Time for change in American policing. On that we can agree. What role should social workers play?

The question has been reframed considering the opportunity now before our society—driven by the Black Lives Matter movement, outcry against police killing Black people, and the need, considered by a majority of Americans, to reform the police system. Yet within our profession, the debate is as complex as the number of terms there are to define the issue.

“Defund the police,” say some, “abolish” the police, “divest and reinvest” say others. Some call on the profession as a whole to come out in support of the Black Lives Matter platform, which includes the line: “We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.”

While the National Association of Social Workers published a position paper advocating for dismantling racist policing, in June, its CEO, Angelo McClain, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that social workers can be effective working alongside police.

His statement was countered by an open letter from UCLA social work chair Laura Abrams and Alan Detlaff, dean of the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work (signed by over 1,400 social workers) noting, ”This appears to be a rush to ally ourselves with a criminal justice system known to perpetuate destructive violence and oppression against Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities…. As a profession, we have not yet reckoned with the racism and anti-Blackness that exists among ourselves and our key social welfare intuitions.”

This internal debate has been framed as “either/or” or “both/and”— while both sides believe that social workers should advocate for change, some believe that social workers should EITHER work with the police within their systems, OR not at all, meaning a rejection of the system, while the other side believes it’s possible and effective for social workers to BOTH work with the police, within the existing system AND simultaneously work to change it.

Detlaff, during Jonathan Singer’s recent National Facebook Live debate said, “I’m advocating for ‘either/or’; we’ve already had ‘both/and.’ We’ve been collaborating [with police and criminal justice systems] for decades, and it has not led to meaningful changes. We are complicit if we continue to work with violent, racist institutions.”

Taking the opposite side, Terry Mizrahi, a professor at The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, supported “both/and.” “We can be part of the solution; social workers can make a difference. You can be both critics and collaborators. We need to be at the table, where policy is being made, and at the door, where the protest is happening. We need both. ‘Either/or’ makes people take sides. I’m not sure why we can’t do both.”

In Buffalo, a group called Western New York Agents of Change, made up of social work and mental health professionals and educators sent an open letter to the mayor flatly opposing the use of social workers “with and/or within police departments” and advocating for a fully funded mobile mental health team operating independently from the police.

“While embedding social workers into police departments and/or having social workers accompany police to mental health calls may appeal to the general public, it is ineffective, unsafe, and unproven to reduce police violence in mental health crisis situations,” they wrote.

Our dean spoke against Mayor Brown’s initiative and was quoted by an Investigative Post reporter, “When we partner with an organization we go in as guests... that’s exactly how we’d be with the police. When you’re a guest you have to live with the rules of that house.” Dean Smyth went on to note that there are too many problems with that “house,” that is, with policing. Smyth said (quoted by WGRZ), “This isn’t about bad people. This is about bad systems that need to be restructured.”