In case you missed it, another black man was shot and killed by police last week. This time, video evidence showed the police officers encountering an apparently inebriated Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old father of three, asleep in his car at a Wendy’s drive-thru in Atlanta. Mr. Brooks failed a field sobriety test, but offered to walk home, since his sister lived nearby. The whole episode should have ended there, had police taken him up on his offer to walk home, maybe called a tow truck, or even put him in a taxi. He wasn’t hostile or combative — but then the handcuffs and the taser came out.
Mr. Brooks got the taser away from the officer and ran away. He was shot in the back — twice.
Now, being drunk shouldn’t be a reason for the death penalty, nor should running away from a cop who got embarrassed by having his nonlethal weapon taken from him. And even “resisting arrest” shouldn’t be a death sentence. But there you have it. A man is dead because this officer, who had more than a dozen complaints of excessive force in his history, shot him in the back while he was running away. Even television cops don’t shoot suspects in the back, and if you check the body count on any show, you’d assume killing people every week is par for the course.
But this is real life, and no one is yelling “Cut” at the end of the scene. The people aren’t getting up, dusting themselves off, collecting their checks and going on to the next contract work, playing a villain or a victim.
Let’s face it, we call on the police to do a lot of things that shouldn’t be in their purview. A guy sleeping in his car? Why not knock on the window and ask if he’s OK? Or do you send him to his early grave by summoning the police? Think that $20 bill might be phony? Why not tell him, I don’t think this is real, I have to call the FBI, or Secret Service, but in the meantime, do you have other means to pay? Or do you subject yourself to a lifetime of guilt and regret because the people you summoned decided paying with what may have been a fake bill is worthy of execution.
Here is my point: Society’s problems cannot be solved by sending in people with guns.
We are a nation that traffics in slogans. Slogans have a way of galvanizing — and polarizing.
There’s little nuance in slogans, but there is so much more that needs to be said.
When we hear Defund the Police, some people panic. They know when they hear Defund Planned Parenthood, those people are looking to abolish healthcare (including and especially abortion services) for lower-income women. They aren’t saying, oh, we want them to still have access to mammograms and pap smears and contraception, just not abortion services. Defunding Planned Parenthood would throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater (said almost unironically).
So when we hear Defund the Police and Abolish ICE, people in some communities are cheering, and in other communities are panicking.
This doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition.
But when we give military weaponry to local police departments, we are budgeting those items at the expense of mental health workers, and other social services to help our neighbors with addiction, mental health problems, homelessness, food insecurity, financial insecurity, and other social ills in this unequal and inequitable society.
I’m not saying if you’re the victim of a crime, you should only have a social worker at your disposal. I’m saying if you’re having a mental health crisis, sending in someone better trained may de-escalate the situation better than someone whose instinct when faced with erratic behavior is to shoot first, and ask questions later.
Not all police officers are so inclined to unholster their weapons when approaching citizens. But too many (and one is too many) are, and all the bias training and de-escalation training in the world isn’t going to help if the color of the person’s skin is intrinsically and immediately perceived as threatening.
We have gotten to the point of doing anything while black is actionable. Driving, walking, being drunk, sleeping in your own home, having a mental illness, having addiction issues, being homeless — all have become death sentences when the wrong law enforcement officer shows up, if you happen to be doing this, while being black.
So let’s reassess what police work (not force, the term itself is already problematic) should look like.
When I was a kid, you had the Officer Friendly come to your classroom. I grew up in a neighborhood where a police officer lived in every second or third house on my block. You were told if you were in trouble, or got lost, to find a policeman. These men were my friends’ fathers.
This is who we need to be. Our children shouldn’t be afraid to call the police because someone might be murdered right before their eyes. Our police shouldn’t be the people who are weaponized by ICE, so that our undocumented friends and neighbors are afraid to come forward if they are victims or have knowledge of a crime, because it puts them in jeopardy.
Our friends and family shouldn’t have to call in people with guns to handle every situation, be it mental health issues, to the homeless person you’ve deemed an eyesore to your neighborhood, to your neighbor playing his music too loud.
Everything shouldn’t be handled by people who have more hours of weapons training than sensitivity training. When your main tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
We need to reimagine community policing, and stop thinking of reform as a dirty word. When children of color are taught at a very young age to fear that uniform, to be extremely careful what you say, do, wear, act and interact with police officers, because one wrong word, or inadvertent move may mean your parents are planning your funeral instead of your graduation, we’ve got to do more than march, chant, cry, grieve — and then add another name to the long list of hashtags.
We’ve got to find another way.
Because society’s problems are never, ever, going to be solved by simply sending in people with guns.
