Let's Take Advantage Of This Political And Cultural Moment To Critically Examine Policing In America.

     It’s essential that we take advantage of this political and cultural moment to critically ask ourselves:  “What is the role of the police and 'law enforcement' in American society?”  We are so far beyond the old, tired trope of “a few bad apples” when it comes to police violence—just look at the widespread brutality against peaceful protesters around the country, ironically in response to a movement calling for an end to it.  I became a political organizer and activist in the late 90s and, in almost all of the major protests (and many of the “minor”) that I’ve attended over 20 years on both U.S. coasts, and in eastern and eastern-central Canada, the police response has been largely the same as it is today:  they pepper spray, club, and tear gas peaceful protesters, shoot them with rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, charge them with dogs, horses, bicycles, and their own vehicles, throw concussion and flash-bang grenades at them, arrest them, and violate their civil rights.  The reality is that, nationally, there are a lot of violent and/or racist cops and departments—just like there are a lot of violent and/or racist people, because the system is violent and racist, and it’s time for it to go.  

     The idea of de-funding the police and fundamentally restructuring “law enforcement” as we know it is not an idea new to the city of Minneapolis, but has been worked on for decades, largely led by people of color-led organizations at the community and national level.  It gained a lot of momentum in the early 2000s, when, post-9/11, we saw an unprecedented power-grab by the Bush administration, which took advantage of the crisis to create scores of new law enforcement agencies, restructuring the entire apparatus of law enforcement, notably via the USA Patriot Act, and including the Office Of Homeland Security, and the militarization of police forces.  Now, the U.S. is one of the most heavily policed, surveilled, and jailed industrialized “democratic” countries in the world, including our schools, and it’s getting worse.

     I had four students of color begin writing their Scholarly Papers on institutionalized racism this year—months before these most recent killings and protests.  Among other topics, their papers focused on biased policing and violence targeting communities of color, as well as an enormous amount of the 2.6 million incarcerated people in this country being black and brown.  One of them focused on the school-to-prison pipeline, and included research about the psychological and emotional effects on students of color of having police officers stationed in schools, which these researchers found was overwhelmingly negative.  From my first day working as a paraeducator, and then student teacher, in Bellevue and Seattle, respectively, until now I have worked with uniformed, armed police officers and been fundamentally uncomfortable with it, seeing their presence largely intimidate students--especially when other kids watched one of their peers get taken out of school in handcuffs.  I know there are good cops working in our schools (and communities), but I just don’t feel that they are needed daily as a member of our school staffs.  Ultimately, though, our students of color (and all of our students), their families, and our staff need to make this call.  

     In the meantime, as community members and as Americans, let’s start asking ourselves what the city of Minneapolis is asking:  “Do we need a cop for that?  Do we need someone who is armed and trained to harm, detain, and/or kill (to be fair, only a few of the duties of police) for this role?  Can we find someone else, create a position, or city department, and/or reprioritize our budget so we can take care of this need with a trained professional that isn’t a police officer?”  Now these are powerful, critical questions—and we need to figure out answers for them soon if we want to keep calling this country a democracy.