Once upon a time I would wake up each morning and reach for my phone to check the day’s weather. (Heaven forbid I actually just looked out the window.) Sometime this year, however, that reflexive action changed, and instead of checking the weather I would wake up and check out the latest incident of police misconduct.
Without a doubt I liked the days I checked the weather much better, because while the weather can sometimes be disappointing, it is almost never appalling—in fact, no matter how disappointing the weather might be it has never once made me cry. Nor has it ever caused me to lay back down in defeat and ask the Universe/ether/empty room “why does this keep happening?” But then the other morning something changed, and as I read the latest report (one where police in Phoenix shot a mentally distraught person who was sitting in an immobilized car), something in the Universe/ether/empty room finally gave me an answer: it’s because they just can’t help themselves. And just like that Parent Mode was active again.
When you become a parent you see everything from the eyes of a parent. That baby that won’t stop screaming on the plane? Pre-parenthood my reaction was “somebody shut that kid up.” Post-parenthood my thoughts are more along the lines of “what’s wrong, and how can I help?” It’s a switch that just gets flipped. I’m not sure what it was about our current situation that suddenly switched my perspective from that of appalled citizen to compassionate parent—maybe just the sheer volume of incidents—but somehow during the last week or so I went from “somebody make them stop” to “how can we help them be better?” The ironic thing is that both attitudes still require the same solution: defund the police.
Frank Clarke once said that a child, like your stomach, does not require all we can afford to give it, and I would argue that the same is true when it comes to the police. There is enough, and then there is too much (or in the case of the police, too many). Too many surplus war toys, (the possession of which then needs to be justified by actions), too many officers responding en masse to situations that clearly only need to be contained until a qualified mental health professional can arrive on scene, and too many times when departments confuse “more” policing with “better.” The whole thing reminds me of an overstimulated child having a breakdown on Christmas morning, when the last thing that child needs in the middle of their tantrum is to be handed yet another toy. What they need instead is not more, but less, and while they will of course see that as a punishment it is nevertheless our jobs, as the caring parent, to endure their accusations of betrayal and stupidity and unfairness and calmly do the right thing. Because in that moment they cannot help themselves. So we must do it for them.
And look, I know that police officers are not children, they are grown ass men and women who make sometimes terrifying adult decisions with consequences that go well beyond pulling down the Christmas tree. And yet, as the people who hire and train them (and as taxpayers that’s exactly who we are), we are ultimately all responsible for the things they do. The problem of police brutality isn’t really a police problem at all: it’s a citizen problem, and asking the police to solve their own problems is like asking a child to fix their own behavior. We created this problem, through benign neglect and overt design, and we are the only ones who can fix it. And we fix it by defunding.
Again, this is not a punishment, although in the moment they will see it that way. It is, rather, a way for us to set them up for success, a way for us to help them become the best they can be. It is a way to allow professional first responders to do what they do best, and only that. Mental health first responders to deal with the mentally ill, medical first responders to deal with the injured, social service first responders to help people access social services, accident first responders to investigate the scene of fender benders, and yes, armed first responders for those (very few) incidents that require them. But if only 4% of police calls require a violent response, and 30% of calls require a mental health advocate (and statistics consistently show that those numbers are accurate), then we already have a clear blueprint for both how and why we should defund.
We just need the adults in the room (and make no mistake—that would be us) to do it.