Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

Ever since a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, there has been a lot of discussion about dismantling or defunding police departments. Some of this discussion occurred at the flashpoint. But it wasn’t limited to Minneapolis. Efforts to limit the damage caused by law enforcement by, say, farming out mental health calls to health care professionals (rather than people with guns trained to view everything as a threat) began to spread.

Following these calls for actions, police officials (and government officials unwilling to go head-to-head against powerful police unions) began claiming any effort to limit funding or power would result in massive spikes in criminal activity. Any anomaly in crime rates (but only those showing an increase) was presented as proof that merely discussing defunding was emboldening criminals. Other opportunistic politicians declared any proffered streamlining of police departments to be the action of radicals unworthy of being included in discussions of societal welfare.

The dividing line in discussions often appeared to be limited to those who had felt the oppressive weight of decades of policing and those who had never experienced this oppression, either because they were white males or police officers — two categories with a sizable Venn diagram overlap.

But even people who know, love, and otherwise support cops are starting to realize law enforcement agencies — as they exist now — may not be the answer going forward. A recent survey of 1,755 households in Los Angeles, California — performed by Loyola Marymount University — shows even cop households support severe alterations of the current cop paradigm.

There’s plenty of interesting and useful information in this survey [PDF], much of which shows there’s still overall support for law enforcement in Los Angeles. But there’s also a lot of desire for change and plenty of recognition that ongoing issues with day-to-day policing (selective enforcement, racial profiling) still need to be addressed.

But perhaps the most stunning survey result is this: households that are home to law enforcement officers are showing plenty of support for defunding or dismantling the LAPD. (h/t Stop LAPD Spying Coalition)

The LAPD has chosen to highlight only certain results from this survey, including one data point that shows those surveyed support the presence of more LAPD officers in their neighborhoods. But the LAPD has yet to respond to these devastating results, which show LAPD officers’ families believe the LAPD should be subjected to some form of budgetary overhaul:

Survey results for respondents with a “police force member in the household” support proposals to “dismantle the police,” compiling a 52.2% majority that either “strongly” or “somewhat” support these proposals. When it comes to defunding the police, the percentage is somewhat smaller (49.6%) but still surprising, showing nearly half of all households housing a cop support defunding efforts. The least extreme of these options — redirecting money from the LAPD budget to other city services — sees even more support from cop households: 63.7%.

This shows there’s plenty of support for efforts like these in places police and government officials insist there isn’t: in families who rely on a cop’s income. It is not solely the product of over-heated radicals who prefer anarchy to the “thin blue line.” Even cop families realize police officers are not the solution to a most societal issues and support efforts that rethink how police work is done and move money to other entities that can better serve those who have been underserved by cops for decades.