Abolishing the Police in Georgia and Ukraine

"Defund the police" means "take away some funding so police can focus on effective policing, instead of kittens in trees, health emergencies, mental health crises, misbehaving children, jaywalking, speeding, and black people grilling in parks/getting locked out of their homes/jogging/birdwatching/existing.” But what about those countries that actually did get rid of their police?

I have a real soft spot for Georgia and Ukraine, two countries with great people and centuries of awful leadership (although Ukraine's latest guy is surprisingly adept), coupled with the misfortune to be next to Russia (20% of Georgia and 7% of Ukraine are occupied by Russian-supported forces). Georgia is also exceptionally beautiful, with amazing food. And both booted much of their police following revolutions triggered in part by police brutality.

After Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2003, the new leader, Saakashvili, fired many police. Nobody really knows how many police were fired, since that number wasn't tracked, but I've heard anywhere from 1/3 to 80-90% to 85%, from "mostly traffic police" to "all police." At the time, you basically bought your way into the traffic police, then had to finance everything yourself, from your car to your uniform, but had a license to shake people down.

“A senior police official recalled that until the end of Shevardnadze’s presidency in 2003, ‘you could not drive 10 kilometres without at least a few traffic policemen stopping your car and asking for a couple of dollars bribe’.”

Newly elected Mikheil Saakashvilli fired a bunch of police, set up a much smaller force, modernized it, gave it new uniforms, regulations, equipment (at one point, the cars only said "police" in English). He literally made the police more transparent by building police stations with giant glass walls, even in remote villages. Georgia went from one of the world's most corrupt countries, to the upper quartile (44th least corrupt country out of 180 according to Transparency International (under Trump, the US has gone from 16th in 2016 to 23rd)). The official crime rate shot up, since previously people didn't report anything to the police. The prison population also skyrocketed, reaching US levels, though it has since fallen to 40% of its post-reform zenith, reaching a level on par with South Africa and Taiwan. Saakashvili became corrupt himself, lost an election, became a governor in Ukraine, was ejected, lost Ukrainian and Georgian citizenship, snuck back into Ukraine, then became a citizen there again.

Speaking of Ukraine, it had its own revolution in 2013-4, sparked by Russia-related corruption and an overly strong response by police (protests led to gendarmes firing into crowds led to the president fleeing to Russia--the palace he squandered the country's money on is now a major tourist attraction). Naturally, police reforms were a high priority. The "Internal Troops" (gendarmes) who had fired on protestors were dissolved (the branch of the special riot police who did much of the killing who were stationed in Crimea straight-up defected to the Russian government), and some were later caught fighting alongside Russian-supported rebels.

I visited Ukraine in 2015, and saw the new "Police" (as opposed to the Soviet-founded "Militia,") a month after they were introduced. My friends said they didn't trust or speak with the Militia, but the Police were US trained and funded, earned three times what the Militia had, and were idealistic young college grads who wore American-style uniforms, spoke English, and drove Priuses. The catch was that, even if they were fair and trustworthy, the rest of the penal system was corrupt. When I returned in 2018, my friends weren't so excited about the Police anymore, as former members of the Militia had joined it. Anyway, I still have hope--Ukraine and Georgia aren't joining the EU anytime soon, but they fly more EU flags than anywhere else. After years of cynicism, they had largely peaceful revolutions (save for, yes, police brutality) that resulted in police reforms, if nothing else. These cases show that there have to be ways to make sure corrupt cops don't reenlist, and that the entire judicial system must be reformed, since if the courts/prisons are still corrupt/brutal, the system remains broken. Still, if Ukraine and Georgia managed radical changes, why can't we?