we need to fight the oppressive “white supremacist” systems of injustice is a profound theme here. As if all of the oppression people of color face is the fault of evil white people, the oppressors. This is pure Marxism, a perverse ideology that has caused more human suffering, misery, and death than all of the death in all of our wars combined. Racism is not the problem, culture and self-destructive behavior is and that is “race neutral.” Racism certainly does exist, but the characteristics of red-neck culture (personal behavior) explains much more of the problem than racism, Sowell (2005) “Black Rednecks and While Liberals.”
The theme that we need to “defund” the police is at the foundation of the idea that an unjust system needs to be torn down and rebuilt into something new. The question of exactly how that is done or what the new system looks like is ignored. Blaming an abstract notion of “White Supremacy” is a radical Marxist strategy to gin-up hatred and resentment, just like “The Evil Patriarchy,” “Homophobia,” “Transphobia,” and now “Christian Nationalism.” Characterizing those with differing viewpoints as evil in this way creates an environment of intractable conflict, that is what leads to actual warfare.
The individuals in this film seem to aspire to a particular view of human nature, that being people, by their nature are good, and will work toward the benefit of their fellow human beings. It’s the unjust and corruptive influences of society, and the desire to possess private property, that cause them to behave unethically. If it were not for the corrupting influences of society, we would all live together in harmony, working toward the public good as in the “Noble Savage.” i.e., Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) “The Social Contract.”
On the other extreme is the belief that people are not, by nature, good. That they will seek their own advantage even at the expense of others and therefore need to be constrained by the law, Adam Smith (1776) “A Theory of Moral Sediments” and “The Wealth of Nations.” A system of incentives and disincentives needs to be established and enforced by the police and courts to maintain societal stability and progress, Thomas Sowell (1988) “A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.”
Neither of these visions of human nature is universally applicable to all people. Some individuals are virtuous and will consistently work toward mutual good and the betterment of society. This is the norm in policing. Others will consistently seek their own self-interest and will victimize others to achieve advantage. This is the norm for those who violate the law. These individuals need to be constrained with disincentives such as arrest, prosecution, and prison. This is the job of the police, and we invest the police with a monopoly on the use of force and violence to accomplish it. Officers who abuse their authority need to be held accountable for violating the public trust and it is true, based upon my 30 years of experience as an officer, that this has not always been the case.
Using a handful of greatly exaggerated tragic events and the “lived experiences” of a minority of individuals to build an argument that the police need to be abolished for some undefined alternative places everyone at risk. More importantly, judging the police as representatives of “white supremacy” and labeling the police generally as racist speaks to the circular reasoning of Ibram X. Kendi, ( 2019) “How to be an Antiracist” the now disgraced scholar who claimed that individuals are either Anti-racist or racist, there is no middle ground.
The individuals in this film are pushing a political agenda that they, themselves, have a vested interest in pushing, i.e., they gain money, notoriety, and power from doing so. In the meantime, their viewpoint has been transformed into public policy due to its emotional appeal, and where that has occurred, chaos has resulted and people are suffering more than ever. The most vulnerable individuals in our communities are being victimized, and killed due to the real problems they face and the lack of policing that is now common because of anti-police activism.
It is absolutely true that the police are charged with responding to incidents that they are not trained or equipped to deal with, the best example being mental health crises. This has been true for decades and we certainly need to reduce our reliance on the police in these cases, there needs to be a viable alternative because mental health problems and substance abuse problems have been growing astronomically. In my view, our emergency medical responders are better equipped than the police and have an opportunity for greater service in this area.
When we look at poverty as the underlying cause of social disorder, and it is certainly a factor, then argue to defund the police we are attacking the one social institution necessary to provide social order and stability. Social order provides the foundation of economic development and enterprise capitalism which is the undeniable cure for poverty.
What is it that people actually want from their police? I’ve asked this question repeatedly and I get blank stares. In my view…people just want to be safe and secure in their homes, neighborhoods, and property. That’s what the police are here to do, and we don’t need more of them, nor do we need more prisons. That was the point of view in the 1990’s by our leaders who promoted a new vision of policing, dumped billions of dollars into our cities to promote public safety, and promised to put 100,000 more cops on the street. Those policies were vigorously pushed by Democrats and our current President, by the way. We don’t need more police we need better police relieved from the things they are not equipped to handle, more resources dedicated to the things the police should not be doing, and better accountability systems that promote virtuous leadership and behavior from those who hold the public trust.
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Pat, Thanks for diving into this. As we know from our past discussions you and I don’t always agree on what’s best for policing in America. And that’s okay. What I think we do agree on is for constitutional, legal and respectful policing which listens to, and collaborates with, the community policed. Which will require “virtuous leadership and behavior.” Much of which I have tried to offer and explain in this decades-long blog. We press on…
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Nope, Black people have been suppressed every time they stand up. Same for striking workers and union activists.
“The world is governed by objective rationality, not subjective attitudes, viewpoints, and feelings. Objective rationality is the basis of the law. It can be no other way. “
Wrong again. The law has been governed by subjective attitudes, viewpoints, and feelings; otherwise, we wouldn’t have Jim Crow laws, laws against unions, the weakening of child labor laws, violations of immigration and labor laws by corporations and corporations seeking corporate immunity. You also have cops taking advantage of qualified immunity to violate the law on a daily basis.
You never see wealthy people and CEOs going to prison for violations of the laws because the cops and the DAs are not allowed to do their jobs. In addition, cops are not going to jail in wholesale numbers for violating the law; otherwise, the prisons would be full of them.
People are not being killed because of the anti-police activity and the lack of social order. They are being killed to corporate greed and corruption. People dying from hunger is the fourth largest killer of people in America: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/22/us-leading-cause-death-poverty-crisis so you can’t blame that on anti-police activity. Maybe you cops should be arresting the wealthy people and the CEOs for causing the deaths of all these people who died from hunger. You can’t blame this on liberalism, communism, and socialism whether the Berlin Wall had fallen now or today. This is capitalism’s fault. Where is your proof that social foundation of economic development and enterprise capitalism which is the undeniable cure for poverty. The answer is you got no evidence at all.
America was a powerhouse with the Glided Age in the late 19th century; yet, too many Americans were poor and when they went on strike to get better working conditions, you cops and the military brutally put them down. It wasn’t until FDR’s economic agenda that help to reduce poverty in America and even then, President LBJ launch the Great Society program because poverty was still a big problem in places like the Appalachian Mountains where the vast majority of the poor people were white. Social order and so called enterprise capitalism didn’t cure poverty. As a matter of fact, when corporations come to a town, they actually killed small and medium businesses, destroy unions and suppress wages by 30%.
Don’t see you cops trying to make mental health people available 24 hours a day/365 days per year. Sheriff Judd of Polk County, Florida makes sure that his deputies get trained on recognizing mental health issues that a person(s) is dealing with and helps them see a mental health provider. If he can do that, there there is no excuse for the rest of the police departments. You just lack the will to provide the money and resources to train the cops along with providing personnel, money, and resources for the mental health departments in your area. As Sheriff Judd pointed out, it is a lack of will.
.”We don’t need more police we need better police relieved from the things they are not equipped to handle, more resources dedicated to the things the police should not be doing, and better accountability systems that promote virtuous leadership and behavior from those who hold the public trust.”
Funny, you always heard cops saying that they need more police and they never advocate for more resources, people, and money for the departments that can do the things that the police shouldn’t be doing and make those departments available 7 days a week/24 hours per day. You never see cops and their police unions supporting better accountability systems and actually fight against it; otherwise, we wouldn’t be on this website talking about it. Our cops should have the same kind of police training that they have in Europe and a rigorous vetting process to weed out the police before, during, and long after they had graduated from the police academy and know the laws they are enforcing instead of making up BS laws off the top of their heads along with give clear, concise reasonable suspicion facts for detaining someone along with reading their Miranda rights plus have reduce qualified immunity and making them financially pay for violating people’s rights instead of the taxpayers.
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“What is it that people actually want from their police?”
What I want from the police is that they stop being a private police force for the wealthy people and corporations. What I want from the police is to go after white collar crimes being committed by wealthy people and corporations. If they can spend so much time harassing and going after people on the left side of the political, social, and economic spectrum plus going after minorities and labor unions, they should be able to spent as much time dealing white collar crime being committed by people wearing expensive shoes, suits, and ties and are supposedly the pillars of our communities and the flower of American civilization and democracy.
What I want from the police is to go after corrupt cops in their own ranks (even at the top ranks) and to send them to prison with heavy sentences and not be separate from the general prison population. Let those corrupt cops deal with the inmates on their own particularly those inmates that were innocent of any kind but the cops send them to prison anyway.
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You want social order and an economic development here is one way to do it:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/14-ways-a-90-percent-top_b_551802
Also a enterprise economy, put the reins back on big corporations like FDR put on them back in the 1930s. Big businesses do not contribute to an enterprising economy. They destroy upcoming potential competitors, cut back on services while raising prices, don’t create new products and pass the savings to the customers, demand that they keep the profits while having the public subsidies their losses and due to them committing white collar crime, they cause the white collar crime to filter down to create more street crime.
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A more reasoned conversation, nice.
The law is based on reason, not feelings, subjective attitudes, experiences, or viewpoints. The motto of every law school is “Reason, Without Passion (feelings).” Individuals are not entitled to their own laws. Where reason has been set aside for emotional appeals, chaos rules.
You rarely see the wealthy and CEOs going to jail because those cases are too difficult to prove, and offenders are devious in their underhanded dealings because they have a great deal to loose. (Perhaps that’s why they can’t get Trump. Or, perhaps he’s just not the criminal many assume he is?) That’s why I encourage my students to study accounting, those skills are largely absent in police agencies. Poor people have little to lose and that makes them much easier to apprehend and prosecute. This is also where we find the most vicious offenders, those who intimidate others and create fear in our communities.
Corporate greed does not kill people in the numbers we see in our cities every weekend. If we can agree that poverty drives crime, violence, hopelessness, death, and despair, then we can discuss how to minimize poverty. History tells us exactly how that is accomplished.
From the Guardian article. “Sadly, the United States is the leader in poverty among the rich countries of the world. As of 2019, the US had the worst poverty rate overall (17.8%) and in children specifically (20.9%)”
At the end of the nineteenth century, just 125 years ago, things were much worse. 90% of people lived in poverty: Today less than 20 % do, worldwide.
Now for some basic economic theory
What changed? Economic development and the realization, by rational people, that wealth is not a zero-sum game. Meaning, the rich do not get rich by taking from the poor and you cannot help poor people become better off by making rich people worse off. This is a common theme of the left and Marxist thought and it’s a lie. The “haves vs. the have nots” is pure Marxist conflict theory, it may have been true in the mid-nineteenth century but it does not hold water today thanks to free market capitalism.
Today wealth is built, not taken from others. People who are enterprising and conscientious develop skills that other people will pay for, they work in an environment that provides stability for economic activity, where they know they will get paid for their labor, and where there are disincentives to cheat, enforced by society. Where these conditions exist, people flourish, where these conditions do not exist, people suffer, especially the disadvantaged. That same economic activity also funds government welfare programs and the police.
Wise individuals seek to build wealth where the risks of doing so are low. They will start businesses and hire people to help them build wealth but that will not happen in locations where there is chaos and a lack of law and order where the legally justified arrest of a Black man results in riots and businesses burning to the ground.
That’s why Walgreens and Costco are closing stores in areas where people just walk in and take what they want without fear of arrest or prosecution. Private business is under no obligation to lose money this way and the result is “food deserts” and even fewer jobs in the ghetto where poor people lack transportation to where jobs exist.
So…we need the police and prosecutors to establish law and order for economic vitality to expand for everyone, especially the poor. Anti-police activism undermines the rule of law and is contributing to the underlying poverty problem.
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As a person of faith, I will assume responsibility for caring for “widows and children” and those most vulnerable in our society. And remember the teaching about a “Jubilee Year” every 1/2 century to try to overcome generational poverty. And other biblical teachings about others in need — healthcare, living wage, etc. Even if not possible, noble aspirations.
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