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The great reckoning touched off by George Floyd's agonizing death in Minneapolis is playing out at the local city council level in Edmonton.

Days of public hearings on policing has attracted close to 200 people wanting to make presentations, many of them calling for budget freezes or budget cuts to the local force.

Activists, including the local chapter of Black Lives Matter, propose that policing money be diverted to community agencies, mental health support, support for racialized communities, free transit and other programs.

Passionate speakers are calling out police for systemic racism.  University of Alberta academics are calling for sweeping changes in police education.

Council will be discussing these issues for weeks ahead, examining policing policies like carding which have been pinpointed as subject to racist abuse.

This soul-searching exercise cannot be dismissed as a knee-jerk reaction to events far away in Minneapolis.

Videos are circulating of police brutality in the past couple of years in Edmonton against Black and Indigenous suspects.

In the wider northern Alberta community the RCMP is under fire for an incident involving Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.  An RCMP dash-cam video shows Adam being tackled and punched by an officer during an altercation over an expired vehicle registration.

There can be no tolerance for racism or excessive violence against unarmed suspects, or, for that matter, individuals in mental distress.

But hacking police budgets to somehow weaken the force and divert funds to preventative social services carries grave risks, particularly in the near term.  And pitting social support systems and police against each other in terms of accessing resources is not a great longterm strategy.

Edmonton's police chief Dale McFee points out that budget cuts that result in layoffs will, because of union agreements, result in last in-first out targeting.  That means younger diversity hires of recent years will be off the streets.

Defunding in any extreme way could lead to underfunded police forces feeling vilified and under attack by their communities.

Increased police training and programs to reverse systemic racism takes more money, not less.  Some advocates suggest police be required to have university degrees, citing some pretty convincing comparisons around the world showing the more education police require, the less the incidence of police violence against civilians.  But better educated recruits will demand higher salaries commensurate with their qualifications another additional expense.

Speakers at the Edmonton hearings have pointed out that much of modern police work is actually social work.

So why not require police forces to hire social workers and incorporate them more aggressively into the policing system?  Instead of an emphasis on swat squads, why not institute mixed police/social worker response teams to deal with 'wellness checks', mental health distress calls and domestic dispute incidents.

Deploy more of the police budget on de-escalation tactic training and racial and cultural sensitivity coaching.

If a police force is so corrupt and irredeemable it needs to be torn down and rebuilt again, that's another matter entirely.  But those circumstances would have to be quite rare to risk the short term anarchy which could ensue.

It's better if the police, as well as all entrenched institutions in society, take this racism-awareness opportunity to do the tough work required.  There must be zero tolerance for brutality or unjustified race-based bias in the country's police forces.

Diversion of funding doesn't address these issues adequately.  It shouldn't be either effective policing or properly funded social support.  Both sides of the equation need to have sustainable resources for a peaceful, tolerant and racism-free society.

Photo Credit: Edmonton Journal

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