Help The Police

Source: Flickr/Taymaz Valley

I bristle when I see the words "Defund Police" on a sign, because it's another example of a complicated idea being boiled down to a catchy phrase that lends itself to misinterpretation, misunderstanding and righteous anger.  I say "righteous" because people who are concerned about crime in their neighborhoods have every right to be concerned about a rallying cry that makes people think we're going to take the police away, unjustly punish the good cops along with the bad ones.

Let's start with a valid concern.  Police are being used too much for too many things, including on-the-spot crisis counseling and social work.  As Alex Vitale writes in The Guardian, "The schools don’t work; let’s create school policing. Mental health services are decimated; let’s send police. Overdoses are epidemic; let’s criminalize people who share drugs. Young people are caught in a cycle of violence and despair; let’s call them superpredators and put them in prison for life."  You don't call the cops for a headache (and here's where you insert a joke about your in-laws).  Why are we continuing to stretch their job description into areas that don't involve protection from immediate bodily or property harm? 

It's time to think about creating new types of first responders, just as we created paramedics at fire stations -- remember the TV show Emergency?  We already have animal control officers.  We can have people trained specifically for drug issues, neighbor disputes, and low-level petty crimes, freeing up officers to focus on the more dangerous assignments.

Here's where I especially shudder at people saying just defund and disband:  what happens when we have an active shooter?  Who do you call?

You need police.  You need police departments.  But you need a department to be focused on a narrow, definable set of problems.  The police action that took the life of George Floyd started with a forgery call -- a complaint about fake bills.  Could a specialized financial crimes unit, minus the lights and sirens, with rapid-response capabilities have made a difference here -- money cops?

A lot of what I am saying here is going to sound weird or mushy to you.  New ideas usually do.  But as we all know, establishing law and order can be done without rolling tanks through the streets and firing tear gas.  Being hard on crime and smart about crime can exist in the same universe, if we are willing to think creatively and not write off alternatives to a gun and a badge as the musings of liberals and pacifist wimps.

And don't say, "Defund Police."  Say, "Reinvent Policing."  Or, "Police Smarter."

Yeah, none of those look good on a sign.  Not angry enough.  Too cerebral.  Sigh.  Can you tell I'd make a terrible activist?