"Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect" is a sentence that should be framed and hung on the wall of the Irony Hall of Fame.
"We roundly reject Minneapolis. It's disgusting. It's not what we do," he says. You know what, Mike? You wouldn't have. You would not have condemned a fellow cop, even in another department, without these protests. At most you'd say we don't have the full picture.
There's a joke, the punchline to which is, "But you fuck ONE goat..." and that line rang in my ears when he was talking about how most of the interactions the police have with the public are overwhelmingly positive.
But here's the thing: if we were to assume that policing works, that the deaths and other harm caused by police are the least possible harm to society because not having police would be so much worse...
We still need to treat them like failures, and police don't.
We still need to treat them like failures, and police don't.
And in fact, we can know for a certainty that the harm done by police is NOT the least possible harm to society, because of the extent to which negative outcomes (false arrests, deaths, torture of suspects, infringements of rights) are not treated as failures.
If they're not treated as failures, then the incentive to avoid negative outcomes is lower than it needs to be. If the incentive to avoid negative outcomes is lower than it needs to be, negative outcomes will be more common than they need to be.
It took more than a week of protests and a feeling that his back was up against a wall for Mike O'Meara to full-throatedly condemn a "negative outcome in a police interaction"; i.e., the cold-blooded murder of a man who was only tangentially suspected of a non-violent crime.
The police don't regard it as a failure of policing that they almost killed that man in Buffalo. The police don't regard it as a failure of policing that their vehicles have driven into protesters. The police don't regard it as a failure of policing that they targeted journalists
It's impossible for someone to do better when they refuse to acknowledge doing worse. Just flat out.
Mike O'Meara could be saying, "We know we've screwed up. We've been screwing up. We know we need to do better to regain your trust" and then pivot to "but it's a two-way street"
Mike O'Meara could be saying, "We know we've screwed up. We've been screwing up. We know we need to do better to regain your trust" and then pivot to "but it's a two-way street"
Don't you think any other industry, having lost the public trust on such a monumental scale as the police have done, would be in DAMAGE CONTROL mode? We'd at least get the formulaic not-quite-apology and promises to do better.
And to be clear: this would not be enough.
And to be clear: this would not be enough.
To be very clear, the police saying, "We've screwed up. Let's start over." would not change my mind about the need to shrink these departments away to nothing.
But the fact that they *won't* say that... does that not change anyone's mind about the possibility of reform?
But the fact that they *won't* say that... does that not change anyone's mind about the possibility of reform?
I honestly have a hard time imagining any institution losing the public trust on the scale the police have and surviving. And the police, more so than possibly any institution, needs the public trust to operate, and especially to do so with any semblance of benevolence.
Even if you're not in favor of abolition, even if you would prefer a lesser reform, I think it's worth asking yourself right now how badly the police can fail, how bad they can get, before you agree that abolition is necessary.
Is your answer really "The limit does not exist."?
Is your answer really "The limit does not exist."?
A belligerant, armed, paramilitary force that is used to being above the law is failing and losing the public trust. Is there no point at which this institution could be so badly compromised that you would agree we need to dissolve it?
My preference, if I could persuade most of the country to go along with what I think best, would be to *shrink* policing away, through phased defunding that redirects resources and functions elsewhere.
But I know if police get too bad, too fast, that won't work.
But I know if police get too bad, too fast, that won't work.
This is a question I'm not looking for the answer to (I don't honestly care what any individual person's answer is) but a question I think we should all be asking, no matter our stance on abolition: how bad can it get before it's worse to *not* abolish the police now?
