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What about an active shooter?

There are no known cases of on-campus police effectively preventing a school shooter. The armed officer that was present at Parkland was reinstated as a deputy sheriff and pleaded not guilty to charges of negligence. This has set a precedent that cops do not need to defend students in the case of an active shooter. Furthermore, funding directed towards cops could be divested into mental health services that could potentially intervene in an active-shooter situation.

What about rape/domestic violence?
Law enforcement has been notoriously insufficient in addressing sexual assault on college campuses and in general. A notable example of this insufficiency is the Jameis Winston case. When Florida State University student Erica Kinsman made rape allegations against Jameis Winston, a star quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles, “The Tallahassee Police Department refused to run a DNA test on Jameis Winston. The TPD did almost nothing for ten months” (The Hunting Ground). When a DNA test was finally run, the DNA collected from Kinsman’s rape kit was indeed Winston’s. Despite this evidence, prosecutors found Winston to be not guilty of the charge, and he proceeded to play for the Seminoles in the state championship. Kinsman received various threats and insults via social media for complying with local law enforcement and school policy throughout her report (The Hunting Ground). Winston has since been accused of assault again by an Uber driver in 2016.

• Police have not investigated a vast majority of the rape kits they collect (over 200,000 by this report), over 400,000 recently.
• Additionally, police officers are notorious for being perpetrators of rape and domestic violence--according to the National Center for Women and Policing, "Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24 percent, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than American families in general... typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim's safety... This 'informal' method is often in direct contradiction to legislative mandates and departmental policies regarding the appropriate response to domestic violence crimes... even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or referred for prosecution."

What about fights?
Jason Washington was murdered by police at Portland State University trying to break up a fight.
Police escalate fights; they do not de-escalate them.

What about police reform?
Policing was created to enforce an unjust hierarchy.

• Policing has origins in slave patrols and was created to protect private property, not the lives of people. This is true today, still. Policing feeds into a system of legalized slavery because of a provision in the 13th amendment. "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
• An intersectional analysis shows that certain groups are targeted disproportionately. "Roughly 35 percent of Black trans folks have been arrested or held in a cell due to bias at some point in their lives, and more than half of Black trans folks report discomfort seeking police assistance, according to the National LBGTQ Task Force." (Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?)
• Police have historically shown that they are antithetical to human rights protests, with historical examples ranging from anti-Civil rights movement violence (Selma, Black Panthers) to anti-BLM protestor violence today.
• Prison populations have exploded in recent decades even considering all efforts put in place to make police more accountable.

• People are arrested.
• Black and Hispanic lives are murdered disproportionately.
• Black men get longer sentences for the same crime.
• Black men more frequently spend their lives in prison for nonviolent crime.
• In locations where anti-racist protests have occurred, bias against Black men has been noted.

But they can't be better if they're under-funded.
The goal is to divest funding into services that mitigate crime, rather than retroactively addressing issues via carceral punishment. Defunding the police alone won’t work--it must be paired with divesting funding into better crisis response professionals with formal, specific training in things like mental health, de-escalation, and increasing access to social services and safety nets.

What about funding for better training?
Funding allocated towards better training increases funding police receive (money that could potentially be invested in schools and rehabilitation services), and increases the scope of what police are expected to respond to, therefore increasing their power and access to resources. For example, providing training to officers on responding to mental health crises justifies their assignment to handling these issues, despite the need for professional mental health experts to be the ones responding to those calls.
--from Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing

What about good cops--aren't the majority of cops good people? Surely they can't all be bad.
This might come down to your personal beliefs on what makes someone a good person, but even if there are “good cops”, they operate within a fundamentally bad system. The history of policing in the US stems from slave patrols and hired thugs to protect rich (white) people’s property and comfort against the presence of entire groups of people they classified (typically along racial or ethnic lines) as criminal or dangerous.
Policing, as a system and practice in the US, has never been designed or intended to protect and serve the people, but rather to protect property and serve the interests of the ruling class by violently enforcing their will onto the majority, sometimes by compliance with laws and sometimes extrajudicially - “cops and klan go hand in hand” isn’t just a catchy chant, but based in fact.
Furthermore, a combination of powerful police unions and a cultivated culture of loyalty to fellow cops means that most police officers will not intervene or even report when they witness their partners planting evidence or using excessive force. Those who do report it are often retaliated against and fired, whereas cops accused of misconduct rarely face consequences, and if fired, they are often quickly rehired at another department.

Body cameras can help, right?
Body cameras increase the funding and technology police have at their disposal. Police often turn off their body cameras or misuse them to increase surveillance capabilities on civilians. Even when use of excessive force is caught on camera, the footage is often misused or spectaclizes violence perpetrated towards underrepresented communities.
--from Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing

What about issues with sororities/fraternities? Protections against hazing, protection for drunk greek life students, protection for community members from rowdy greek life students?
Law enforcement and colleges alike are notorious for downplaying the seriousness of violent crimes perpetrated by certain students, leading to further victimization of other students. Colleges benefit directly from covering up the crimes of their students. They rely on their alumni having clean records and prestige. They also rely on donations from fraternity and sorority alumni, who may choose to revoke their contributions if their chapters are held accountable for violent behavior (“in 2013, nearly 60 percent of donations of more than 100 million dollars made to universities came from fraternity alumni” (The Hunting Ground)). Colleges additionally are incentivized to maintain revenue influx from athletics, which disincentivizes them to persecute athletes who have committed violent offenses.
Violent crimes are punished less severely by both parties, particularly when the perpetrators are white male students of high socio-economic status (Shwartz et. al, p. 3). This inaction causes further victimization on campus and in society at large, as these students often “become tomorrow’s corrupt government officials, tax cheats, toxic waste polluters, defrauders of Medicare, corporate price fixers, fraudulent advertisers, and other myriad forms of white collar criminals,” with their degrees, further protected by their artificially clean records (Shwartz et. al, p. 6).
Colleges and any police forces they form will inevitably possess inherent biases towards persecuting crime selectively as to what protects the university’s brand and financial condition. Campus police will continue to crack down on minor crimes such as parking/traffic violations and minor drug/alcohol possessions, while crimes that truly endanger students will be overlooked to preserve the credibility of the university. These selective practices do not address the issues our community faces, and exacerbate challenges faced by systematically oppressed students.
--Schwartz, Martin D., and Walter S. Dekeseredy. Sexual Assault on the College Campus: the Role of Male Peer Support. SAGE Publications, 1997.

What if someone is experiencing a mental health crisis?
The Ruderman Family Foundation reported that nearly half of people killed by police have a disability. LaQuan McDonald, Michelle Cusseaux, and Ethan Saylor are among the many disabled people murdered by police. Police should not be responding to calls regarding mental health crises--unarmed mental health professionals should.
Funding from police can be reallocated to resources that alleviate mental illness--access to housing, food, healthcare, and the formation of crisis mediation teams that can intervene when a situation arises. CAHOOTS is a great example.

Who will protect businesses from rioting and looting?
Even without an armed campus police force, Oregon State University still has campus public safety along with the Corvallis police department and the Benton County sheriff’s office. Defunding and disarming campus police will not result in rioting and the looting of businesses.
Furthermore, we need to fund community resource programs that ensure people have what they need to survive. The Human Services Resource Center, the UHDS Emergency Housing Program, the CGE Hardship Fund, and Student Health Services all provide community members with resources that can eliminate the need for theft.