Police need to be part of the community
We have all seen and heard the ubiquitous police slogan: To protect and serve. That’s their job. Period. Their job is not to intimidate and inflame or to instigate and bully. Today, too many police are enforcers of systemic racism. Despite safeguards such as body cameras and community policing, the police appear to answer to no greater authority than themselves.
Of all the ways to build a just and fair society, the place to start is law enforcement.
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Justice has repeatedly rolled back local police reform initiatives. The focus is instead on “bad apples” implying that bad cops are an anomaly rather than a sign of deep systemic racism and can be rooted out one by one. That doesn’t work.
In the wake of 9/11, the
U.S. Department of Defense gave combat gear to police forces across the nation. These accoutrements of warfare were accompanied by a change in philosophy. It was drummed into police that they were soldiers in the war against crime and that they had the authority to identify the enemy in the streets.
Too often, they decided the enemy was black.
We need to demand that our towns, cities, states and country de-fund the police and de-escalate their tactics. We need to get the police out of their “star trooper” costumes and take away their war toys. We need to make them a part of our communities, not invading forces.
We need to teach them the slogan from the 1960s:
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”