"Officer, Can You Help?"
A friend of mine who's now long, long retired from a police force told me once that those words were why he chose to apply to become a police officer.
He wanted to help.
He wanted to protect.
He wanted to make neighborhoods and communities safe and strong.
I asked him, "Was your life ever at risk?"
A few times, he told me. But rarely because of "bad guys shooting at me." Cops get exposed to a lot of dangerous situations.
Once he dove into a lake to free a dog trapped in a sinking boat, which was the only thing close to a bona fide 'hero story' he'd ever tell about working as a cop.
I suspect he could tell more.
He is white. There were "black neighborhoods" in his city and sometimes he was assigned there. He said he didn't feel extraordinarily alert or threatened or risk-conscious there. He was just doing his job.
He knew there was racism on the force he worked for. He knew there were racial tensions in some of the areas he worked. He did what he could to address that, including spending off-time in some of those neighborhoods, volunteering at community centers, participating in pick-up basketball games, eating out at local joints, getting to know people.
But that was then. Forty-plus years ago, when SWAT teams hadn't yet migrated eastward from the West Coast, before President Nixon declared "War on Drugs", before the manufacturers of military hardware decided domestic law enforcement was a fruitful new profit center, before the Endless Oil War supplied police departments with so many recruits with military training and rawly traumatic urban warfare experience.
Forty-plus years ago, when the Civil Rights movement had just accomplished a series of victories and the assassination of Martin Luther King heightened consciousness of just how dangerous racism was for all concerned. No one wanted to set off more Long Hot Summers. De-escalation of racial tension remained a priority even in an essentially racist mostly-white police force in an oh-so-politely racist white northern city.
I've been trying to parse out what I know about the corner law enforcement has backed itself into, with its increasing militarization, paranoia, hyperactive threat assessment reflexes, and above all, racism. How all of those things have combined into a powerful bunker mentality, an us-versus-them stance, empowered by good-old-boy unions complicit with City Hall lawyers.
It's not going to be easy to change.
The present calls for unity, for de-escalation, for finding common ground, for making change, etc., aren't exactly unprecedented.
But the reality is that until the police departments of America take steady, consistent, and observable actions to change their culture, their recruitment and training practices, their operational doctrines, and their willingness to be accountable to ALL the people in ALL the communities they serve, the spiral will continue in the wrong direction.
wearily,
Bright
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