Smith makes the case that reforms to a bad system cannot result in significant change. Only a radical change in the social system can produce alternative modes of "policing". Later he provides some examples of what these alternatives might look like.
It is a mistake, in seeking police reform, to limit one’s campaign solely to the institution of police. Groups engaged in anti-oppression and racial struggle, like those engaged in anti-capitalist struggle, share in one way or another a common universal struggle against a system which runs against the well-being of all, against the prospect of actual democracy, equality and egalitarianism. This is not to take anything away from the particular suffering, conflict and fight experienced by black communities across the US. If Chris Hedges is right, moreover, in his observation that the “discontent in Ferguson, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Ayotzinapa” and now Baltimore “is one discontent”, this is because the fundamental source of injustice that unites them all is an unjust social-political, economic system.
.... modern democracy, as a concept and as a thing, has always had less to do with the actual content of “democracy” as an egalitarian system of political-economic values than with the neglect of this content for its (mere) form. The concept of democracy today is really the leftover after the actual content (Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc.) has been boiled away. This sentiment is expressed most clearly on the streets, where the chant ‘there can be no democracy in capitalism’ is frequently voiced.
