How do we think about institutional racism in the American police force?

Institutional racism is a colonial hangover

Question: How do we think about institutional racism in the American police force?
Position1 of 3›: 'The police must be reformed!': The police are systemically racist
Argument‹6 of 6: Institutional racism is a colonial hangover

We will never be able to solve this problem unless we fully understand the historical contexts that shaped it. When they began, the police were created to protect white wealth.

The argument

The police in the United States of America must be reformed as the police are fundamentally and systemically racist. This stems from institutional racism as a colonial hangover, setting a historical precedent that carries through to this day. Therefore, the current policing structure is unsuccessful due to its racist characteristics and must be reformed. Historically, modern policing finds its roots in the slavery of the American south. White “patrollers” would police slave communities in an effort to crush any perceived threat. This effort became institutionalized in Virginia and the Carolinas through connections with county courts, state militias, and general local government. These precedents trickle through to the modern day, imposing fear on Black slaves and today’s Black Americans. This trickle-down effect from colonial and enslaved America ensures the modern police cannot be free from its inheritance. Furthermore, the Jim Crow laws following the Civil War also ensured that the policing effort of the entire United States, but especially the South, were based on racial divisions. Lynching, the unlawful murder of those perceived guilty of a crime, ran rampant through the South through the nineteenth and early twentieth century, often with the permission or support of police. The modern police force is built on the foundation of hundreds of years of racist legacy, connecting policing to victimizing Black individuals. There is no solution but to reform the police.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue modern US policing traces to slave patrols in the American South, where white 'patrollers' were institutionalised through county courts and militias to control enslaved communities. [P2] Jim Crow laws and police-permitted lynching further built policing on racial division, so the modern force inherits a centuries-long racist legacy it cannot escape. [C] Because institutional racism is a colonial hangover embedded in policing, the police are systemically racist and must be reformed.

Counter-arguments

The police do not need to be reformed, nor are they systemically racist. There is no colonial hangover on the police forces of today. Yes, racist mistakes were made in the past of the United States but drawing a straight line from point A to point B oversimplifies and undervalues modern data. The fact that black crime is so relevant points towards why the police are most often engaged with the black population.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Slave patrols are one of several roots of American policing rather than the root: Northern forces developed from the English watch-and-constable model and were shaped by industrial-era disorder, so an account resting on the Southern lineage alone does not reach the institution nationally. [Rejecting P2] The conclusion also relies on an inheritance the premises never trace — that policing "cannot be free" from its origins treats descent as destiny, and the strongest version of this case is usually made from present-day mechanisms such as use-of-force policy, arbitration and disciplinary records, stop and arrest patterns, and revenue-driven enforcement, none of which the argument invokes.