Everything Looks Like a Nail
You know the old saying – When the only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is the perfect descriptor of policing in America today. Police are equipped like warriors, dress like warriors, are trained like warriors, and certainly act like warriors. Violence is often the first response to a police call, often with deadly consequences and completely unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, police have a difficult and dangerous job; however, the range of responsibilities of police are far too broad, and personnel are woefully untrained for a lot of them.
How did we get here? It’s taken a long time to screw up a vital function this badly. Setting aside some of the origins of US policing in slave patrols to protect slave owners, policing has grown from its origins in the 19th Century to today where it has been militarized, and expanded to the point that it handles everything from domestic violence, to mass shootings, to mental health treatment.
The mental health role was forced on municipal police forces beginning in the early 1980s when Reagan ceased funding federal mental health programs, pushed those programs to the states, but left them unfunded. To deal with the mentally unstable, municipalities expanded policing to manage it, making jails the first place those suffering from mental problems are detained. Today, 15% of men, and 30% of women booked into jails have serious mental health problems. Making matters worse, police training in general and in mental illness specifically, is woefully inadequate. That’s why many encounters with those suffering from mental illness end in violence and even death of the victims.
Sending police to deal with mental illness and emotional problems is like sending in the Marines to unplug someone’s toilet. The mismatch is that bad. Like last week in Rochester NY, police pepper sprayed a sobbing and handcuffed 9 year old. On the video of the assault, you can hear one officer say, “This is taking too long,” just before the child was sprayed. There is simply no excuse for this kind of violence especially against children. Add race to the mix, and the violence almost always escalate. AND, this kind of violence is more the norm than the anomaly.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Period. Last summer’s “Defund the Police” movement tried to address this precise issue, but was inarticulate and then converted to a bludgeon by conservative to beat reformers with after every instance of violence during demonstrations against police brutality. Denver is handling this issue differently, with a new pilot programs that is dealing with mental and emotional issues without the violence normally associated with police response. Called the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program, specifically trained mental health professionals are dispatched to non-violent police calls; police stand back and let them work whatever issues they dealing with. Starting in June of last year, the team has responded to 748 mental health calls. Of those 748 calls, not ONE resulted in violence or arrests, or even require police intervention. Denver is expanding the pilot program.
The great results from programs like STAR are that 1) people get the help they need; 2) they don’t end up in jail or assaulted; 3) the police like it because it’s one less thing they have to deal with. Police do need to be defunded, but not how opponents to reform try to frame it. If you take this funding for mental health treatment out of the police budget and put it into social services, where it belongs, it frees up police to actually do police work, it reduces overcrowding in jails, and it has the most important feature that fewer people who encounter police will be assaulted or even killed.
We still must de-militarize police which includes taking away the armored vehicles, military weapons, and even the black uniforms. We must increase foot patrols and neighborhood policing and re-engage police with communities. Part of this reform must including increasing training, increasing police wages, AND requiring police to live in the communities where they police. These practices have proven to have huge benefits.
It’s long past time to fix policing in the US. We even know how to do it – we now need elected leaders who will make it happen. Let’s not take the hammer out of the toolbox; let’s add the other tools we need.
Let’s not take the hammer out of the toolbox; let’s add the other tools we need.
1To have a good toolbox, you need screwdrivers, saws, levellers, etc. We need to remember that.
Several times I have looked at all the gear an officer now carries and wondered, (1) how on Earth did officers for so many decades seem to cope so well with only a pistol, baton, and cuffs, and (2) did someone see the Batman utility belt and just decide to create a police version with as many toys in it as possible.
2El Jefe it’s actually much worse. There’s a chance that most marines can wield a plunger. As you describe in the rest of your article there’s little or no chance a cop has any skills for coping with the mentally ill.
Three overlapping areas: schools, housing and policing where trained professionals are needed to relieve those assigned of their “expanded duties” for which they are either not trained or have no particular interest. Again as you have mentioned there are successful programs to serve as models that need to be expanded. You specifically mentioned to STAR program. There are also other models that deal successfully with non-academic issues in the schools and special needs in housing available as models of what can be done.
What you call the hammer/nail problem can also be seen as the repetition of “building a better mousetrap” failures. Money goes into ironically named think tanks and emerges out of some politician’s orifice of the day. Frustrating, eh? When it seems too simple: replicate what already has been a proven success.
3Headline: Family Called Police to Help a Mentally Ill Teen. Cops shot Him to Death After He Surrendered
19-year-old teenager Christian Hall experienced a mental health crisis, and his family called the Pennsylvania State Police to help him as he stood on a bridge considering suicide. Instead of helping, they shot the teen as he appeared to raise his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender.
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2021/02/family-called-police-to-help-a-mentally-ill-teen-cops-shot-him-to-death-after-he-surrendered/
4Many years ago, I interviewed a new police chief. He made all the trendy points but he also said that if you wanted officers to behave at the professional level of lawyers, expect to pay them like lawyers.
We acted on the pay but did not get the professionalism, in general. I have encountered some cops who do act professionally.
In the days of a nightstick and cuffs, cops got away with a lot of rough injustice.
The very first felony level crime — if it was a crime — I covered was when I was teen-ager, so long, long ago.
A drunk was chasing his wife around the house. The son, 13, was tired of the abuse and hid behind a door with the family shotgun. As his father lapped the house again,the boy let him have both barrels in the back.
I asked the sheroff if he would chage the boy.
“Hell, naw, I’d a-done the same thing.”
I don’t know if that was the proper conclusion but I know it wasn’t arrived at thoughtfully.
Want to hear more? I got a million of ’em.
5Apologies. There is a video taken by motorists showing the cops may have lied about him having a gun in his hands.
6I have yet to see any real use for police as they are at present. But a lot of their actions are forced on them by US!!! when a crime happens and we INSIST that something be done, the cops are under pressure to produce something!!! And anything that looks OK to the public is OK, it don’t matter if it is correct or true, just looks good. But what good are they? Yes they may protect & serve, but what is it they protect & serve??? US??? NO WAY!!! they protect and serve the society. No cop can stop some one from stealing from you or even killing you. Yes try to a public robbery of a bank and they may stop it, but how many will be killed???
7I’ve always felt we need a professional police force. That means they are trained in the law, in dealing with all sorts of people, trained in the use of weapons, required to stay physically fit and receive annual updates in these areas. But most importantly, they need to know when to ask for assistance and who to call. They are not God, we can’t expect them to be and they can’t think they are.
8Agree on all points El Jefe.
A young cop takes someone into custody who is a danger to themself or others. Most states have laws like this. In Florida we had the Baker Act in the 80’s…may have been updated since.
There was some behavior involved that could be charged but everyone knows the issue is mental illness.
Getting that person into a facility will occupy the rest of that officers day/shift or the majority of it. May be impossible that day.
The officers supervisor “recommends” booking said person on a minor charge related to incident and going back on patrol.
The underlying logic being that tomorrow morning the judge will say “Hey this guy’s crazy, lets get him in a facility and out of here”.
Rinse, repeat nationwide for four decades, and welcome to 2021.
9Amen to every word of that, El Jefe! We need soldiers, but we don’t need them policing our streets. Sometimes, guns are the answer to a problem–but not every problem. They need to be a last resort, not, as it often seems, the first.
10Just to expand a bit on the Reagan legacy. In 1981, his first year as president, he defunded federal mental health programs and pushed them on the states unfunded. But before that, in 1967, his first year as governor of California, he defunded mental health hospitals and made it difficult to institutionalize the mentally ill. I see a pattern there. He single handedly increased the number of mentally ill homeless people and many of them ended up in jail instead of getting the help they needed.
On a personal note, I had a first cousin born with brain damage due to lack of oxygen. She was turned out of a state institution and my aunt and uncle ended up living in poverty trying to pay for her care. There is a special place in hell for Ronald Reagan.
11Police seem to assume that everybody is armed and ready to kill them. They are certainly ready to assume every person of color is armed and ready to kill them. Racism is a cancer in the police and the military. Joining an organization that pays you to carry and use a gun is a match made in heaven for racists.
On the other hand, this white person walks out of the house every day assuming that everybody is armed and ready to shoot. I keep hearing that gun sales are up, up and up. This country is one huge twitchy trigger finger. I don’t see how we can move forward with the police issue as long as most of the citizens are armed to the teeth.
12Agree on the substance of the article.
Whoever came up with “defund the police” as a slogan was stupid, though, because that was handing the hard right an easy hit back. Of course “defund” sounded like “take all the money away” when it *can* mean “take some money and put it on the jobs the police don’t like anyway.”
When I was on the local EMS, we dealt with all the stuff police hate, short of crime (and we dealt with the injuries there.) Luckily, in the early 80s, the local law enforcement (anyone from State Troopers to county sheriff’s deputies) would usually stand back for us to work first. Frex, we had the job of transporting a drug addict whose family was tired of dealing with him to a psych hospital. LEOs stood by in case of need, but if your voice is calm and friendly, you can often get people to act sensibly…as I did on that trip. But domestic violence, drug overdoses, sexual assault cases…LEOs just aren’t that good at any of those.
Demilitarizing would help. Setting firm limits and enforcing them would help. NEVER handcuff children. NEVER lie to suspects or the court. NEVER throw a child on the ground. A child’s noisy hysteria is NOT an excuse for a cop’s temper tantrum. NEVER use a chokehold. The NEVERs should be cause for firing immediately, and reporting to a database of undesirable hires.
13There are hundreds of amateur videos of snotty cops escalating constitutionally illegal stops and “demands for ID” into arrests , searches and brutality.
Typical scenario: Two or more average-looking people, usually two guys, each with a camera, go into or outside of a publicly accessible building and video-record, often streaming directly to the Internet.
This is not only a well-adjudicated legal action, but the Supreme Court has ruled that doing so is NOT legitimate grounds for “investigation of suspicious actions”.
The cops almost always ignore or dispute this, and escalate untl a requested supervisor calls them off. I’ve watched hundreds now.
What’s interesting is that the 1st Amendment Auditors, as they call themselves, have been doing this for TEN YEARS and won many large false arrest payouts, yet the cops don’t learn and don’t care, since usually such judgments are paid by the city or insurance.
Now the police are Facebooking in private groups about how to use pretextual stops, K9 units, and other tricks to harass the cammers, as they describe themselves.
I’m advocating a national single licensing database, to prevent bad cops from just hiring on at the next township, and seriously limiting qualified immunity (look it up).
14Elizabeth Moon @ 13:
15Thanks for one more aspect of your experience. Speaking for myself it’s definitely appreciated. This joint is frequented by folks with tons of experience across lots of different backgrounds. Ferdamnsure a helluva a good place to hang out.
I can’t say enough good things about our local police department. They have a specially trained unit that handles mental health issues. They are excellent!
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