In my view, being a good police officer is the hardest job in the world. Their mandate is to respond to people’s worst and most destructive behaviors. Meeting these challenges with compassion and knowing that each interaction could turn deadly at any moment means there is a razor-thin line to tread. An overreaction in either direction results in damage to the officer, the community or both. There is a reason that suicide rates for police officers are now the highest for any profession in the U.S.
At the same time, the “bad apples” who use excessive force and embrace racial stereotyping and harassment should be called “poison apples” instead, and treated as criminals. They are deadly to our society, not just spoiling the barrel of good cops, but poisoning our sense of community. Where can people turn if the government agents chosen to protect and serve them take actions that are as bad or worse than the problems that draw the police in the first place?
Calls to “defund the police” use the wrong terminology. Even when an entire department is disbanded because of an impregnable culture of corruption and racism, as was the case in Camden, N.J., in 2013, it must be replaced with a different police force, such as the county sheriffs in Camden. No reasonable, rational or realistic person can believe that a modern American city, town or rural area can function without a group to enforce necessary laws and protect the weak from the unscrupulous, greedy and violent criminals that constitute a tiny but inescapable percentage of our population.
But regardless of the excruciating video evidence that confirms the criminal behavior of some poison apples, all officers and departments are not even remotely the same. But they do have one thing in common: Since the Reagan Revolution led government toward serving the upper class rather than the people, the expectations and demands of their jobs have continually expanded as spending on social services has been cut to the bone.
The head of the Center for Policing Equity, Philip Goff, recently suggested that our society once had a full tool box for solving pervasive social problems. “Then you lose the tool of mental health resources … the tool of public education … the tool of job placement. And then all you’ve got left is one rusty hammer. That’s policing.”
Each year since 2013, there have been about 1,000 police killings. Some statistics indicate that about one in four deaths are people with severe mental health problems. Nationwide, police departments estimate that about 20 percent of their staff time and about 10 percent of their overall budgets are consumed by people with mental health issues, including transport to involuntary screenings and institutions.
In response to these issues, a diverse group of cities, varying in size and demographics, including Miami, Memphis, Denver, and Eugene, Ore., have instituted Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) by shifting funds within their police budgets. The goal is for dispatchers to send out trained, unarmed mental health and social services workers to mediate and de-escalate situations where confrontation and armed response are likely to make the problem worse. In Miami, arrests (and associated jail and court costs) dropped in one year from about 118,000 to 56,000. From 2010 to 2017, their CIT teams responded to about 83,000 calls but counted only 139 arrests.
For many years, Greenfield’s Police Department and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office have worked closely with social service agencies. They have generally been involved and supportive of efforts to protect victims of domestic and child abuse, make full use of available mental health services, and provide treatment for substance abuse.
Deputy Chief Mark Williams notes the Police Department participates in a Jail Diversion project, and that 70 percent of staff have completed CIT training as a requirement for supervisors, and the rest voluntarily, far above national recommendations. In the first half of 2020, they have also been involved in 79 Section 12 incidents that require people to undergo mental health assessments to prevent harm to themselves or others.
The Greenfield Police Department, like every other national and local government and business organization, is not perfect. Separating mental health issues from crimes against property and people does not eliminate problems of systemic racism that exist throughout our police departments, businesses, schools, and larger society. But it can allow good police officers to focus on the essential protection and service that is central to healthy communities.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer and author living in Greenfield. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.