Policing Isn’t About Safety — It’s About Control

Texas Governor Greg Abbot has promised to sign a bill that makes it incredibly difficult for large cities to reduce funding to police departments. The bill affects cities with over 250,000 residents, and states that any reduction in funding must first go through a municipal election. Additionally, cities cannot reduce the number of officers that the city is allowed to employ.

I spent a few minutes trying to think of some clever loopholes around the bill (e.g. a hiring freeze, but only for police officers), but I quickly realized that wasn’t helpful or interesting. What’s more interesting to me is seeing the lengths at which elected representatives will go to harm people.

Within discussions around policing, there is sometimes (but not nearly often enough) the topic of harm reduction. Politicians (and police) are fond of saying that we need cops to keep us safe, but they never really specify what that means. What exactly are they keeping us safe from, and — more importantly — what aren’t they keeping us safe from? In Texas, the police certainly aren’t keeping anyone safe from Greg Abbott.

Modern policing is an inequitable system that is very ineffective at keeping people safe. There are better ways to provide public safety that don’t involve hundreds of police officers in a city.

Improving policing could save money and save lives, both of citizens and officers. So at first glance, it doesn’t make much sense why a governor would prohibit a city from even trying to improve public safety.

I’m picking on a Republican politician in a red state — how about a Democrat politician in a blue state?

In Minneapolis, Minnesota (the city where George Floyd was murdered), there have obviously been a lot of discussions about policing. Initial promises for change have been walked back a great deal, and debate continues within the city as to what should be done with the police department there.

Throughout this ongoing conversation, Mayor Jacob Frey has stood by the chief of police, Medaria Arrodondo. A few days ago, the Minnesota Reformer published a piece that outlined how Chief Arrodondo and Mayor Frey worked with an outside public-relations team to help convince city council members and the public to increase funding for the police department, including offering political favors to city council members.

Policing is a somewhat unique topic that can bridge political divides, purely because it reinforces power structures. More than any other institution (in my opinion), policing maintains the systems of social hierarchies that we have in this country. And that is really the primary function of the police.

I will get momentarily confused by the decisions that police departments and city leaders make regarding the police, because they make decisions that adversely affect public safety. Greg Abbott and Jacob Frey are putting the lives of their constituents more at risk. But then I remember that the police are not there for public safety.

Many years ago, in one of my very first criminal justice classes, I had a teacher who said the mission of policing was to protect the status quo. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time. Later, when I worked in policing, that fact became even more cloudy. I told myself that I was trying to help people — that I was doing my part for public safety.

But the reality is that I was involved in a system that is structured from top to bottom to keep disadvantaged communities disadvantaged, and privileged communities privileged. In other words, to keep our current social model in place. Policing accomplishes this by punishing disadvantaged communities more severely and more arbitrarily — in effect, they are punished for being disadvantaged. Privileged communities, on the other hand, get a much greater license to engage in harmful behavior.

I’ve said this in a previous article, but it bears repeating. Policing punishes Black people more for the same types of behaviors that white people engage in. And it’s not just about race — it’s also about class and gender.

The main function of policing is not to keep you safe, or even themselves safe. If it was, police departments would be changing how they operate, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There is more than enough evidence to show that how we police in this country is terrible, and there are many better models to follow.

The main function of policing is to keep people in their place. It is to maintain social structures that just so happen to be discriminatory and destructive. When viewed through this lens, the decisions of police departments and city leaders begin to make sense.

It’s important to recognize that progressives make up only a portion of the Democratic Party — the rest are mostly conservatives. (Not the extreme authoritarians that the GOP has turned into, but conservatives nonetheless in that they want to maintain current social structures.) This is why we see Mayor Frey in alignment with the police in Minneapolis.

Change — real change — is something that terrifies most politicians. And they’re willing to risk your life to keep it that way.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything