A college professor from Virginia contends that police reform is impossible, and that all police agencies in America should be abolished.
In an op-ed piece published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, George Ciccariello-Maher—a visiting scholar at the College of William and Mary and the author of "A World Without Police" which has yet to be released—says that police should be replaced by "family, friends, and neighbors."
Ciccariello-Maher writes that "civilian oversight committees are toothless, so-called 'community policing' only weakens already ailing communities" and that resources now directed to police should be used for "reinvesting in communities, building local grassroots power, and strengthening other forms of conflict resolution so that policing gradually becomes obsolete."
In a counterargument that appeared alongside Ciccariello-Maher's anti-police screed, Christopher F. Rufo—a documentary filmmaker and research fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty—says, "What police abolitionists fail to acknowledge is the problem of evil. No matter how many 'restorative' programs it administers, even a benevolent centralized state cannot extinguish the risks of illness, violence, and disorder."
