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Abstract:
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Society has struggled to understand the role of police in providing safety for communities. The ‘defund the police’ movement wants to replace police with other specialists and agencies to provide services to deliver support more safely for the mentally ill, for traffic calming, and for domestic violence. The cost of insurance and lawsuit settlements for cities and municipalities has surged in recent years, due to police shootings, and injured and killed innocent bystanders. Would police safety be jeopardized if police were not armed, but kept their firearms in their vehicle rather on their hip? Does data exist to show armed police are safer than police with only tasers and nightsticks? Do natural experiments or available data exist to test the hypothesis that unarmed police would be safer, less likely to be murdered, than armed police? Also would the public be less safe? Are other research experiments needed to inform the discussion about how to provide police protection without creating fear in urban and minority communities? Join this roundtable to discuss transformative approaches to providing safer communities for both police and residents.
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