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Imagine your town without police officers. Would you be more frightened or more at ease in your community?
It was a thought experiment that community members in Liberty City, a predominantly black neighborhood in Miami with a long history of policing issues, toyed around with late last week in a meeting organized by a national group called Critical Resistance.
It’s a far fetched idea but with the very real goal of rethinking the conventional roles and practices of police in American neighborhoods today. Nadege Green, reporter for member station WLRN in Miami, attended the Liberty City meeting and says the shared feeling was that something needs to change.
George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate politics professor at Drexel University, often thinks about these big ideas. He agrees with our Key West listeners who argue that community is the key to changing decades of problematic policing culture.
What you’ll learn from this segment:
- How one town in Miami is questioning the role of police.
- Why a society or community might want to change their relationship with police.
- What a society without police might look like.