There are essentially two views of cops and law enforcement - the largely anodyne depictions of prime time network shows ("Law & Order", "CSI", etc) and the more gritty, raw depictions of cable channels ("The Shield", "Luther", etc). The main difference is only stylistic though - the underlying premise is that the "good" ones are driven by the desire to serve and get to the truth, and that they will always prevail over the "bad apples". The popular mythology that the police are here to protect and serve is well established.
However, even a casual perusal of the history of policing makes it abundantly clear that the truth is, in fact, the diametric opposite - the raison d'etre of the police has always been to keep the less fortunate amongst us "in check."
What started out as the night watch (in the early 1600's) in the big cities on the eastern seaboard (Boston, New York, Philadelphia) eventually gave rise to the first formal police department in 1838 (in Boston). In the south meanwhile, what started off as slave patrols morphed into local police departments. In both cases, the police were entirely staffed by white men, whose main charter was to keep the labor force - slaves in the south, factory workers in the north - under the control of their masters. The rich, as they are wont to do - all around the world and throughout history - outsourced the dirty work to hired minions. For much of the early decades the local police departments were nothing more than enforcers for the local mob bosses (who were of course the political bosses as well).
In the early 1900s, there was an attempt to professionalize police departments around the US and while some positive changes came in (for instance, policemen would be hired through a dedicated process and not simply be appointed by the Mayor and his henchmen), it also created the modern police bureaucracy. The main purpose however, was still to keep labor from getting too restive and the police were routinely called into bust union activity. In response to persistent charges of brutality and calls for increased accountability, police forces closed ranks and unionized themselves. This has to be one of the more ironic twists in this saga - the police today use the very same tool to avoid accountability that they were supposed to destroy - unions.
The calls for police reform continued to come at regular intervals, but nothing really changed well into the 60s and 70s, when the police were called in to suppress the civil rights and anti-war activities of that era - and they responded with characteristic brutality. Through the 90's and beyond, corruption and racial discrimination scandals have erupted in one big city police department after the other with clockwork regularity.
The modern day police brass may make a lot of PC statements, but under that veneer, things have only gotten worse. A case in point is the increasing militarization of big and small town police departments. This is the consequence of the, now infamous, 1033 program which requires the Pentagon to transfer surplus military hardware to local police departments. The original rationale was almost logical - help the police in their 'war on drug'. However, the results have been predictably disheartening - small and big town police departments are now bristling with military vehicles and weapons that only serve to further terrorize citizens when the police deploy them in overwhelming displays of force. Shock and Awe on the homefront. This is exactly what happened in Ferguson, MO - the manner in which that police department responded to protests that broke out in the wake of the 2014 killing of the unarmed black teenager (Michael Brown) at the hands of a white police officer so horrified the nation that President Obama signed an executive order suspending the 1033 program. From 1990 through 2014, this program had caused more than $5 Billion in military gear to be transferred to municipal police departments across the country. Predictably, in 2017, Trump signed an executive order reinstating the program.
As an immigrant of color (or maybe just as a person of color), any encounter with any law enforcement officer (let alone a cop) is fraught. I understand implicitly that the burden of proving my "innocence" or "lack of threat" is on me and the cop considers it well within his (yes, it is still mostly men) rights to assume that I am up to no good. This is very difficult (if not outright impossible) for white americans to understand - their trust in the cops as protectors is indeed justified. When Trump recently praised police officers as "great, great, people", who have been, "letting us live in peace," he was exactly correct - with the minor caveat that the "us" he was referring to are the people with the money and power - that are also overwhelmingly (and not coincidentally), white. His choice of words were also (unwittingly, I am sure, given that this is Trump - that past master of linguistics, the one with all the "best" words) revealing in their own right: In stating that the police are "letting" us live in peace, he was implicitly endorsing the belief amongst a significant fraction of the law enforcement community that we are all just being allowed to thrive under their benevolent guardianship and how dare we challenge this by asking for any accountability or transparency?
Probably the most famous line from A Few Good Men, is the "You can't handle the truth!" retort from Col Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson), but what follows is particularly telling. He continues:
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it." Enough said.
Calls for "defunding" the police have started to gain momentum and Trump and his supporters have seized upon it with predictable glee. It's easy to scare people into thinking that the protestors are advocating for a lawless world where we would all essentially be in a real life version of The Purge. (Actually, I am pretty sure that that prospect is exactly what scares the living daylights out of rich elites, but let's leave that for another day.)
Don't fall for this scare tactic! "Defunding" doesn't mean there won't be a police department or law enforcement officers. It simply means that we, as a society, need to rethink what we want our police to do. They have become the ultimate Swiss Army knife of civic society - called upon equally to attend to natural disasters and domestic abuse. This is unfair to the police and to us as citizens who are paying for this service. The police are trained to keep the peace and solve crimes, not respond to homelessness or mental illness. "Defunding" the police is a call to restructure how we spend our public safety dollars. If you are still worried about ending up with a smaller police force, perhaps you will take some comfort in the study after study that has shown that more police does not lead to less crime. Or conversely, that a smaller force does not lead to increased crime.
I will close with the example that is being bandied about a lot these days - that of Camden, New Jersey. In 2012, Camden dissolved its police department en masse (although about 25% of the officers were re-hired after a new set of hiring policies were put in place). At that point, it was one of the most violent cities in America, with a murder solve rate of about 14%. The force was rebuilt from the ground up and crime has now dropped by more than half and their murder solve rate is above 60%. Why do I highlight this statistic amongst so many others? Well, because most murders are solved only when citizens come forward and help the police with witness statements and cooperate, in general. The sharp spike in the solve rate points to a very key (and otherwise intangible) factor - the huge increase in trust that the citizens of Camden now have in their police. Isn't that a worthwhile goal for all of us to have?
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