Police are effective in reducing violence, according to Patrick Sharkey. \u201cWhen there are more police on the street, there\u2019s less violence, and we have very good evidence on that,\u201d Sharkey said during a virtual \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d program on July 22.<\/p>\n
But that is only part of what is needed to make communities safe, Sharkey said. The reliance on police to deal with safety in urban areas has left big inequalities and needs unaddressed. That\u2019s one of the key factors behind the enormous wave of protests since the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May.<\/p>\n
So Sharkey, a professor of sociology and urban affairs at Princeton University and an expert on the value of community efforts in increasing safety, has been calling in places such as the Washington Post<\/em> and New York Times<\/em>, for bold experiments in new ways to help neighborhoods.<\/p>\n That led to Sharkey\u2019s online conversation with Gousha, Marquette Law School\u2019s distinguished fellow in law and public policy. Sharkey has done consulting in Milwaukee in recent years and has visited Marquette Law School twice previously.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve become very dependent, we\u2019ve become very reliant, on policing in the past 50 years,\u201d Sharkey told Gousha. That goes beyond having police officers respond to crimes to having them deal with mental health issues, homelessness, domestic disputes, drug addiction, and many other matters that they aren\u2019t really trained to handle. And the inequalities of life in cities, especially in neighborhoods where the residents are mostly Black or Hispanic, have gotten worse with the increase in emphasis on law enforcement and not problem solving.<\/p>\n Sharkey\u2019s response to calls for \u201cdefunding the police\u201d is not to cut officers or budgets, but to create a different set of well-funded, well-trained professionals who would respond to a wide range of other community needs while police deal with crime and emergencies.<\/p>\n Sharkey said his expectation is that if an effective second stream of problem-solvers served communities, \u201cthis is going to be at least as effective as the police on controlling violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Community organizations have had major positive impacts in cities across the country, he said. But the efforts have been limited. \u00a0\u201cWe need to start investing in a different set of actors (than the police), a different set of institutions, and give them a chance with the same resources to create safe communities,\u201d Sharkey said. \u201cWe need a model to reduce violence further but to do it a different way.\u201d .<\/p>\n Violence has, in reality, fallen sharply across the country, including in most urban centers, since the 1990s, Sharkey said, and America as a whole is safer today than it may ever have been. That is true even with some rebound in crime rates in recent years and a surge of violence in some places (including Milwaukee) this year.<\/p>\n But, as valuable as the decline in violence is, it is not enough to create the strong communities if the gaps between rich and poor, and between people who are white and people who are not, remain so great. That is why a different approach, emphasizing helping people, is needed, Sharkey said. He said he hopes a bold mayor and a bold philanthropist somewhere will step up to create a demonstration project in line with his ideas.<\/p>\n