Police Reform

When I was thirty-years old I lived in Downtown Los Angeles with my boyfriend at the time and our two dogs. It was the morning after Thanksgiving, one of the absolute best times to live in Los Angeles because so many people are out town, not working, and recovering from the day before that the streets of the city are literally deserted. When I was younger and new to Los Angeles this deathly silence was unnerving, but as I got used to it over the years I began to look forward to that calm weekend as one of the only times of the year when L.A. was peaceful.

Rising early I walked out into the crisp air in my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt to potty my two dogs. The city had asked residents to relieve their pets in the gutters so as not to dirty up the sidewalks. A law abiding and sensible person, I saw the wisdom in this, and in fact had already been doing it since we moved in six months earlier. As I stood in the street waiting for my dogs to find the right spot I closed my eyes and soaked up the bright morning sun. One car drove past. Then a moment later a police cruiser with their window down. I smiled warmly at the cop, grateful for the peace and order they maintained and their visible presence in such a potentially dangerous place to live.

But instead of smiling back, he scowled at me— “Get out of the street,” he said angrily. I must have looked perplexed. I looked around to check that, yes, I was standing in a parking stall between two parked cars. “But I’m not in the street?” I said questioningly. In less than a split second he cranked the wheel of his car over to the curb, as my dogs began shitting. Both officers exited the vehicle, chests puffed out, walking slowly toward me. “Get out of the street,” he repeated. I stepped up onto the sidewalk while my dogs continued to shit. “The city asked us to relieve dogs in the gutter,” I said. He wasn’t interested in hearing from me. “Show me your I.D.” he said, the partner remaining silent but crowding me intimidatingly and forcing me to back up, the dog shit now sitting uncollected in the gutter. Over the years of my life I have come to understand that many straight men will harass me just because I’m taller than they are. Towering over them they instinctually seek to best me in an imaginary competition for superiority and prove themselves exactly the insecure, cowardly puddles of fear they seek to dispel. “I don’t have my I.D.” I said angrily, my voice growing louder, pointing to my pajama bottoms. “You’re required to have your I.D.” he lied. I lost it and began screaming some incoherent babble about this not being Nazi Germany and I knew my rights and didn’t need to have an I.D. on me as I wasn’t operating a vehicle, how they were harassing me and that I hadn’t actually broken any laws and that they were bored with nothing better to do and could be better occupied chasing down the drug dealers dealing on every corner of downtown in broad daylight. The cop demanded my information and so I gave him my name. Having heard my voice, my partner soon appeared. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking as bewildered as I. The look on those cops’ faces when they realized that I was a not some big tough straight guy with whom to have a pissing contest but instead a likely law-abiding, clean, responsible gay man cohabiting with his partner and fueling the gentrification of the once dilapidated and run-down downtown who is probably friends with members of the gay mafia and other well-connected liberal activists was distinctly one of “oops, we really messed up.” They immediately stopped harassing me, their posture slumped back to normal, not even responding any longer to my jabs and protestations as we waited in the heat of my indignation and unflinching scowl for their supervisor to arrive so I could waste their time further by lodging a formal complaint even though I knew it would not be respected either.

If I were black, the statistics are that instead of taking my anger in stride those cops would likely have body-slammed me to the ground and put me in a restraining hold for refusing to submit to their authority. From the moment I smiled at the cop they were entirely in the wrong—but still they wrote me up a $250 citation for “blocking traffic” when they were the only car on the road, two lanes away from me, while I was standing between two parked cars pottying my dogs in the gutter exactly as the city had requested. The harassment, the power-trip, the willingness to go out of their way and outright fucking lie to create charges to satisfy their own egos is a small but very real example of how the institution of law enforcement is currently a tool used to satisfy the whims, biases, and amoral character of inept, fearful, corrupt, and power-hungry human beings. If I were not white I would not have been able to respond to my unfair treatment in the way I did. That is exactly how many, many black men and women have died. It is a right that is not enshrined in any law or code but one which white people wield with careless abandon, which is to not be killed, injured, or exploited simply for protesting unfair and unethical treatment by law enforcement.

Defunding the police does not, in fact, mean getting rid of police. It means reducing the opportunity for police to become an unconstitutional, exploitational, and unaccountable authoritarian institution. Several years ago I also posted on social media that police should be disarmed—I should not have been surprised (though I was) when one of my cousins who is a police officer replied that society would collapse and violence run unchecked without armed police. There are many plain and simple examples to demonstrate the falsity of this absolutely ignorant belief that police are the only thing standing between us and absolute chaos as to make my cousin look like an asshole—The United Kingdom, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, and Iceland are some examples— Never mind the fact that there are TWELVE-FUCKING-MILLION PEOPLE IN LOS ANGELES and if they wanted to become violent and lawless there is nothing the police could do to stop TWELVE-FUCKING-MILLION PEOPLE from doing what they want. Human society is not held together by authoritarian, armed law enforcement. The reason that twelve million human beings live together in relative peace and prosperity is because people are generally wonderful, cooperative, and loving by nature and seek the opportunity and prosperity which results from collaboration and cooperation. Obviously, weaponry and armed forces are required for the protection of countries and societies from antagonistic forces, which may include the need for the forceful enforcement of law in certain instances, but that is not the same as a police force being armed amongst the very citizens they are supposed to protect, nor considers the infiltration of this outrageously empowered institution by the very antagonistic forces who seek to use that empowerment for the realization of their own ends. The very method that most human atrocities have been facilitated is through criminal police forces—secret police, corruption, and systems replicating the power dynamics demonstrated by the Stanford Prison Experiment, made worse by the indoctrination of members to believe they are the arbiters of peace and justice and thereby commit horrors and atrocities through it.

A few years after my unpleasant experience with the police in Downtown L.A. we moved to the resort town of Palm Springs, California. One day an angry new neighbor decided to scream unsolicited obscenities at me over my fence as I watered my plants because they had been cited by the city for dumping their remodel trash in an empty lot, and the neighbor accused us of doing the same without me even uttering a single word. It was so alarming that I called the cops, and two nice police officers showed up at our door. We explained the situation and during our conversation the handsome one asked how tall I was and the other remarked about our great kitchen backsplash. It was exactly the kind of behavior we expect from police—arriving when needed in a timely manner, building community relations, and effectively quelling inter-community disputes. But the thing is—it’s great that there are good cops, but IT DOES NOT MATTER that there are good cops. Their presence doesn’t do anything to stop the proliferation of nefarious, racist, xenophobic, insecure, and power-hungry people from exploiting the power and authority of the police force to commit crimes. The presence of good cops did not prevent the death of George Floyd, nor the hundreds and thousands of other murders which have occurred at the hands of bad cops, nor even just the simple unfair and unjust harassment of American citizens who deserve to go about their business in peace. The presence of good cops did not also stop police brutality during protests and riots when soldier-boys eager to engage in the conflict for which they’ve fantasized and trained finally provided the opportunity to do so, against their fellow citizens, neighbors, brothers, friends, and community they are supposed to protect.

Weapons are meant to kill, to instill fear, to intimidate. It does not matter if a cop is well-trained or good, when they walk up to a car with a gun on their hip there is an immediate fear and revulsion which accompanies them. Cops view this as authority and protection but in reality it puts their own life in danger, making themselves a target of other fearful, distrusting, criminal, or unwell persons. I once dated a cop who was shot as he drove through a neighborhood. He personally did nothing to deserve it, but the animosity from decades of unchecked injustice in turn made him a target by association. Most criminals are also people who are simply mentally ill—When you’re white, an accompanying mental illness causes white citizens to consider some compassion for the perpetrator. You wouldn’t want police to shoot your mentally ill grandmother when she stumbles toward them in a fog of confusion, or your younger drug-addict brother who’s high on methamphetamine so he can live to get treatment and turn his life around. That right is not afforded to people of color, because racism, who also suffer higher rates of such issues precisely because of racist systems like redlining which have systematically oppressed opportunity for empowerment and success.

When I was twenty-four I was driving down 4th South in Salt Lake City, Utah (a big, busy street) when suddenly I saw two men physically assaulting a third who was lying on the ground. Instinctively I laid into my car horn, threw my car into park, and jumped out to confront them, shouting “What the fuck do you think you’re doing.” The two men were undoubtedly alarmed at seeing a six-foot-six man take issue with what was going on, and they immediately hurried away from their victim (a taxi pulled up and asked me what was going on and I asked him to call the police and follow the two attackers, which he did, whom they apprehended shortly after). The man lying on the ground was obviously drunk, and bleeding, but when the police arrived they did not even try to ascertain his condition, simply standing over his body as if it was routine for them to feel no sense of concern for people of color. I was alarmed when the man tried to get up and I urged him to stay still, looking to the cop for answers since I was not a trained EMT, as blood trailed down his forehead (it wasn’t gushing but still concerning). The cop didn’t even look at the man but instead spoke to other officers through his radio as he stood there doing nothing.

People who need guns to do to what’s right are cowards. I did not have a gun or any other weapon on me when I intervened in this conflict. Sure, they could have had a weapon and I could have been killed. But that did not stop me from doing what was right, keeping the peace, and looking out for my fellow man. Humans do what is right for two reasons: A desire to live in peace and cooperation, or an understanding that violence and crime jeopardizes their own social wellbeing. Right now the system in America accomplishes the latter through prisons and threat of violence upon vulnerable populations, without compassion or mercy and both incidental and intentional injustice. Most people’s inability to be motivated by the former also stems from conditions like mental illness, drug addiction, and social and economic factors which cause these, where the police are then expected to control and contain these people who instead should be given medical treatment. Police are expected to do too much, and this also in turn provides an opportunity for exploitive and dangerous individuals to exercise their racism, fear, and control issues on the rest of us. Defund the police does not mean abolishing the police. We will always need some form of police. But we expect too much of them and provide too little training and accountability relative to the level of responsibility. Defund the police means to redirect much of the budgets we use to control mental illness, drug addiction, and other problems of society into programs which cure and prevent these in the first place. The job of the police is then narrowed and thus becomes more effective, accomplished also through means which do not empower racists and other dangerous sectors of human society which seek to exploit empowered institutions. Armed and forceful operations should be restricted to responsible and appropriate arms of government like the National Guard who fulfill the purpose of the 2nd amendment, transitioning the role of police from judge, jury, and executioner to the public servants they are meant to be. The shift in funding to programs which promote peaceful and successful societies and economies (like teaching, social work, mental health and medical professionals, etc.) increases jobs so nobody loses out on employment opportunities (and pay is increased since budgets are no longer spent on expensive munitions and fucking toys that militarized police groups collect for fun (go play a fucking video game if you want to shoot people from a militarized Humvee).

The biggest problem with police as an institution is that people think they are good and moral simply through association. The cop I dated also expressed a desire to join the military so he could kill someone. He had been abused, heavily, by his father, and the institution of police empowered and facilitated his mental illness (he has not acted on this so far as I know, though he also regularly drove his cruiser while drunk, and I hope his tirade was a way of coping with the pain and trauma with which he deals rather than a real danger—though considering the history of policing is not a strong likelihood). The delusion of right by association arms and emboldens criminals, both accidental and intentioned, and so empowers them to harass our communities in spite of those who are honorable and well-meaning, even those who are also mentally ill and should not be empowered as such. Being an ignorant white person who wants to believe that cops are mostly good with a few bad seeds ignores the reality of infiltration by extremist persons who wish to exercise their ideologies to your own peril. Today it may be those who share your ideology, but tomorrow it may be your adversary. The only means by which to prevent misuse is to defund the institution in the first place, to instead use resources to build up other systems which target the problems largely addressed by policing before they become problems in the first place. Increasing teacher pay, teaching jobs, and funding other educational and employment programs empowers people to provide for themselves and lift themselves out of poverty. Nutritional and mental health and medical programs reduce substance addiction and associated crime. Mediation, arbitration, and intervention programs alleviate the need for police involvement in many cases. Social work prevents or resolves most domestic crimes. Social media and connectedness reduce criminal behavior far more than police work, because it empowers and educates and connects people, and it too can be leveraged even more to this end.

If you are someone who suffers from or knows those affected by substance abuse, or in a position of authority which regularly deals with such individuals, you can help them or yourself by learning about the underlying cause of alcoholism and addiction and what to do about it. Economic stress is a major factor in criminal activity (would you sit by and watch your family starve while the rest of of society grows fat with prosperity? You say no, then steal movies, music, books, and video games on the internet just because you can) and enlightened ideas on income and success can help relieve this stress, as can programs for universal wages which also stabilize markets and governments. I also still believe that Trump will win 2020 in spite of all this, because most people don’t understand that a significant majority of people who voted for him did so precisely because his criminality and ineptitude would destabilize our country exactly as it’s doing and so force consequences upon the establishment and the reformation of oppressive institutions, since the parties have heretofore been unwilling to do it voluntarily, or in many cases, like Biden, even being an author of it and surprise, surprise wants to keep everything exactly as it is.