Rep. Munira Abdullahi says “all cops are bad”, overstating systemic racism

Munira Abdullahi is the first Somali American lawmaker in Ohio, along with Rep. Ismail Mohammed. They arise from the 50,000 Somalians who call Columbus home. She previously worked for Ismail as a paralegal, and now represents northeast Columbus.

In her first month as legislator, she defended religious liberty, but then put out an overly broad condemnation against cops.

Statehouse prayers

One of the first issues she faced was Rep. Ron Ferguson’s proposal to require a Christian prayer in the Statehouse, disrespecting Muslims like her, Jewish and Hindu lawmakers, and 27% of Ohioans who are not Christian. The current rule says only that “prayer may be offered”. She was right to speak out against the proposal, to stand up for the spirit of religious liberty in Ohio.

All cops are bad?

A few days later, she tweeted that “all cops are bad”, a milder version of the acronym ACAB, which has historically been associated with criminals and anarchists. RationalOhio is against this kind of prejudice and sweeping denigration of every person in a demographic, whether it’s race, gender, a major religion or political party, or in this case a common profession.

One can oppose policing in its current form, and even some or many cops, without opposing 100% of the people in law enforcement, but Abdullahi’s defense of ACAB contradicts that tact. Her statement incites more tension during interactions between citizens and police, which makes things more dangerous for both.

Complicity

She tries to distinguish between bad cops and good cops who are merely complicit in a bad system, but ultimately defends the idea that every single police officer is bad for one reason or the other. Complicity generally requires intent to help a crime or wrongdoing, at least in the legal sense, but arguably in the moral sense too. Calling all cops complicit is accusing them all of moral wrongdoing, despite her attempt to clarify otherwise.

We can think of a bad cop who brutalizes an innocent person, and a complicit cop who lies about it and helps them cover up the crime. Or a cop trainer could be indirectly complicit for teaching bad lessons that lead to unnecessary brutality. But there are also plenty of good cops who uphold good laws, and even great cops who go out of their way to avoid use of force unless it’s absolutely necessary.

I personally know a police chief who is actively working to hold his department to a higher standard, specifically incorporating ideas that came out of the Black Lives Matter movement. Abdullahi labels even him complicit in the system he’s trying to improve, and that’s just wrong. It’s discouraging to cops trying to do the right thing when officials like her treat them as no better than the man who killed George Floyd.

Law makers need enforcers

Her statement alienates every police officer in the state, even though as a lawmaker she’s going to need them to enforce the laws she supports. ACAB makes police supporters more defensive, and less receptive to the kinds of systematic reforms she want to enact.

Also, the legislature is part of “the system”, so does that make every lawmaker complicit too, including her? Surely she would object: she only just started and wants to change things. Likewise, the test of individual contribution, for better or worse, should apply to every cop too.

Systemic racism

It’s true that the problem of police brutality is bigger than just a few cops going rogue. Calling the issue “systemic” can be useful for communicating that it’s multi-faceted, and that we’ll need creative solutions from many angles: legally, culturally, etc. Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan has a good article detailing specific examples of how racial bias in criminal justice is not a myth.

However, it becomes less useful, and even harmful, to indiscriminately blame “the system”, or to treat every part and participant of it as defective. It’s in this sense that Professor Matthew Frank writes that “systemic racism” is like a conspiracy theory. Even Vaidyanathan says “‘systemic racism’ may not be the most helpful term.”

We should be asking the difficult question, “which cops are bad, complicit, good, or great?”, but as Frank writes, with “systemic-racism theory: ‘who’s to blame’ is never answered with any particularity that will fix responsibility on known persons.” Abdullahi says “the whole system is broken”, but America has at least 50 different systems, since each state has its own laws and practices. For example, Connecticut has far fewer police killings than New Mexico, even though Connecticut has a larger total population and a larger black population per capita. Perhaps Connecticut’s system is better, but Abdullahi blasts all of policing just the same.

Racist design?

She goes even further, saying that policing is intentionally “designed” to be racist and oppressive. Maybe she’s thinking like the ACLU, NAACP and others who tie modern policing directly to slave patrols. Columnist Jonah Goldberg contends that this characterization is “unfairly twisted”, with historical examples of law enforcement predating America, and highlighting differences between southern slave state practices and northern free states. He writes, “How much [slave patrols] taints the police forces of modern-day Atlanta or Charleston or any other state is clearly up for discussion. But it strikes me as somewhat far-fetched to argue that police in Minnesota or New York are imbued with the spirit of southern militias tasked with tracking down slaves.”

Treating the intention of today’s policing as mostly driven by racism undermines the significant progress since the overtly racist systems of the past, including the 13th and 14th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act, etc. It ignores the designs and intentions of reformers, both past and recent, who have worked to make law enforcement more just, improving transparency (body cameras) and accountability (guilty verdicts for bad cops), and achieving changes like banning no-knock warrants in some states. Of course there’s still work to be done, but we can’t just cast today’s police as no better than the slave patrols of the past. (I make a similar argument against the assertion that the US Constitution is presently racist.)

So which parts of our modern police system are purposely racist? Dr. Vaidyanathan’s article gives a couple examples, pointing to research suggesting that stripping voting rights from felons was motivated by racism when it was widely adopted after the civil war. Most states still have some form of it, but so do some European countries. In the last few decades, many states have progressed by restoring voting rights after finishing a prison sentence. Two states and DC never disenfranchise felons, even while in prison, again showing that calling the “whole system” uniformly bad is just not accurate.

Some cops are bad

ACAB goes too far, but the opposite extreme is also a problem: supporting every cop no matter what they do. No one should be above the law, including the police. When cops hurt or kill citizens unnecessarily, they deserve to go to prison.

Abdullahi’s tweets came just after video was released of the police killing of Tyre Nichols in Tennessee. Those 5 cops were charged with murder and other crimes, so there’s hope they will be held accountable.

It’s possible some other cops in Memphis or elsewhere in Tennessee are complicit in creating an environment that encouraged unnecessary brutality that led to this killing. It’s valid to track down who or what led to this, and demand changes in personnel, policy, culture, or laws where the facts show it’s appropriate.

But even that that doesn’t make every one of the thousands of cops in Memphis complicit in this or other killings, let alone every cop in Ohio or Connecticut.

Another police killing

In January, she reasonably called the fatal tasing of Keenan Anderson in Los Angeles unjustifiable and tragic. His and Nichol’s deaths have prompted the United Nations to raise concerns about US policing practices insufficiently upholding international human rights.

We can and should reevaluate our use-of-force policies to strike the right balance between protecting citizens, including those who committed a crime, while also allowing cops to handle very serious acts of violence. We can do that without labelling every cop a part of the problem.

We need police

She says “crime prevention AND Police accountability … are not mutually exclusive.” This seems to acknowledge that police are necessary, so at least she isn’t calling for the extreme idea of abolishing the police. Despite its flaws, law enforcement is an important and necessary service in civil society.

Michael Fanone is US Capitol police officer who was beaten by insurrectionists on January 6th while literally defending our democracy. Here’s what he says about the need for police:

“Police officers, specifically uniformed police officers, are the backbone of the public safety infrastructure in this country. Anyone else who has an idea outside of that – it’s just that: an idea.”

Is she anti-capitalist?

Abdullahi’s tweet also threw in an apparent criticism of capitalism, blaming police for upholding it. If someone stole Munira’s car, wouldn’t she want the police to help get it back, to uphold her capitalistic property rights? Voters deserve more clarity on how anti-capitalist she is.

I’ve written about the extremes of anti-capitalism in another article.

Her 2022 election was unopposed

Neither her campaign website nor her Ballotpedia survey had any mention of her positions on policing, so voters may not have known about her anti-cop sentiments. Unfortunately for democracy, she ran unopposed in the 2022 general election, so voters didn’t have much choice.

She did have an opponent in the Democratic primary, earning 68% of the vote against Paul Filippelli, but only 4,408 voters cast ballots in that race, compared to the 27,000 voters in Ismail Mohammed’s neighboring district. Nevertheless, on the same day as Abdullahi’s tweet, Filippelli also put out a tweet thread critical of “the whole barrel” of police:

Would there be substantial policy differences between Abdullahi and Filippelli on policing? He has been more specific about his proposed police reforms, offering nuance instead of just sweeping condemnation, suggesting a more solution-oriented candidate:

Filippelli also spoke out against “mass incarceration, police brutality, segregation, and all other forms of institutional racism” right in the first paragraph of his website’s issues page, so at least voters would know to expect that from him.

Going forward

One of RationalOhio’s core values is to “be more specific with who or what behavior is being criticized, based on factual events and policies rather than sweeping demonization.” And our motto is “Appreciate what’s good. Work toward better.” We need to accurately quantify a problem in order to solve it, which means recognizing those cops who do the right thing, and identifying specific policy changes instead of just blasting the entire system. ACAB goes against these principles.

Abdullahi should do a ride-along with a Columbus police officer, if she hasn’t already, to understand their point of view and focus her attention toward constructive solutions instead of contemptuous tweets.

Resources

10TV: Democrat is elected as Ohio’s 1st Somali American lawmaker
Spectrum News: Somali Americans, many who fled war, now seek elected office

Ballotpedia for Munira Abdullahi
Wikipedia for Munira Abdullahi

muniraforohio.com (the site is down, last cached on 12/6/22)
twitter.com/muniraforohio
facebook.com/munira.abdullahi.1293
linkedin.com/in/munira-abdullahi-0b41b71a3