Police abolition movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_abolition_movement

"Abolish the police" sign on an NYPD vehicle during the George Floyd protests

The police abolition movement is a political movement, mostly active in the United States, that advocates replacing policing with other systems of public safety. Police abolitionists believe that policing, as a system, is inherently flawed and cannot be reformed—a view that rejects the ideology of police reformists. While reformists seek to address the ways in which policing occurs, abolitionists seek to transform policing altogether through a process of disbanding, disempowering, and disarming the police. Abolitionists argue that the institution of policing is deeply rooted in a history of white supremacy and settler colonialism and that it is inseparable from a pre-existing racial capitalist order, and thus believe a reformist approach to policing will always fail.

Police abolition is a process that requires communities to create alternatives to policing. This process involves the deconstruction of the preconceived understandings of policing and resisting co-option by reformists. It also involves engaging in and supporting practices that reduce police power and legitimacy, such as defunding the police.

In the George Floyd protests and riots, Black Lives Matter and other activists used the phrase "defund the police". The defunding movement advocates reducing police department budgets or the delegation of certain police responsibilities to other organizations. Some activists have proposed the diversion of police funds to social services, such as youth or housing services. Despite exceptions, advocates for defunding the police rarely call for outright abolition of police.

Police abolition has been criticized by many sociologists, criminologists, journalists, and politicians.

History

The United States established its first militarized police force in Pennsylvania in 1905, directly influenced by American warfare which was conducted by the Philippine Constabulary. The Pennsylvania State Police were created by Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, who intended for the force to serve as a means "to crush disorders, whether industrial or otherwise, which arose in the foreigner-filled districts of the state." Virtually all of the officers were drawn from the U.S. military, many coming directly from the Constabulary. While the state police force was "supposedly statewide" in name, "the force was actually deployed in four troops to cover the mining districts", which were highly populated by "foreigners". Nearly all of the troopers were "American born and their motto was 'One American can lick a hundred foreigners,'" as recorded by Thomas Reppetto. They referred to themselves as the Black Hussars and were referred to colloquially as "Cossacks."

As early as 1906, the state police were already stirring resentment by shooting labor strikers and escaping accountability. In 1906, troopers shot twenty strikers in Mount Carmel. Although the lieutenant in command was arrested for assault and battery, "the state exonerated him and his men of all charges." Governor Pennypacker expressed support, stating that the troopers had "established a reputation which has gone all over the Country... with the result that the labor difficulties in the anthracite coal region entirely disappeared." The state police were commonly called in to suppress labor strike activity, were used as a weapon of the elite class in Pennsylvania, and regularly escaped repercussions for their actions. As stated by Jesse Garwood, "A [state] policeman can arrest anybody, anytime." The United Mine Workers "pressed for the abolition of this 'Cossack' force" but retreated during World War I when more transformative labor organizing from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) arose in the region. Although they had supported abolition for nearly a decade, the United Mine Workers were satisfied when a raid was conducted on an IWW meeting in 1916 in Old Forge. All 262 people present were arrested, and "after the release of some undercover informants, the rest were sentenced to thirty days."

Immigration to the United States heavily declined in 1914, which resulted in some mining communities becoming more Americanized. As a result, "Pennsylvania's industrial belt was no longer a land of cultural deviance, but just another rural slum." A wider police abolitionist movement had emerged as a response to the violence inflicted by the public police and the private coal and iron police during a series of armed labor strikes and conflicts known as the Coal Wars (1890–1930). Throughout the period, there were numerous reports of miners being severely beaten and murdered by the public and private police. State police fired indiscriminately into tent cities, which resulted in the "killing or wounding of women and children", and numerous sexual assault and rapes committed by officers became common. After witnessing the beating of a 70-year-old citizen, American trade unionist and member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives James H. Maurer proposed legislation to abolish the public Pennsylvania State Police.

In 1928, the ACLU issued a pamphlet entitled "The Shame of Pennsylvania", declaring that thousands of public and private police had been "allowed to abuse their power without inquiry or punishment" yet ultimately concluded that, without a "fearless governor", abolishing the police was "not conceivable." In 1929, the murder of Polish émigré miner John Barcoski eventually resulted in the abolishment of Pennsylvania's private anti-labor Coal and Iron Police system in 1931. Barcoski was beaten to death by three officers employed by American banker Richard Beaty Mellon's Pittsburgh Coal Company. James Renshaw Cox, who worked with a coalition of civic, labor, and religious leaders to abolish the private police, referred to the agency as "tyranny by the wealthy industrial people."

Ideology

A protester calling to abolish the police during the Daunte Wright protests in Eugene, Oregon, in 2021. The protester's sign features the anarchist circle-A.

Police abolition is founded on the idea that police, as they exist in society, are harmful to the people and must therefore be abolished. Abolitionists push back against reformists who, as Correia and Wall describe, "refuse to even consider that a world without police and private property might actually be a safer and more democratic world than the one we know today [and] never get tired of telling poor communities, routinely terrorized by police, to simply be patient, follow police orders, and work hard to escape the ghetto." Correia and Wall write that "whether in Detroit in 1967 or Ferguson in 2014, insurgent movements of poor Black and Brown people know that police reform always leads to more criminalization, harassment, arrest, and police killing in their communities."

Abolitionists argue that policing in the United States is rooted in colonialism and slavery and therefore cannot be reformed. As summarized by Mahesh Nalla and Graeme Newman: "Many policing problems plagued the new cities of America. They included controlling certain classes, including slaves and Indians; maintaining order; regulating specialized functions such as selling in the market, delivering goods, making bread, packing goods for export; maintaining health and sanitation; ensuring the orderly use of the streets by vehicles; controlling liquor; controlling gambling and vice; controlling weapons; managing pests and other animals." Early policing in America had little to do with crime control and was performed by groups of "volunteer citizens who served on slave patrols or night watches", as recorded by Victor Kappeler and Larry Gaines. Such slave patrols, for the purpose of keeping slaves from rebelling or escaping, had the power to monitor and inspect slave populations for signs of dissent as well as to watch for and apprehend traveling escaped slaves. Modern police organizations in the United States were developed from these early slave patrols and night watches, using tactics such as enforcement of vagrancy and voting restrictions laws to "[force] newly freed blacks into subservient economic and political roles" after the formal abolition of slavery. An example were the New England settlers who appointed Indian constables to police Native Americans, and the Province of Carolina that developed "the nation's first slave patrol", organized groups that would go on to exist in Southern and Northern states, in 1704.

Anarchist anti-police art

Abolitionists argue that increased budgets for police officers do not generally go towards fighting violence and preserving community safety but instead go towards surveilling the public and criminalizing civilians, such as drugs, traffic, minor property offenses, debt collection, evictions, controlling unhoused people, and mental health calls, servicing those with political or economic power. Abolitionists, such as cultural critic Stacy Lee Kong, argue that the Robb Elementary School shooting exposed how many community safety functions of policing are in fact myths, and that the police exist instead to protect the interests of power and property.

Even police and prison abolition is considered by abolitionists as "not a definitive end, because police and prisons lie at the heart of the capitalist state, which is always evolving, adapting, and reconstituting itself in response to resistance and insurgency." As stated by Luis Fernandez, professor of criminology, "asking the question 'what are alternatives to policing?' is to ask the question 'what are alternatives to capitalism?'" Fernandez identifies that "the role of the police is to maintain the capitalist social order, to maintain the social order so that those particular people who have power can do their business with the least amount of disruption ... possible." From this perspective, abolition of the police and prisons in the United States is inherently intertwined with undoing the racial capitalist order. As stated by Joshua Briond for Hampton Institute, "Black death is a necessity of racial capitalism and the institutions (such as policing and prisons) that exist to uphold it." As a result, Briond concludes that "the only realistic solution to a reality in which anti-Black terror, violence, and death is an inevitability to the functionality of a system, is abolition."

Abolition as a process

A person protesting the killing of Ma'Khia Bryant calling to disarm and abolish the police. Disarmament is one of several elements of a process that police abolitionists believe will ultimately accomplish their goal.

Police abolitionists see abolition as a process of disbanding, disempowering, and disarming the police in the transition to a society without police. This may take several forms for abolitionists, such as imagining alternatives to policing, directly challenging the legitimacy and roles of policing, resisting liberal attempts to co-opt, incorporate, or reconcile the uncompromising objective to abolish the police, and engaging in practices which undermine the authority and power of the police, such as defunding the police. As stated by academic Alex S. Vitale, police abolition is a process, rather than a singular event:

Well, I'm certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police. What I'm talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them. And my feeling is that this encompasses actually the vast majority of what police do. We have better alternatives for them. Even if you take something like burglary — a huge amount of burglary activity is driven by drug use. And we need to completely rethink our approach to drugs so that property crime isn't the primary way that people access drugs. We don't have any part of this country that has high-quality medical drug treatment on demand. But we have policing on demand everywhere. And it's not working.

Creating alternatives

Briond states that "the lack of political imagination, beyond the electoral strategy and reformism, and the inability to envision a world, or even country, devoid of police and prisons is rooted in (anti-Black), racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage." In opposition to the position that police abolition is inconceivable, abolitionists support creating alternatives to policing. Activist Tourmaline references Andrea Ritchie to explain how "people act with abolitionist politics all the time, without actually knowing it." Ritchie presented the following example to illustrate this point: "You and your friend are at a bar. Your friend drove there. Your friend wants to drive home. Are you gonna call the cops or are you going to say 'no, I'll drive you home; I'll call a cab; I will take your keys'?" Tourmaline states that this is an example of "abolition at work", since "people are not constantly calling the cops on their friends to prevent them from drunk driving; people are finding unique and creative ways to get their friends from not driving while they're drunk."

In response, lawyer and activist Dean Spade states that "it seems like a big part of an example like that is the difference between how we feel about somebody we know—like, you're about to commit a crime, you're about to get in a car and drive drunk, but it never occurs to me that I should call the cops on you, because I don't see you as disposable, I know you—versus, [a scenario where] there's strangers on the subway and somebody's doing something that someone doesn't like and instead of figuring out what's going on or [questioning] can this be stopped, can this be less harmful, or can people get taken care of, there's a kind of immediate" response to make it "into a police problem." Spade says that this occurs because of the ways in which "people are alienated from one another in our culture" which has made it socially "not okay" to "connect and try to figure out how to solve the problem" together.

In response, Rachel Herzing suggests that we learn from people who have developed and proposed alternative strategies which rely on community development, networking and negotiation, group self-defense learning, workbooks and other materials which present alternatives for people who are unsure of what alternatives may exist, citing Fumbling Towards Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan and Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi.

Pod-mapping

The Bay Area Transformative Justice collective, cofounded by disability justice and transformative justice activist and writer Mia Mingus, has developed numerous tools for individuals to practice responding to violence, harm and abuse; and to identify and develop alternatives to policing. Pod-mapping is a tool developed by the Bay Area Transformative Justice collective for people to map their "networks of care". The exercise consists in listing the people one could turn to "for support around violent, harmful and abusive experiences, whether as survivors, bystanders or people who have harmed". These people constitute the individual's "pod". Pod-mapping is meant to spark conversations between a person and the people they include in their pod about what type of support in situations of violence would be relevant or helpful to them, and which approaches they would rather avoid. In addition to identifying who is in their pod, individuals are asked to identify people who could be in their pod, and what needs to happen before including them. Finally, individuals can also include organizations, faith groups and community services they could access were they to cause, witness or suffer violence. Once completed, the pod-map allows people to know very concretely where to turn to instead of the police. As stated by organizer David Abad, pod-mapping can help reduce violence and trauma by allowing people to know who to turn to for support and accountability "before it’s needed". During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous international human rights organizations, anti-violence networks, shelters and news outlet worldwide noticed increases in domestic violence rates. Some anti-violence organizations, like Futures Without Violence, encouraged survivors to create pod-maps as part of their safety plan to escape and survive the violence they were subjected to.

Delegitimizing the police

Protests in Raleigh, North Carolina on May 30, 2020

Abolitionists argue that delegitimizing the police as an institution of society and deconstructing the logic of policing are necessary towards actualizing police abolition. Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that "by attacking the police as an institution, by challenging its very right to exist, the contemporary abolitionist movement contains the potential to radically transform society."

Dean Spade states that "clearly US policing has been having a major legitimacy crisis because of the Black Lives Matter movement." However, Spade cites Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore's article "Beyond Bratton" in Policing the Planet in order to express how legitimacy crises historically have often actually resulted in the expansion of policing: "In the U.S., after the crisis in the 1960s and 70s that was provoked by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and so many different anti-racist and anti-colonial movements calling out the police and more people seeing police violence and seeing the police as racist, the police just did a lot of new PR moves, like they expanded police to have police be homeless outreach workers and to have police go into every classroom in the United States and do a drug abuse education program called D.A.R.E." As a result, Spade concludes that "the idea that just because we provoke a [legitimacy] crisis we'll get a reduction or elimination is something we have to really question."

Resisting co-option

Many supporters of police abolition believe that police reform efforts are inherently flawed, and as such work to avoid compromising with less radical positions than abolition outright.

Abolitionists believe that calls for abolition may be co-opted and drained of their power by reformists who propose reforms which actually function to strengthen police power. Tourmaline argues that this process of expecting the state to reduce harm and violence through increasing policing is embedded within the state's attempts to maintain its own legitimacy and power: "the logic of the state is constantly demanding us to think of ways to increase policing as a way to decrease harm and violence." Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that an abolitionist praxis which "adopts uncompromising positions that resist liberal attempts at co-optation, incorporation, and/or reconciliation" should be adopted and amplified as a result.

The Ferguson unrest reform proposal of body cameras for police has been cited as an example of a reformist approach to policing which worked to strengthen police power and build wealth for the less than lethal weapons industry while failing to provide material relief to those impacted by police violence. Dean Spade argues that "the goal of those kinds of reforms is to demobilize us, to tell us 'your problem has been solved' ... and that is so important for us to deeply resist."

Mariame Kaba argues that reform will always be a failed project when it comes to police, because police have the power to execute state power without any limitations: "How are we going to reform an institution that basically has the ability to decide whether or not to use violence in any conceivable situation and is sanctioned by the state to do so?" Kaba points to examples which illustrate how police are not accountable to the law, but engage in the work of maintaining order rather than in enforcing the law.

Divest and invest

See also: Defund the police

 

A demonstrator at a June 2020 George Floyd protest holds up a sign calling for defunding the police, a possible step in police abolition.

Defunding the police can be considered as a step towards abolition, by using funds allocated to police to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing over time until the institution is fully abolished. Such initiatives could include social workers, mental health therapy, domestic abuse centres, drug counselling, and low cost housing. For instance, in Oakland, California, the police budget is over 40% of the city's discretionary spending. In many US cities, the police department is the largest single budget item.

Defunding the police frees up funds to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing. Activist and advocacy groups like Movement 4 Black Lives call for "divest/invest" programs to divert police budgets into programs that have been proven to reduce crime. According to Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, "We're ready to chip away at the line items inside of a police budget that really are nonsensical. Police should not be in charge of mental health crises. They should not be in charge of dealing with homelessness. They should not be in charge of 'supporting' people with drug dependency and addiction. Those are three line items which we can cut out of the police budget and then put that back into health care." In Eugene, Oregon, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program called CAHOOTS has handled mental health calls since 1989 and is often cited as a model for an alternative to police handling mental health calls. In 2019 CAHOOTS responded to 20% of Eugene's 911 calls on a budget of $2 million.

In June 2020, the 2012 disbanding of the Camden, New Jersey police department and replacement with a new one under county control was referred to as an example of abolishing the police by some media outlets. In 2012, Camden was considered "the most dangerous city in the United States", and the city had numerous problems with police corruption and many instances in which police would plant drugs on citizens. The department's disbanding and replacement allowed for funds to be reallocated to community-building initiatives. The new department had more officers, but their roles were reframed to be community-oriented and focused on de-escalating violence. A seven-year study showed that violent crime dropped 42% and the crime rate dropped from 79 per 1,000 to 44 per 1,000. Camden dropped down the list of most dangerous cities in the U.S. to tenth. Calls have increased to disband municipal and county police agencies in favor of standardized policing state-wide.

Outside the United States

Canada

On April 12, 2020, following the shootings of Eisha Hudson and Jason Collins by the Winnipeg Police Service, James Wilt published an article in Canadian Dimension, arguing that policing was increasing the criminalization of Indigenous Canadians and of the homeless, and that "an institution designed to displace, dispossess, and break apart families and communities in the interests of capital cannot provide 'justice.'" Wilt noted how much budget goes to policing and called for the Winnipeg Police to be disbanded and their budget spent on social services.

Europe

Law-enforcement abolition movements in Europe were most notable in the 1970s as the prison abolition movement, but the police abolition movement did not see similar levels of popularity.

Hong Kong

During the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the abolition of police was one of the requests by protestors. The slogan "Disband the Police Force immediately" (Chinese: 解散警隊，刻不容緩) appeared in many areas during the protest.

Contemporary responses

Social scientists

According to Princeton University sociologist Patrick Sharkey, the best scientific evidence available shows that police are effective in reducing violence, while there is also a growing body of evidence that community organizations can play a central role in reducing violence. In an interview with Vox, Sharkey stated aggressive policing and mass incarceration were effective at reducing violence but said these methods have had "staggering costs". He went on to say, "The next model should be one driven primarily by residents and local organizations as the central actors. Police still certainly have a role to play, but responding to violent crime takes up only a tiny fraction of police officers' time. So the idea here is that we can rely on residents and local organizations to take over most of the duties that [officers] currently handle and make sure neighborhoods are safe."

Criminologists Justin Nix and Scott Wolfe state in The Washington Post, "We have enough research evidence to be concerned about the immediate impact of drastic budget cuts or wholesale disbanding of police agencies: Crime and victimization will increase....These collateral consequences will disproportionately harm minority communities that need help, not further marginalization." They go on to state that "Cities that have more police officers per capita tend to have lower crime rates. This does not necessarily mean we need to hire more police. Rather, having more officers per capita provides greater ability to dedicate resources to community- and problem-oriented policing approaches that have been shown to reduce crime and improve community satisfaction." They further argue that police departments need to be held more accountable for their use of funds, suggesting more emphasis on evidence-based practices, and say that making the police responsible for so many social ills should be reconsidered, although stating the infrastructure to handle those should be in place before reallocating funds.

Media

Matthew Yglesias, writing in Vox, criticized police abolition activists for lacking a plan for how to deal with violent crime, and for ignoring what he calls the "substantial literature" finding that having more police leads to less violent crime. He stated that their dismissal of police reform ignores that even modest reforms have been shown to reduce police misconduct. He writes that across government as a whole, only a very small portion of spending goes to police, and that while more social spending would probably reduce crime, that does not need to come out of police budgets, noting that the United States actually has 35% fewer police officers per capita than the rest of the world. He also states that abolishing public police services would lead to a surge in the use of private security services by those who can afford them, and that such services would lack accountability.

Responding to Yglesias in Current Affairs, Alec Karakatsanis says the claim "police reduce crime" is mistaken and that focusing attention on it distracts from more important considerations in the conversation about police utility and abolition. Karakatsanis claims, for instance, that studies used to support the idea police reduce crime are flawed, in part because they reply on crime reduction data from the police themselves, which, according to Karakatsanis, are not an "objective body neutrally 'enforcing law'", but one that has "political incentives to manipulate the data they collect". Additionally, Karakatsani says, the data is deficient because it often misses crimes like wage theft, air and water pollution, and illegal home foreclosures. Karakatsanis also contends Yglesias both ignores studies that contradict his premise and misuses those he proports confirm police reduce crime — Karakatsani says the studies are narrow in scope (in time, geography, background) and generalisations cannot be extrapolated from them in the way Yglesias suggests. Rather than focusing on violent crime in the "narrow way police calculate it", Karakatsanis says the more important issue is what things constitute the largest harms in society and how to address them, which is a fundamental goal of the abolitionist. For Karakatsanis, these harms are things like "structural poverty, lack of access to health care, forced homelessness, children forced to drink water poisoned with lead, a pregnant woman unable to afford proper nutrition, or a family (often illegally) evicted from their home" — and the police are part of the societal structure that perpetrates and perpetuates these harms. Karakatsanis criticises Yglesias for, in his opinion, failing to see this.

Public opinion

Police abolition advocates in New York City at a protest following the 2021 killing of Daunte Wright

The contemporary police abolition movement began at least as early as 2014 during the Ferguson riots but gained strength in 2020 during the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the protests surrounding it.

A YouGov poll from May 29–30, 2020, found that "most Americans do not support reducing law enforcement budgets. Close to two-thirds (65%) oppose cutting police force funding. Just 16 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans support that idea." An Economist/YouGov poll from June 14–16, 2020, found that 22 percent of African-Americans favor police abolition. A June 23–July 6 survey by Gallup found that 81% of African-Americans wanted police to spend the same amount of time or more time in their neighborhoods, as did 86% of the sample as a whole.

Politicians

U.S. president Joe Biden does not support defunding or abolishing the police. Many members of the U.S. House of Representatives have criticized the movement as a distraction from other efforts, notably Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn warned Democratic leaders against engaging in the movement on a private call in June 2020, over fears that Republicans could propagandize the controversy during the upcoming election. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders opposed police abolition, stating that all cities in the world have police; instead, he argued that police departments should be staffed with "well-educated, well-trained, well-paid professionals", stating "we want to redefine what police departments do, give them the support they need to make their jobs better" while ensuring "every police officer in this country [is held] accountable for what he or she does."

Former president Donald Trump criticized the efforts to defund police departments and said it was important to have "law and order" in the United States. According to Attorney General William P. Barr, there would be an increase in "vigilantism" and "more killings" in major American cities.

Cities

"Abolish the police" graffiti in Minneapolis, Minnesota in June 2020

According to The New York Times, cities across the United States were considering defunding, downsizing, or abolishing their departments following George Floyd's murder.

In Minneapolis, advocacy group MPD150, which had previously published a report in 2017 recommending the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) be abolished, argued that "the people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises" and that first responders should be social workers and mental health providers. Public schools, parks, multiple private businesses and venues, and the University of Minnesota have severed ties with the police department. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey was booed by a large crowd of protestors after refusing to defund and abolish the police. Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council—a veto-proof majority—pledged on June 7, 2020 to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, despite opposition from Mayor Frey. Supporters of the pledge included Alondra Cano, Jeremiah Ellison, and council president Lisa Bender. U.S. representative Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, stated, "the Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform. It's time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis." A few weeks after the pledge, the City Council passed a provision for a public referendum to amend the city's charter to do so, as the charter required the city to “fund a police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident.” The proposed amendment was blocked by the Charter Commission, who said it lacked legal provisions and necessary public input.

In September, the pledge to abolish the department was set aside. Elected officials said there was widespread disagreement about its meaning, even at the time the pledge was taken. Lisa Bender said that different interpretations of the pledge by different council members had created confusion. The New York Times reported that the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city’s progressive politicians had denounced." The police abolition efforts culminated in the 2021 Minneapolis Question 2 ballot measure to replace the city’s police department with a public safety department that failed by a 56.2 percent to 43.8 percent vote margin.

On June 8, 2020, the police-free Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was established in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

The New York Times described the six-block Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle as an example of police abolition put into practice, because police did not respond to calls in the zone and the local precinct was closed. They reported that the zone had its own self-appointed armed guards, and described cases of harassment and intimidation of businesses and customers, as well as vandalism. Business within the zone crashed. There were four shootings in the zone, two of them fatal, before the police retook the zone.

Activist Albert Corado, whose sister Melyda was killed by police during the 2018 Los Angeles hostage incident, became the first candidate nationwide to run on a police abolition platform when he announced a bid for Los Angeles City Council in 2020.

Guano

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano

 

The nest of the Peruvian booby is made of almost pure guano.

 

Man-made Guano Island near Walvis Bay in Namibia

Guano (Spanish from Quechua: wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials.

The 19th-century seabird guano trade played a pivotal role in the development of modern input-intensive farming. The demand for guano spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world.

Unsustainable seabird guano mining processes can result in permanent habitat destruction and the loss of millions of seabirds.

Bat guano is found in caves throughout the world. Many cave ecosystems are wholly dependent on bats to provide nutrients via their guano which supports bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The loss of bats from a cave can result in the extinction of species that rely on their guano. Unsustainable harvesting of bat guano may cause bats to abandon their roost.

Demand for guano rapidly declined after 1910 with the development of the Haber–Bosch process for extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere.

Composition and properties

The guanay cormorant has historically been the most important producer of guano.

Seabird guano

Seabird guano is the fecal excrement from marine birds and has an organic matter content greater than 40%, is a source of nitrogen (N) and available phosphate (P₂O₅).

Seabird guano contains plant nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium and potassium.

Bat guano

Insectivorous bats, such as this Mexican free-tailed bat, have historically been the most important producers of bat guano.

Bat guano is partially decomposed bat excrement and has an organic matter content greater than 40%, is a source of nitrogen, and may contain up to 6% available phosphate (P₂O₅). 

Raw insectivorous bat guano

The feces of insectivorous bats consists of fine particles of insect exoskeleton, which are largely composed of chitin. Elements found in large concentrations include nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace elements needed for plant growth. Bat guano is slightly alkaline with an average pH of 7.25.

Bat guano under a microscope reveals tiny particles of insect exoskeletons, which are mostly chitin.

Chitin from insect exoskeletons is an essential compound needed by soil fungi to grow and expand. Chitin is a major component of fungal cell wall membranes. The growth of beneficial fungi adds to soil fertility.

Bat guano composition varies between species with different diets. Insectivorous bats are the only species that congregate in large enough numbers to produce sufficient guano for sustainable harvesting. 

History of human use

Chincha Islands where guano was found in abundance. Mining was done on site and ships transported it to Europe.

Bird guano

Indigenous use

The word "guano" originates from the Andean indigenous language Quechua, where it refers to any form of dung used as an agricultural fertilizer. Archaeological evidence suggests that Andean people collected seabird guano from small islands and points off the desert coast of Peru for use as a soil amendment for well over 1,500 years and perhaps as long as 5,000 years. Spanish colonial documents suggest that the rulers of the Inca Empire greatly valued guano, restricted access to it, and punished any disturbance of the birds with death. The guanay cormorant is historically the most abundant and important producer of guano. Other important guano-producing bird species off the coast of Peru are the Peruvian pelican and the Peruvian booby.

Western discovery (1548–1800)

The earliest European records noting the use of guano as fertilizer date back to 1548.

Although the first shipments of guano reached Spain as early as 1700, it did not become a popular product in Europe until the 19th century.

The Guano Age (1802–1884)

Advertisement for guano, 1884

 

Main article: Guano Era

In November 1802, Prussian geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt first encountered guano and began investigating its fertilizing properties at Callao in Peru, and his subsequent writings on this topic made the subject well known in Europe. Although Europeans knew of its fertilizing properties, guano was not widely used before this time. Cornish chemist Humphry Davy delivered a series of lectures which he compiled into an 1813 bestselling book about the role of nitrogenous manure as a fertilizer, Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. It highlighted the special efficacy of Peruvian guano, noting that it made the "sterile plains" of Peru fruitful. Though Europe had marine seabird colonies and thus, guano, it was of poorer quality because its potency was leached by high levels of rainfall and humidity. Elements of Agricultural Chemistry was translated into German, Italian, and French; American historian Wyndham D. Miles said that it was likely "the most popular book ever written on the subject, outselling the works of Dundonald, Chaptal, Liebig..." He also said that "No other work on agricultural chemistry was read by as many English-speaking farmers."

The arrival of commercial whaling on the Pacific coast of South America contributed to scaling of its guano industry. Whaling vessels carried consumer goods to Peru such as textiles, flour, and lard; unequal trade meant that ships returning north were often half empty, leaving entrepreneurs in search of profitable goods that could be exported. In 1840, Peruvian politician and entrepreneur Francisco Quirós y Ampudia [es] negotiated a deal to commercialize guano export among a merchant house in Liverpool, a group of French businessmen, and the Peruvian government. This agreement resulted in the abolition of all preexisting claims to Peruvian guano; thereafter, it was the exclusive resource of the State. By nationalizing its guano resources, the Peruvian government was able to collect royalties on its sale, becoming the country's largest source of revenue. Some of this income was used by the State to free its more than 25,000 black slaves. Peru also used guano revenue to abolish the head tax on its indigenous citizens. This export of guano from Peru to Europe has been suggested as the vehicle that brought a virulent strain of potato blight from the Andean highlands that began the Great Famine of Ireland.

Soon guano was sourced from regions besides Peru. By 1846, 462,057 tonnes (509,331 short tons) of guano had been exported from Ichaboe Island, off the coast of Namibia, and surrounding islands to Great Britain. Guano pirating took off in other regions as well, causing prices to plummet and more consumers to try it. The biggest markets for guano from 1840–1879 were in Great Britain, the Low Countries, Germany, and the United States.

By the late 1860s, it became apparent that Peru's most productive guano site, the Chincha Islands, was nearing depletion. This caused guano mining to shift to other islands north and south of the Chincha Islands. Despite this near exhaustion, Peru achieved its greatest ever export of guano in 1870 at more than 700,000 tonnes (770,000 short tons). Concern of exhaustion was ameliorated by the discovery of a new Peruvian resource: sodium nitrate, also called Chile saltpetre. After 1870, the use of Peruvian guano as a fertilizer was eclipsed by Chile saltpetre in the form of caliche (a sedimentary rock) extraction from the interior of the Atacama Desert, close to the guano areas.

The Guano Age ended with the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), which saw Chilean marines invade coastal Bolivia to claim its guano and saltpetre resources. Knowing that Bolivia and Peru had a mutual defense agreement, Chile mounted a preemptive strike on Peru, resulting in its occupation of the Tarapacá, which included Peru's guano islands. With the Treaty of Ancón of 1884, the War of the Pacific ended. Bolivia ceded its entire coastline to Chile, which also gained half of Peru's guano income from the 1880s and its guano islands. The conflict ended with Chilean control over the most valuable nitrogen resources in the world. Chile's national treasury grew by 900% between 1879 and 1902 thanks to taxes coming from the newly acquired lands.

Imperialism

Islands claimed by U.S. via the 1856 Guano Islands Act in the Atlantic

1. Arenas Keys
2. Alacranes Island
3. Swan Islands
4. Serranilla Keys
5. Quita Sueño Island
6. Roncador Island
7. Serraña Key
8. Petrel Island
9. Morant Keys
10. Navassa Island
11. Alta Vela Island
12. Aves Island
13. Verd Key

Islands claimed by U.S. via the 1856 Guano Islands Act in the Pacific

1. Enderbury Island
2. McKean Island
3. Howland Island
4. Baker Island
5. Canton Island
6. Phoenix Islands
7. Dangerous Islands
8. Swains Atoll
9. Flint Island
10. Caroline Island
11. Maidens Island
12. Jarvis Island
13. Christmas Atoll
14. Starbuck Island
15. Fanning Island
16. Palmyra Island
17. Kingman Reef
18. Johnston Atoll
19. Clipperton Island

The demand for guano led the United States to pass the Guano Islands Act in 1856, which gave U.S. citizens discovering a source of guano on an unclaimed island exclusive rights to the deposits. In 1857, the U.S. began annexing uninhabited islands in the Pacific and Caribbean, totaling nearly 100, though some islands claimed under the Act did not end up having guano mining operations established on them. Several of these islands are still officially U.S. territories. Conditions on annexed guano islands were poor for workers, resulting in a rebellion on Navassa Island in 1889 where black workers killed their white overseers. In defending the workers, lawyer Everett J. Waring argued that the men could not be tried by U.S. law because the guano islands were not legally part of the country. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States where it was decided in Jones v. United States (1890). The Court decided that Navassa Island and other guano islands were legally part of the U.S. American historian Daniel Immerwahr claimed that by establishing these land claims as constitutional, the Court laid the "basis for the legal foundation for the U.S. empire". The Guano Islands Act is now considered "America's first imperialist experiment".

Other countries also used their desire for guano as a reason to expand their empires. The United Kingdom claimed Kiritimati and Malden Island for the British Empire. Others nations that claimed guano islands included Australia, France, Germany, Hawaii, Japan, and Mexico.

Decline and resurgence

In 1913, a factory in Germany began the first large-scale synthesis of ammonia using German chemist Fritz Haber's catalytic process. The scaling of this energy-intensive process meant that farmers could cease practices such as crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing legumes or the application of naturally derived fertilizers such as guano. The international trade of guano and nitrates such as Chile saltpetre declined as artificially synthesized fertilizers became more widely used. With the rising popularity of organic food in the twenty-first century, the demand for guano has started to rise again.

Bat guano

Aerial view of Guano Point. Old tramway headhouse is at the end of dirt road (right). Second tramway tower is more clearly visible, on skyline to right. Bat Cave mine is 760 m (2,500 ft) below, across the canyon.

In the U.S., bat guano was harvested from caves as early as the 1780s to manufacture gunpowder. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Union's blockade of the southern Confederate States of America meant that the Confederacy resorted to mining guano from caves to produce saltpetre. One Confederate guano kiln in New Braunfels, Texas, had a daily output of 100 lb (45 kg) of saltpetre, produced from 2,500 lb (1,100 kg) of guano from two area caves.

From the 1930s, Bat Cave mine in Arizona was used for guano extraction, though it cost more to develop than it was worth. U.S. Guano Corporation bought the property in 1958 and invested 3.5 million dollars to make it operational; actual guano deposits in the cave were one percent of predicted and the mine was abandoned in 1960.

In Australia, the first documented claim on Naracoorte's Bat Cave guano deposits was in 1867. Guano mining in the country remained a localized and small industry. In modern times, bat guano is used in low levels in developed countries. It remains an important resource in developing countries, particularly in Asia.

Paleoenvironment reconstruction

Coring accumulations of bat guano can be useful in determining past climate conditions. The level of rainfall, for example, impacts the relative frequency of nitrogen isotopes. In times of higher rainfall, ¹⁵N is more common. Bat guano also contains pollen, which can be used to identify prior plant assemblages. A layer of charcoal recovered from a guano core in the U.S. state of Alabama was seen as evidence that a Woodlands tribe inhabited the cave for some time, leaving charcoal via the fires they lit. Stable isotope analysis of bat guano was also used to support that the climate of the Grand Canyon was cooler and wetter during the Pleistocene epoch than it is now in the Holocene. Additionally, the climatic conditions were more variable in the past.

Mining

Workers load guano onto a cart in 1865

Process

Mining seabird guano from Peruvian islands has remained largely the same since the industry began, relying on manual labor. First, picks, brooms, and shovels are used to loosen the guano. The use of excavation machinery is not only impractical due to the terrain but also prohibited because it would frighten the seabirds. The guano is then placed in sacks and carried to sieves, where impurities are removed.

Similarly, harvesting bat guano in caves was and is manual. In Puerto Rico, cave entrances were enlarged to facilitate access and extraction. Guano was freed from the rocky substrate by explosives. Then, it was shoveled into carts and removed from the cave. From there, the guano was taken to kilns to dry. The dried guano would then be loaded into sacks, ready for transport via ship. Today, bat guano is usually harvested in the developing world, using "strong backs and shovels".

Ecological impacts and mitigation

A large colony of guanay cormorants on South Chincha Island of Peru in 1907

Bird guano

A herring gull (Larus argentatus) excreting waste near Île-de-Bréhat.

Peru's guano islands experienced severe ecological effects as a result of unsustainable mining. In the late 1800s, approximately 53 million seabirds lived on the twenty-two islands. As of 2011, only 4.2 million seabirds lived there. After realizing the depletion of guano in the Guano Age, the Peruvian government recognized that it needed to conserve the seabirds. In 1906, American zoologist Robert Ervin Coker was hired by the Peruvian government to create management plans for its marine species, including the seabirds. Specifically, he made five recommendations:

1. That the government turn its coastal islands into a state-run bird sanctuary. Private use of the island for hunting or egg collecting should be prohibited.
2. To eliminate unhealthy competition, each island should be assigned only one state contractor for guano extraction.
3. Guano mining should be entirely ceased from November to March so that the breeding season for the birds was undisturbed.
4. In rotation, each island should be closed to guano mining for an entire year.
5. The Peruvian government should monopolize all processes related to guano production and distribution. This recommendation was made with the belief that a single entity with a vested interest in the long-term success of the guano industry would manage the resource most responsibly.

Despite these policies, the seabird population continued to decline, which was exacerbated by the 1911 El Niño–Southern Oscillation. In 1913, Scottish ornithologist Henry Ogg Forbes authored a report on behalf of the Peruvian Corporation focusing on how human actions harmed the birds and subsequent guano production. Forbes suggested additional policies to conserve the seabirds, including keeping unauthorized visitors a mile away from guano islands at all times, eliminating all the birds' natural predators, armed patrols of the islands, and decreasing the frequency of harvest on each island to once every three to four years. In 2009, these conservation efforts culminated into the establishment of the Guano Islands, Isles, and Capes National Reserve System, which consists of twenty-two islands and eleven capes. This Reserve System was the first marine protected area in South America, encompassing 140,833 hectares (348,010 acres).

Bat guano

Unlike bird guano which is deposited on the surface of islands, bat guano can be deep within caves. Cave structure is often altered via explosives or excavation to facilitate extraction of the guano, which changes the cave's microclimate. Bats are sensitive to cave microclimate, and such changes can cause them to abandon the cave as a roost, as happened when Robertson Cave in Australia had a hole opened in its ceiling for guano harvesting. Guano harvesting may also introduce artificial light into caves; one cave in the U.S. state of New Mexico was abandoned by its bat colony after the installation of electric lights.

In addition to harming bats by necessitating they find another roost, guano harvesting techniques can ultimately harm human livelihood as well. Harming or killing bats means that less guano will be produced, resulting in unsustainable harvesting practices. In contrast, sustainable harvesting practices do not negatively impact bat colonies nor other cave fauna. The International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) 2014 recommendations for sustainable guano harvesting include extracting guano when the bats are not present, such as when migratory bats are gone for the season or when non-migratory bats are out foraging at night.

Work conditions

Chinese laborers stand on a partially extracted guano deposit in the Chincha Islands in 1865

Guano mining in Peru was at first done with black slaves. After Peru formally ended slavery, it sought another source of cheap labor. In the 1840s and 1850s, thousands of men were blackbirded (coerced or kidnapped) from the Pacific islands and southern China. Thousands of coolies from South China worked as "virtual slaves" mining guano. By 1852, Chinese laborers comprised two-thirds of Peru's guano miners; others who mined guano included convicts and forced laborers paying off debts. Chinese laborers agreed to work for eight years in exchange for passage from China, though many were misled that they were headed to California's gold mines. Conditions on the guano islands were very poor, commonly resulting in floggings, unrest, and suicide. Workers experienced lung damage by inhaling guano dust, were buried alive by falling piles of guano, and risked falling into the ocean. After visiting the guano islands, U.S. politician George Washington Peck wrote:

I observed Coolies shoveling and wheeling as if for dear life and yet their backs were covered with great welts...It is easy to distinguish Coolies who have been at the islands a short time from the new comers. They soon become emaciated and their faces have a wild desparing expression. That they are worked to death is as apparent as that the hack horses in our cities are used up in the same manner.

Hundreds or thousands of Pacific Islanders, especially Native Hawaiians, traveled or were blackbirded to the U.S.-held and Peruvian guano islands for work, including Howland Island, Jarvis Island, and Baker Island. While most Hawaiians were literate, they could usually not read English; the contract they received in their own language lacked key amendments that the English version had. Because of this, the Hawaiian language contract was often missing key information, such as the departure date, the length of the contract, and the name of the company for which they would be working. When they arrived at their destination to begin mining, they learned that both contracts were largely meaningless in terms of work conditions. Instead, their overseer (commonly referred to as a luna), who was usually white, had nearly unlimited power over them. Wages varied from lows of $5/month to highs of $14/month. Native Hawaiian laborers of Jarvis Island referred to the island as Paukeaho, meaning "out of breath" or "exhausted", due to the strain of loading heavy bags of guano onto ships. Pacific Islanders also risked death: one in thirty-six laborers from Honolulu died before completing their contract. Slaves blackbirded from Easter Island in 1862 were repatriated by the Peruvian government in 1863; only twelve of 800 slaves survived the journey.

On Navassa Island, the guano mining company switched from white convicts to largely black laborers after the American Civil War. Black laborers from Baltimore claimed that they were misled into signing contracts with stories of mostly fruit-picking, not guano mining, and "access to beautiful women". Instead, the work was exhausting and punishments were brutal. Laborers were frequently placed in stocks or tied up and dangled in the air. A labor revolt ensued, where the workers attacked their overseers with stones, axes, and even dynamite, killing five overseers.

Although the process for mining guano is mostly the same today, worker conditions have improved. As of 2018, guano miners in Peru made US$750 per month, which is more than twice the average national monthly income of $300. Workers also have health insurance, meals, and eight-hour shifts.

Human health

Histoplasmosis endemism map for the U.S.

Guano is one of the habitats of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum, which can cause the disease histoplasmosis in humans, cats, and dogs. H. capsulatum grows best in the nitrogen-rich conditions present in guano. In the United States, histoplasmosis affects 3.4 adults per 100,000 over age 65, with higher rates in the Midwestern United States (6.1 cases per 100,000). In addition to the United States, H. capsulatum is found in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Of 105 outbreaks in the U.S. from 1938–2013, seventeen occurred after exposure to a chicken coop while nine occurred after exposure to a cave. Birds or their droppings were present in 56% of outbreaks, while bats or their droppings were present in 23%. Developing any symptoms after exposure to H. capsulatum is very rare; less than 1% of those infected develop symptoms. Only patients with more severe cases require medical attention, and only about 1% of acute cases are fatal. It is a much more serious illness for the immunocompromised, however. Histoplasmosis is the first symptom of HIV/AIDS in 50–75% of patients, and results in death for 39–58% of those with HIV/AIDS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that the immunocompromised avoid exploring caves or old buildings, cleaning chicken coops, or disturbing soil where guano is present.

Rabies, which can affect humans who have been bitten by infected mammals including bats, cannot be transmitted through bat guano. A 2011 study of bat guano viromes in the U.S. states of Texas and California recovered no viruses that are pathogenic to humans, nor any close relatives of pathogenic viruses. It is hypothesized that Egyptian fruit bats, which are native to Africa and the Middle East, can spread Marburg virus to each other through contact with infected secretions such as guano, but a 2018 review concluded that more studies are necessary to determine the specific mechanisms of exposure that cause Marburg virus disease in humans. Exposure to guano could be a route of transmission to humans.

As early as in the 18th century there are reports of travellers complaining about the unhealthy air of Arica and Iquique resulting from abundant bird spilling.

Ecological importance

The Ozark cavefish, a species that depends on bat guano as a source of food.

 

Cave cockroaches on guano

Colonial birds and their guano deposits have an outsize role on the surrounding ecosystem. Bird guano stimulates productivity, though species richness may be lower on guano islands than islands without the deposits. Guano islands have a greater abundance of detritivorous beetles than islands without guano. The intertidal zone is inundated by the guano's nutrients, causing algae to grow more rapidly and coalesce into algal mats. These algal mats are in turn colonized by invertebrates. The abundance of nutrients offshore of guano islands also supports coral reef ecosystems.

Cave ecosystems are often limited by nutrient availability. Bats bring nutrients into these ecosystems via their excretions, however, which are often the dominant energy resource of a cave. Many cave species depend on bat guano for sustenance, directly or indirectly. Because cave-roosting bats are often highly colonial, they can deposit substantial quantities of nutrients into caves. The largest colony of bats in the world at Bracken Cave (about 20 million individuals) deposit 50,000 kg (110,000 lb) of guano into the cave every year. Even smaller colonies have relatively large impacts, with one colony of 3,000 gray bats annually depositing 9 kg (20 lb) of guano into their cave.

Invertebrates inhabit guano piles, including fly larvae, nematodes, springtails, beetles, mites, pseudoscorpions, thrips, silverfish, moths, harvestmen, spiders, isopods, millipedes, centipedes, and barklice. The invertebrate communities associated with the guano depends on the bat species' feeding guild: frugivorous bat guano has the greatest invertebrate diversity. Some invertebrates feed directly on the guano, while others consume the fungi that use it as a growth medium. Predators such as spiders depend on guano to support their prey base. Vertebrates consume guano as well, including the bullhead catfish and larvae of the grotto salamander.

Bat guano is integral to the existence of endangered cave fauna. The critically endangered Shelta Cave crayfish feeds on guano and other detritus. The Ozark cavefish, a U.S. federally listed species, also consumes guano. The loss of bats from a cave can result in declines or extinctions of other species that rely on their guano. A 1987 cave flood resulted in the death of its bat colony; the Valdina Farms salamander is now likely extinct as a result.

Bat guano also has a role in shaping caves by making them larger. It has been estimated that 70–95% of the total volume of Gomantong cave in Borneo is due to biological processes such as guano excretion, as the acidity of the guano weathers the rocky substrate. The presence of high densities of bats in a cave is predicted to cause the erosion of 1 metre (3 ft) of rock over 30,000 years.

Cultural significance

There are several references to guano in the arts. In his 1845 poem "Guanosong", German author Joseph Victor von Scheffel used a humorous verse to take a position in the popular polemic against Hegel's Naturphilosophie. The poem starts with an allusion to Heinrich Heine's Lorelei and may be sung to the same tune. The poem ends however with the blunt statement of a Swabian rapeseed farmer from Böblingen who praises the seagulls of Peru as providing better manure even than his fellow countryman Hegel. This refuted the widespread Enlightenment belief that nature in the New World was inferior to the Old World. The poem has been translated by, among others, Charles Godfrey Leland.

English author Robert Smith Surtees parodied the obsession of wealthy landowners with the "religion of progress" in 1843. In one of his works featuring the character John Jorrocks, Surtees has the character develop an obsession with trying all the latest farming experiments, including guano. In efforts to impress the upper-class around him and to disguise his low-class origins, Jorrocks makes references to guano in conversation at every chance he can. At one point, he exclaims "Guano!" along with two other varieties of fertilizer, to which the Duke replies, "I see you understand it all!"

Guano is also the namesake for one of the nucleobases that comprise RNA and DNA: guanine. Guanine was first obtained from guano by Julius Bodo Unger [de], who described it as xanthine in 1844. After he was corrected, Bodo Unger published it with the new name of "guanine" in 1846.