Under the guise of police accountability, social justice activists are trying to sever the ties between corporations and police foundations. Their efforts only serve to undermine police accountability and the beneficial community programs in which police foundations actually participate.
The online racial justice group Color of Change is reaching out to banks and large corporations, demanding that they cease donations to police foundations. Some, such as Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, have already relented. This is a mistake, driven by the false assumption that isolating police and police foundations increases accountability.
Take, for instance, the $50,000 Wells Fargo gave to the Atlanta Police Foundation last year. The donation was no blank check but was a grant to provide police officers with affordable housing in the neighborhoods they serve. This allows for the exact kind of accountability our society should want from police officers. It encourages good policing. Instead, Wells Fargo has paused all future donations.
This boycott effort ignores the good that police foundations do in their communities. Yes, some donations are for updating equipment and software (which generally helps police do their jobs better). But police foundations themselves have programs beneficial to communities, such as Atlanta’s “At-Promise” youth program. Through counseling and tutoring, the program works to divert nonviolent youth offenders away from the criminal justice system. The bank Truist announced last year it would give $3 million to open a new At-Promise center.
The Los Angeles Police Foundation has a similar program, as do Glendale and Alexandria. Preventing young, nonviolent offenders from falling into the “prison pipeline” is precisely what society should want. It is explicitly what social justice activists have been advocating. Now, Color of Change is looking to punish police foundations that have taken up that very fight.
This misguided effort is not new. It’s the same idea that led to the push to drive shows about police off television, and it undergirds the reckless movement to defund police departments. It assumes that police, as an institution, are an unsalvageable problem and must be ostracized from the other elements of our society. Most people recognize this is a farcical idea: 88% of people in the United States want police to spend the same amount of time or more in their community, including 81% of black adults.
To the extent that there are flaws in our law enforcement agencies and their training, depriving police or police foundations of resources solves nothing. Police foundations should be part of the solution, and if organizations such as Chevron or Goldman Sachs really want to improve policing, they should be encouraged to give more for specifically tailored programs, not less.
The social justice impulse to punish police officers and police departments must be rejected by companies that engage with and contribute to police foundations and by the activists who profess to be fighting for police accountability. As is often the case, collaboration is the best path forward, and it should be encouraged.
