I grew up with cops. My dad was a cop, my uncles were cops, my other “uncles” that weren’t blood related were cops, the guys on their softball teams that I hung out with eating hotdogs as a 6 year old were cops, and now my cousins are cops. I’ve never been afraid when I see cops in the wild – so to speak – because I probably know them. I drove my dads very unique truck for a while and every cop on the road knew it and waved for as long as that truck ran.
My family lives in a small town, so my family are small town cops. Cops like that, “Walk the beat.” Know your town; if everyone knows who you are, they will come to you with their problems, and if you handle those problems respectfully and honestly, you can then come to that community when it’s your turn to ask for help and they will treat you with the respect that you’ve earned. It’s called Community Policing. If cops make themselves known and are held accountable to their fellow citizens then everyone works with each other with significantly less fear and danger on both sides.
But don’t take my word for it, Reading Rainbow fans: This has been researched at every level of policing, from small towns to the FBI, and proven to be the most effect method – financially, and ethically.
So how did we get to this point?
Tonight, on FOX’s Craziest Shootouts Caught On Tape
The short of it is that SWAT teams captured our attention in the early-to-mid 90’s with all of those “America’s Wildest Police Chases,” and “Craziest Shit You’ll See Until Youtube Is Invented,” shows that were all over FOX back in the day. We all watched these dudes in badass gear go toe-to-toe with the guy who stole a tank in LA and drove it down the freeway and the other guy who built a tank out a bulldozer in Colorado. It was understandably captivating, not just for me, but for everyone – including cops.
During arguably the most peaceful time our country has ever seen in the last 100 years – if you exclude the uproar over a blowjob – in steps the manufacturers of military-grade weaponry. With no “real wars,” the military industrial complex didn’t have a perpetual hunger to feed, so the manufacturers turned to a new market – the domestic one. They began pushing their wares on departments all across the country, and they didn’t have to push hard. Police everywhere, in big cities and small towns, began stocking up on equipment that they never had a need for before. Like any kid with a new toy, the cops wanted to use theirs.
Every Problem Is A Nail When You Have An Arsenal Of Hammers
So we started seeing a steady increase in SWAT raids across the country. We saw a huge increase in SWAT teams, popping up in departments overseeing towns of 500 that had no conceivable reason, no history at all to suggest that anyone should ever need to use grenades or assault rifles on the American civilians in their one-stoplight town, but here they were somehow spending millions of dollars on a tank.
Budgets changed. Training funds were pushed aside to buy shiny new killing tools, not policing tools, but tools of war and death and violence. No-knock warrants in the middle of the night, busting down doors and destruction of property to serve non-violent offenders. I’m not even going to get into asset-forfeiture. Rather than interact in the community and build rapport with the citizens the police were taught how to break down doors, how to incapacitate, and frankly, how to fear your fellow man. The training wasn’t, “This machine gun is the last tool in my tool belt, de-escalate the problem until you literally can’t anymore.” It became, “If that guy moves his hands in a manner that you feel is a threat, shoot him.” In March Breonna Taylor, a black paramedic, was murdered in her sleep, by 8 bullets, in her own apartment in the middle of the night on a no-knock warrant.
Lobbyists, Again
The budgets grew overnight to accommodate this. Departments would get more funding from the state if they ordered X number of this equipment, so, obviously they did – they’d be stupid not to, not when the neighboring departments didn’t hesitate to accept the terms of that money came with. Doing so was purposefully cutting yourself out of the action.
Departments received more funding when the military-grade industrial companies lobbied or bought elected officials to make those budgetary grants. Those companies were unsatisfied with their blood-money and thought, “Hmm, you know there’s a whole untapped market right here in America for this kind of shit, and they already kinda do whatever we want anyway, so…,” and, well, here we are.
Solutions
You wanna fix this? Start paying cops a salary commensurate with the risks that they are taking. Pay for better and more thorough training – they certainly have the budgets for it, if you cut down on the fucking tanks and drones and facial-recognition surveillance. Raise your standards and wash out the ones who can’t perform to those standards. There is no room for racism anywhere but especially not in those who are there to protect our society – ALL of society. Look, we’re seeing a lot of systemic racism in this country. The police departments are just one of the many industries infiltrated by those pussies. The fact of the matter is if you want to attract better people, you pay them more and you tighten your standards.
The proof of all of this is evident in the departments that have done this exact thing. A little way back San Diego hired the police chief from San Jose after he turned that city around with his community policing. San Diego is pretty well put-together, safe, and friendly, despite sharing the most heavily trafficked boarder in the world with what our president calls rapists and thieves. I live 23 miles from that border, and am thus far un-raped, though I did have a bike stolen off my porch a few years ago. Camden, NJ, was the murder capital of the entire planet less than 10 years ago. The police disbanded themselves, reformed with community policing guidelines, and directly countered the tradition of fighting fire with fire. Yesterday, the Camden police peacefully marched hand in hand with Black Lives Matter protesters while other cities violently clashed.
This, like everything that we’re seeing in America, is a systemic problem. Changes won’t be easy or smooth, but they can’t be gradual, either. I’m writing all of this as a white dude with a family of police officers – I know these things because I was lucky enough to read the right books, hear their stories first-hand, and live in the community that bore those results.
There are millions of Americans who inherently know this in their bones, not from books, but from generations of personal experience. That cannot be discounted. That cannot be ignored. Their voices are the ones we have to listen to because they know the truth, their communities have struggled and lived that truth. Anything less than honest reform with input from all classes and races and creeds is tacit acknowledgment that we accept this behavior, that this is, in fact, the American Dream that our ancestors fought for.
I’m not buying it.