It doesn't have to be this way.
First, let’s take back the phrase “a few bad apples.” Secondly, let’s put part of the blame on our unjust War on Drugs. Finally, reform needs to include better pay.
My hometown was an example of the norm around the nation this weekend in that peaceful protests turned nasty with the police using tear gas and other violent measures to quell alleged violence. Though I — with much anguish — skipped the protest due to virus concerns, many of my friends participated and confirmed that the protesters were peaceful; and any looting or nefarious pot-stirring appeared to be a separate, very small, group of people.
I have never been a fan of the police so I will readily admit that I have lobbed my share of criticism their way and made probably unfair generalities in the past. However, as I have friends married to police officers and detectives, I have had to take a step back to try to fairly look at the situation in America today.
Make no mistake though, the criminal justice system is full of corruption. And the police, as the first line, are the most visible for obvious reasons. There is a solid piece in the Washington Post today regarding the phrase “a few bad apples” when discussing police brutality. Not surprisingly, in it, he debunks the excuse pretty handily:
My colleague Radley Balko has compiled more than 100 studies, surveys and investigations detailing the scope of systemic racism in America’s criminal-justice system. Again and again, those reports show that blacks are more likely to be searched during traffic stops and targeted in drug raids — even though those searches are less likely to find illegal items. At the same time, unarmed blacks are 3.5 times more likely to be shot by police than unarmed whites. And a 2018 Post investigation found a strong correlation between majority-black/low-income jurisdictions and those with the lowest clearance rates for homicides.
(Wouldn’t it be great if these types of statistics were found “above the fold” in straight reporting in all major news outlets across the United States instead of opinion sections? But I digress.)
As he points out, the phrase is really not applicable in the way the police apologists use it, as the whole expression is “a few bad apples spoil the bunch.” So let’s run with the entire phrase then to push back on this now very tired old trope of this terror merely being caused by a small handful of police officers.
By going further, in ceding that the acts of oppression and violence are carried out by a few bad apples, we can then move on to the way this spoils the whole barrel. Once a police department is marred by murder at the hands of one officer, the whole department is spoiled. No one under the precinct’s territory will ever trust them again. Indeed, as the ubiquitous protests this weekend showed, Americans know that this is a systematic problem, and we’ve had enough.
And the fact that police forces everywhere respond by circling the wagons rather than tossing out the rotten apples is all the evidence you need that whether, by design or accident, the contract with the communities they are supposedly policing is in complete shreds.
While looking at possible reforms, it’s important to understand how we got here. First, as I wrote almost four years ago, but is still relevant today — yes, the police have racists roots in the old Confederacy. We need to acknowledge this fact as a nation.
In the post-WWII-era, this tradition of protecting the power structure remained during continued segregation in the South; then brutally accelerated during the civil rights movement. Then, just as things looked like America might be living up to their founding ideals finally, Nixon came in and initiated the War on Drugs.
As police are the executive arm of the law then, they can’t shoulder all the blame for enforcing what our legislators put on the books. They are weighed down with the burden of enforcing unjust laws, written as a tool of oppression by our politicians.
And of course, we know too that organized white supremacist groups have been infiltrating the departments for years, so there has been plenty of intentional apple-barrel spoiling. And as the these departments defend their own as a matter of unwritten policy, the bigots are in charge right now just by default.
So, I try to put myself in the shoes of an honest cop. What can they do? Unfortunately some of them acclimate. Others may despair. The police profession has been shown to have the highest rate of suicide in America when compared with other vocations. Adding to this hardship, police pay is abysmal for a profession that cannot be easy on the body or the mind.
Finally, the militarization — which is another example of how out of control the War on Drugs has become — as this terrific blog spells out, compounds the “us vs them” feeling probably only the strongest officer can avoid succumbing to after years of enacting brutal unjust laws.
If this is the dawning of U.S. citizens trying to take back control of our democracy, I have a few suggestions in how we can reach across the divide, so to speak, and see if we can come together to solve this crisis.
My humble suggestions:
— Federally legalize marijuana. Decriminalize the rest and treat drug addiction like a health issue, not a crime.
— Root out and expunge the white supremacists in all police departments across the country.
— Move to community policing. And better yet, have patrol officers live in the neighborhoods for which they are responsible.
— Pay them enough to stave off any bitterness caused by economic hardship. If we are going to have them live in their responsible neighborhoods, then this is even more important as some neighborhoods are really expensive.
— Start rebuilding all departments with better screening for empathy, intelligence and compassionate sympathies.
— Outlaw private, for-profit prisons.
— Take down all and any remaining monuments glorifying the Confederacy.
— Enact common sense gun control.
I’m sure there are more than my amateur pedestrian-self can think of at the moment. More ideas and comments are welcome. And if you have police or criminal justice experience, please contribute.
Until then, keep doing what you can do. Even though the raging pandemic makes it scary, the time is now to unify with our brothers and sisters of color and stand for justice.
And let’s also see if we can get through to the police unions so we may see each other’s humanity across the canyon. (To the officers that marched with the protesters in some of these communities, thank you.)
Let’s grab hold of that arc, and help bend it towards justice.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
