(Dis)trust and (defunding) the police

The density, proximity and anonymity that are characteristic of urban life are often thought to make their spaces conducive to people learning those skills necessary for democracies to function effectively. However, in circumstances where trust between members of a democracy is in short supply, there is also the need to think about how cities can be designed to help manage distrust in ways that are compatible with commitments to democratic forms of government. In this paper, I critically examine a range of strategies that propose to balance trust and distrust through the design, use and management of urban environments. I argue that across this range of strategies—from the privatized security forces operating within gated communities to approaches conceived of as open enough to be described as anarchistic—there is an unexamined and unquestioned assumption that the institution of the police is compatible with democracy. More specifically, these strategies assume that police, adequately reformed and constrained, can help manage distrust between members of a democracy in a way that is compatible with democratic commitments. In contrast, this paper takes seriously the abolitionist argument that authentic democracy requires both a wholesale and complete rejection of the police as an institution and a commitment to develop alternative forms of community safety infrastructure that are used to manage and reduce the effects of distrust within urban space.