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Wednesday open thread: There has to be a better way than this


This came across my timeline yesterday:
Do watch the video then come back.

Are you done? Good.

On the left, this will be more grist for the "defund the police" mill. And on the right, they will echo the one cop's question to the gentleman who is the narrator of this clip: "If he broke into your house and stole something you wouldn't want us here?" Both ends of the horseshoe operate on the basis of ideology, not humanity.

I've been the victim of break-ins to my house. I've been the victim of assault. And I've been grateful for the police response during those incidents. The fact of the matter is that in a modern, advanced society, the state must have a monopoly on law-enforcement. If police were to be disbanded tomorrow morning, they would be replaced by gangs in poor areas, and by gangs calling themselves "private security" in wealthier ones. And no, that wouldn't be better. It would be far, far worse, and really the end to any civilized life, where no one, rich or poor, would be secure in her property and person. That's my argument to the defunders.

And to the thin blue line fetishists? If you are not too far gone in your racism, take a look at that video. Tell me that this is a valid use of police power and police violence. Arresting, traumatizing a young Black boy over a bag of chips. A bag of chips he may not even have stolen, not that a theft of a salty snack would validate such an egregious response from the police. Tell me that incidents like this haven't contributed to the distrust of police across all sectors of society. It was "back the blue" until January 6, 2021. Then they became expendable to further your political aims.

No child, never, not once, ever, should be subjected to what this child is being subjected to. He is a child. You respond to him as a child. You talk to him. You find out what happened. You get his name and address and take him home, and have a talk with the parents. You don't handcuff him and put him in the back of a police vehicle. The trauma this child will now suffer we can't even begin to calculate. He may have been put right into the school-to-prison pipeline. For what? A petty theft he may not have committed. Another sacrifice to the gods of the carceral state

Instead of coming together to seek solutions for the very real problems with policing in this country, we instead sling arrows at each other, sure in our virtue and rightness. We either do away with police, or we make police even more lethal. Neither side recognizes that either of those solutions will destroy our society.

One solution, which is already being tried, is replacing calls which would have normally gone to police with social workers. This isn't a panacea. Sometimes police will have to be called anyway. But if you begin from a place of non-confrontation, results tend to be better. No one gets shot dead by an officer, leading to a large payout from the locality to the survivors. The "bad apples" have less of an opportunity for abuse of power, also decreasing payouts to citizens for excessive force suits. 

It's past time that we get a handle of the crisis in policing in which we live. Giving up is not an option, unless we're resigned to live in barbarity.
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