America’s Policing Problem.….

Even under the most ideal conditions the job of policing is challenging.
There is a part of every human being which is opposed to losing it’s freedom, even when we consciously know that we are engaging in activities we have no business engaging in.
Given the most ideal hypothetical situation where race, class and other defining characteristics which influences behavior are non-existent, people would still be opposed to receiving a parking ticket from a police officer. And an officer would probably be more inclined to give a ticket to a male who gives him lip over a sweet old lady who doesn’t .

If we reverse that utopi­an sce­nario and put back in the mix , the defin­ing neg­a­tives of racism, clas­sism, dis­re­spect, as a result or racism or clas­sism the dis­ci­pline which is polic­ing becomes far more prob­lem­at­ic for some.
That seem to be the chal­lenge fac­ing police depart­ments across the United States today.
There are var­i­ous rea­sons giv­en for the fright­en­ing killing of Americans by police with­out hard­ly any offi­cer being held account­able. Even when there seem to be glar­ing evi­dence of wrongdoing.

Whether police are killing more peo­ple than years gone by, or we are see­ing more of these con­fronta­tions because of tech­no­log­i­cal advances remains to be defined.
For peo­ple in the black and brown com­mu­ni­ties, the almost dai­ly killings of unarmed peo­ple by police is what they have been com­plain­ing about for decades.
It is impos­si­ble to tell whether police are killing more peo­ple today because police depart­ments are not required to report to fed­er­al author­i­ties just how many peo­ple lose their lives at their hands each year.
Even today there are no legal require­ment for uni­formed report­ing to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Nonetheless pri­vate web­sites and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are begin­ning to track as much as they can, these killings at the hands of police.

According to Eastern Kentucky University and Author Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.

The birth and devel­op­ment of the American police can be traced to a mul­ti­tude of his­tor­i­cal, legal and polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. The insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the con­trol of minori­ties, how­ev­er, were two of the more for­mi­da­ble his­toric fea­tures of American soci­ety shap­ing ear­ly polic­ing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which lat­er became mod­ern police depart­ments, were both designed to con­trol the behav­iors of minori­ties. For exam­ple, New England set­tlers appoint­ed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were found­ed to pro­tect res­i­dents from Native Americans in that fron­tier city, and many south­ern police depart­ments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina devel­oped the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to main­tain the eco­nom­ic order and to assist the wealthy landown­ers in recov­er­ing and pun­ish­ing slaves who essen­tial­ly were con­sid­ered property.

It is impor­tant to con­sid­er these facts when we grap­ple with what we see hap­pen­ing today, even though we have come a long way since the days of slave patrols.
In my native Jamaica some experts have point­ed to the fact that the Jamaica Constabulary Force emerged out of the Morant bay rebellion.
They argue that because the force was cre­at­ed to quell the upris­ing of the oppressed mass­es, present day police still approach the task of polic­ing with the same mindset.
Whether there is truth to both sce­nar­ios or not is not up to me to decide . It’s inter­pre­ta­tion has to be with­in the remit of each and every one of us.

Clearly what is unde­ni­able is the uncon­scious bias­es which informs each offi­cer’s mind­set. Without a doubt, an offi­cer who pulls his/​her weapon in an inner city com­mu­ni­ty and shoots some­one who is unarmed, is informed and influ­enced by pre­con­ceived risks with­in that community.
The bias­es which inform those actions would most cer­tain­ly not be present in an upscale white com­mu­ni­ty. Therein lies the problem.
Within those real­i­ties, not all white offi­cers who end up killing an unarmed black per­son is nec­es­sar­i­ly racist.
In the same way that a Jamaican offi­cer, him­self from the poor­er class, who kills some­one in the ghet­to could rea­son­ably be accused of classism.
It is the per­cep­tion of inher­ent dan­ger, (wrong or right)and in some cas­es lack of respect, which cre­ates the vio­lent con­fronta­tions we see today.

As a young offi­cer patrolling parts of Western Kingston, Arnett Gardens, Waterhouse and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties we con­strued to be dan­ger­ous, my weapon was always at the ready. The same was not true when I patrolled Cherry Gardens and Norbrook.
I was not against peo­ple liv­ing in the inner city com­mu­ni­ties. I was just mind­ful that I was a lot more like­ly to be shot in those com­mu­ni­ties than I was in Cherry Gardens and Norbrook.

Black and brown peo­ple in America’s urban areas com­plain about aggres­sive and even oppres­sive police tac­tics in their com­mu­ni­ties. The police say they are mere­ly arrest­ing peo­ple where crimes are being committed.
There are ele­ments of truth to both arguments .
According to the Washington post .

Whites were about 45 per­cent more like­ly than blacks to sell drugs in 1980, accord­ing to an analy­sis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by econ­o­mist Robert Fairlie. This was con­sis­tent with a 1989 sur­vey of youth in Boston. My own analy­sis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 per­cent of white ado­les­cents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, com­pared to just 5.0 per­cent of blacks (a 32 per­cent difference).

This part­ly reflects racial dif­fer­ences in the drug mar­kets in black and white com­mu­ni­ties. In poor black neigh­bor­hoods, drugs tend to be sold out­doors, in the open. In white neigh­bor­hoods, by con­trast, drug trans­ac­tions typ­i­cal­ly hap­pen indoors, often between friends and acquain­tances. If you sell drugs out­side, you’re much more like­ly to get caught. Rothwell’s num­bers shoot some holes into some oft-repeat­ed drug war­rior talk­ing points: that peo­ple don’t get arrest­ed for non­vi­o­lent drug crime as much as they used to (false), and that legal­iz­ing and decrim­i­nal­iz­ing cer­tain drugs won’t mag­i­cal­ly solve racial dis­par­i­ties in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem true but it could help.

Essentially, police arrest peo­ple where they see crimes being com­mit­ted in the open.This usu­al­ly leaves the false per­cep­tion that there is mar­gin­al, or no crime in upscale neighborhoods.
The prison pop­u­la­tions shows the dis­par­i­ties and so are the crim­i­nal records of many inner city residents.
Years ago, police in my upstate city of Poughkeepsie patrolled on bikes and walked the streets inter­act­ing with busi­ness own­ers like myself on a per­son­al basis.
The city was able to claw it’s way back from the throes of drug infes­ta­tion and gun vio­lence, result­ing in a burst of new busi­ness­es and occu­pan­cy of build­ings which were once shut­tered, ren­der­ing the city a ver­i­ta­ble ghost town.
We prac­ti­cal­ly knew the names of all of the cops on the department.

All of a sud­den the foot and bike patrols dis­s­a­peared, in their place were cops in cruis­ers glar­ing at peo­ple as if they are aliens.
I asked sev­er­al offi­cers with whom I had become friends over the years,“what hap­pened to com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing”? To a man they all said they were told to write tick­ets and enforce qual­i­ty of life offences.
In oth­er words stop being so darn friend­ly. Community rela­tions be damned what we need are arrests.
Today , save for one Lieutenant on the depart­ment who goes out of his way to be what a police offi­cer should, I have no idea who the peo­ple we pay to police our city are.
That kind of polic­ing is a two-edged sword as experts have said , it cre­ates a chasm between police and the com­mu­ni­ties they are sup­posed to serve. It is prob­lem­at­ic when peo­ple see the peo­ple they pay to pro­tect them as occu­py­ing forces there to oppress and keep them in line.
It is a prob­lem when offi­cers come from out­side the com­mu­ni­ties in which they work and act as over­seers to those com­mu­ni­ties , mak­ing deter­mi­na­tions on their own how they decide to treat people.

A cou­ple days ago I drove west­er­ly on main street in my city of Poughkeepsie. Back on some of the cor­ners are some of the very things which result­ed in the demise of the city years ago. Young men stand­ing around at all times of the day , it does not require a great deal of thought to fig­ure out what they are doing on those corners.
These groups did not con­gre­gate dur­ing the foot and bike patrol days. The short-sight­ed approach of polic­ing from afar will yield seri­ous con­se­quences for my city and it has for count­less oth­er cities which have cre­at­ed mil­i­taries out of local law enforce­ment agen­cies result­ing in adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties they are sup­posed to serve.

An ill-informed polit­i­cal can­di­date run­ning for pres­i­dent can argue for stop and frisk as a strat­e­gy to con­tain crime out of igno­rance. It is how­ev­er dan­ger­ous tone-deaf­ness to con­tin­ue to ignore the cries of the oppressed which will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences going forward.