DEFUND:

Public wellbeing is being reimagined before our eyes. In Minneapolis, the city committee has chosen to end its police department. A growing number of urban areas, including Los Angeles and New York City, have focused on defunding its police departments and reinvesting the cash in less developed communities. Additionally, regions across the country are choosing to remove police from schools in order to really establish safe learning environments. 

New Jersey has a long history of police savagery and violence. The endeavors of neighborhood and state pioneers, including Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, have come up short and assured a continuation of police brutality that will disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities. The best way to ensure that an episode of police violence doesn't occur is to entirely avoid an encounter to begin with. 

Grewal's new policy includes: Prohibition against any use of physical force against a civilian except as a last resort; a bar on deadly force against civilians, including chokeholds and strikes to the head and neck, except as a last resort; a halt on firing at moving vehicles or during high-speed chases, except in narrow instances. The new policy also requires New Jersey's 38,000 officers to undergo a two-day training on de-escalation and other tactics aimed at limiting the use of force.

The reforms followed after a state trooper killed Maurice Gordon, a Black man, on the Garden State Parkway in June and the protests against police brutality around the country. The Attorney General has favored the police association in Newark and impeded reforms that are not even groundbreaking, like regular citizen review boards with discipline and subpoena power. 

The police reform era commenced over 100 years ago, after training, demonstrable skill and preparations were outlined as an answer for the issues of policing. This pattern has continued to the present and it incorporates the changes proposed by the principal legal officer and state lawmakers. Minneapolis implemented these reforms: body cameras; implicit bias, verifiable predisposition, and mindfulness training; reconciliatory endeavors with communities of color; use of force standards; necessities that police intercede in offense; and local area policing. The division was held up as a model for progressive police reforms, yet George Floyd still lost his life. 

Lessening contact with police and redirecting resources into local area institutions, such as mental health crisis centers, will ensure police brutality doesn't happen and further decrease violence and strife within communities. It is relevant to recollect that police brutality and killings are not the only types of police violence. 

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