COVID-19 AND POLICE REFORM: RETHINKING SAFETY FOR ALL

The year 2020 forced us all to reflect on what health and safety means to our communities. At its start, we witnessed the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It became startlingly apparent that the U.S. government was unprepared to deal with COVID-19 efficiently and effectively. Stay-at-home mandates, or lockdowns, were present in many states across the country, but most families were not equipped with the resources or abilities to comply.

Domestic abuse rates in the United States saw a drastic increase with lockdowns and pandemic restrictions (Mineo 2022). Additionally, many people were forced to continue to work and expose themselves to COVID-19. Hospitals were overflowing with patients in some areas because of the mass increase in hospitalizations. In 2022, over 1 million people died from COVID-19 in the United States alone (“United States” n.d.).

This inefficiency of our response to COVID-19 has had devastating consequences worldwide. From the initial stages of the disease, members of the global majority were more severely impacted. That is, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), typically (though not all) with origins in Africa, Central and South America, and Asia, who constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population.

The U.S. eventually supported waiving patent protections so other countries could make their own vaccines. However that support came late. This made it nearly impossible for governments of many low-income countries to effectively handle COVID-19 themselves. At the same time, U.S. policy was slow to pave the way to deliver vaccines to residents of those same countries that desperately needed them. Our for-profit healthcare system had harmful effects that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of people around the world and domestically. Devastatingly, companies prioritized profits from vaccine patents over saving lives.

Additionally, communities in the United States suffered needlessly. While some states acted swiftly to provide vaccines and mask mandates (figure 7.1), others provided few to no resources for their residents. This resulted in unequal and sometimes inaccurate depictions of how COVID-19 spread throughout the country.

Then, in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd by the police sparked uprisings against police brutality likely to an extent our country had not seen before (Buchanan et al. 2020). It became more brutally apparent that as a nation, we still have not found a consistent and compassionate way to respond to crises around public safety.

According to the organization Mapping Police Violence, the police killed more people in 2021 than almost any other year in recent history. The use of force across race is persistently disproportionate, as Black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed, and less likely to be threatening someone when killed (Mapping Police Violence 2021). This presents real concerns about racial bias: preconceived beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about racial group members. Take a few minutes to browse through the 2021 Police Violence Report [Website] of Mapping Police Violence (figure 7.2). What else stands out to you in the data they present?

Both COVID-19 and the police brutality crisis sparked national civil society action in 2020. It had become clear we need to rethink how to provide safety and security for us all. Because of the state’s lack of response to COVID-19, many community members across the nation stepped up to form mutual aid organizations to fill in the gaps. These organizations popped up in every state and were responsible for providing food, personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 tests, and material or emotional support to people who were otherwise unable to access state resources. In this way, dozens of communities came together to take care of each other.

For example, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon was motivated to help drive the nation out of the pandemic. They delivered vaccines to people in the spring of 2021, regardless of their Tribal status. They provided 12,000 vaccines, focusing on frontline workers, and others who were not yet eligible for the shot under state guidelines (Kisiel 2021). (Optional: Read more about the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde [Website].)

After the murder of George Floyd, followed by the police murders of Daunte Wright and other Black individuals, thousands of people took to the streets in every major city demanding an end to police brutality. On one end of the spectrum, some called for an elimination of police altogether. Others called for reform. That might mean an entire revamp of our law enforcement system, or less radical change that includes more police accountability, more community policing, body-worn cameras, and police training that examines their biases. While protests against police use of force have been ongoing for years (figure 7.3), the protests of 2020 proved pivotal.

Little overall changed regarding funding. However, the discussion of how to implement abolition of the prison industrial complex was brought to the national stage. This abolitionist movement, which originated from communities organizing to abolish chattel slavery, is not new, but its energy was reignited by the uprisings. Today, people from across the country are working together to figure out alternative ways to build safety in their communities without the use of police, prisons, violence, and punishment with imprisonment.

Combined, our country’s crisis in care during the COVID-19 pandemic and uprising against injustice in law enforcement have revealed important realities about institutions in the United States. It’s become crucial to ask: How well do our institutions provide health, safety, and security for all?

This chapter will explore two intersecting institutions whose weaknesses were revealed in 2020: healthcare and government. We’ll explore how sociology studies healthcare in the United States with policy evaluation and a social construction lens. Then, we’ll explore how and why groups experience safety, security, and health in the United States differently, and how government plays a role. We’ll explain how colonization shapes contemporary issues around health, safety and security, then discuss alternative and emerging models for providing for those rights in society. Finally, we’ll peek into recent history and current models to identify alternative ways of providing health, safety, and security in society.

We will introduce some perspectives and projects from Canada, so we’ve applied the terms “First Nations” and sometimes “First Nations and Inuit” to refer to Indigenous Peoples living there. (Optional: This guide [Website] gives more information on terminology for Indigenous Peoples in Canada.)

This chapter will encourage you to ask questions about the institutions we have built that provide us health, safety, and security.

• What shapes our ideas of health and safety and security?
• Who receives sound health, safety, and security in the United States, and who doesn’t?
• How equitable are the systems that define and deliver health, safety, and security?

Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Story

Open Content, Original

“Chapter Story” by Avery Temple and Aimee Samara Krouskop is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 7.1. “COVID-19 Mobile Testing Center in NY” by the New York National Guard is on Flickr and licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Figure 7.3. “Winston Image 03” by Braxton David Winston, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, Levine Museum of the New South, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 7.2. Screenshot image of the “2021 Police Violence Report” by Mapping Police Violence is included under fair use.