Hands Up! Enough Already!

Violence in America is growing. There are social reasons, there are economic

reasons and, increasingly, there are cultural reasons developing cracks in

the very fabric of American life. Part of the cultural reasoning is the

militarization of police forces. Poorly trained, often ex-military (where

they are trained to shoot first), and certainly over-equipped, police forces

across America have become a fifth column in many regions, dividing the

nation’s trust and communities.

Dealing with violence or potential violence is hardly an easy job. But like

most professionals, training is the key to success. It is like calculators

for kids in middle school. It is easier to make children proficient in math

tests using calculators than to actually teach them how to do math using

only pencil and paper. Go ahead, take out a pencil and paper and determine

the square root of 289. You can guess, you can do it by trial and error -

oops, with a calculator it took under two seconds. Police training for

violence is now exactly like that. Carry a bigger gun, travel in a .50

caliber-proof armored truck (hand me down from the war in Iraq), have mace

at the ready even for peaceful demonstrators, wear military surplus Kevlar

body armor and especially a combat helmet - all these are like calculators.

It makes the job quick, efficient, safer.

Safer? For whom? Not for the public’s camaraderie with police forces, not

for that trust of the public to fight crime, and certainly not for the need

of children to want to befriend the local police. What kid would want to hug

a police officer dressed in combat gear, visor down, finger on sub-machine

gun trigger? Once the police become a standing army in your neighborhood,

your trust in them diminishes in direct relation to their visible dress

code, heavy equipment mistrust of you, the citizen. Seeing cops on the

street in full military gear, with high-powered sniper rifles and machine

guns could hardly be called comforting. And comforting is the first emotion

towards open trust and collaboration. We should be able to openly trust our

police; they must be our friends, neighbors, like the fireman you need in an

emergency.

What many police need is training, hands-on training, on how to deal with

violence before they have to resort to sanctioned manslaughter or crowd

control with tanks, guns and tear-gas. Take away their “tools” and make

police officers undergo violence management training.

Where? Try the Taconic DDSO. Staff there are trained to deal with mentally

challenged often-violent patients. These staff often need to talk violent

people down; they needed to learn how to restrain them without bruising the

patients or themselves. The campus police carry no weapons there. And yet,

ask this question: “How many times has someone been shot, gassed or beaten

up by police at Taconic DDSO in the past ten years” Remember, their patients

are, in large number, extremely violent unstable individuals. The patients

are not all drugged up, but they are managed, treated as humans in need of

help, watched for early signs of a flare up. In short, the staff there have

no calculators to do their homework. They do the math, they do their real

job, protecting themselves and their patients.

The real job of the police is to be that part of society whose job it is to

protect themselves and protect citizens from harm. All citizens. Not shoot

someone with their hands up, or a mentally unstable woman defending her home

when six heavily armed men crash through her front door. Okay she had a

hammer, okay maybe that kid was a suspect for a store robbery. Shoot them

dead? Why? And how about that man with a knife in St. Louis? Where’s the

training to wound, or (if they were as well trained as Taconic DDSO staff)

talk them down and safeguard all concerned? I get it, it is easier, faster,

to shoot him dead, 12 bullets making a final end to any supposed threat.

Perhaps it is time to take away some of the police forces’ toys. Then you

might see the real, good, capable, officers who we all know are there, to

protect and serve as part of the community, retake control of the police

forces everywhere; leading those divisions to a more harmonious

relationship with their communities and thereby re-strengthening American

communities.