Defang the Police
Is there any wonder that many folks have concluded that it’s time to defund the police? The brutal tactics employed by police departments in their response to peaceful protests – a First Amendment right - following George Floyd’s death were nothing less than chilling. The actions by Los Angeles Police were particularly jarring to me; I had not seen the like since the Rodney King protests. Surrounding peaceful protestors, allowing them no chance to disperse. Arresting peaceful protestors before curfew. Painful zip-tie handcuffs. Breaking car windows to drag people from their cars. Detainees being held in crowded conditions without light or bathroom facilities for as long as 12 hours. Officers blasting heavy-metal music in the paddy wagon, for as long as 45 minutes. Refusing to give badge numbers. Releasing detainees in the far corners of LA. For God’s sake, shooting a wheelchair-bound protester in the head with a rubber bullet! Not a shred of humanity in those police actions.
And all this is secondary to the reason for the protests in the first place: the documented systemic racism in policing that has resulted in unarmed Black Americans being executed by police. The human stain of racism, our original sin, has dogged us for four hundred years, and we have never shed it, despite emancipation of slaves and gains produced by the Voting Rights Act. Every single black person I know has been subject to police intimidation and racial profiling. Even the pre-eminent astrophysicist of our generation, Neal DeGrasse Tyson, has had those chilling experiences. It is time to cast the shackles of racism off forever, and a huge piece of that is police reform.
In the last several decades we have watched as our municipal police have become militarized in both weapons and tactics, and as a warrior culture has been reified in their rank and file. The tolerance of racism in police ranks shocks me. But there are good cops, you might protest. As Chris Rock observed, “American Airlines can’t be like, ‘Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.” There should be zero tolerance for racism in police ranks!
Now there is sustained national support for fundamental police reform. The city council of Minneapolis has voted, veto-proof, to dismantle the police department and start from scratch. Camden, New Jersey, has reformed its police department, shifting to a more community-based public safety model. And with the recent election of George Gascon as district attorney of Los Angeles County, there is some hope here as well. Gascon, a former LAPD cop, ran on a platform that included holding the police more accountable for their actions. As district attorney for San Francisco, he did just that: he prosecuted more than 30 policemen for such crimes as use of excessive force, and developed program changes to address the toxic racist culture in police rank and file. That he was elected bu LA voters speaks volumes about the willingness of voters to go down this route, to choose change over business as usual; they’re sick of the brutality. It is unfortunate that change did not come sooner from elected officials at either the state or local level. This is perhaps testament to the power of police unions, which lobby hard and have even helped craft laws which supposedly help police the police.
Los Angeles now has an opportunity to shift to a community-based public safety model, and start to regain the credibility and public trust that it has lost with its ill-advised protest response, its obvious attempt to dominate, intimidate and bully protestors. It’s time. Defund? I say defuse and defang.
