Policing and Poverty

 

By David K. Shipler 

                Imagine walking into a police station for help as a victim of crime and also getting help as a victim of poverty. Think how policing would change if, under the same roof, assistance were available for the problems of hunger, housing, health, addiction, and joblessness.

                This sounds like pure fantasy, especially as unjustified police shootings continue, the country erupts in protests, and white supremacists threaten Black Lives Matter demonstrators with violence that turns deadly. In many black neighborhoods, the police are seen as the enemy—just another gang, as some residents have said.

But the constructive reform of policing need not be lost in the fog of fury. It needs to be kept as a focused goal whose achievement will take unprecedented cooperation among community activists and law enforcement, including police leadership and officers in the ranks.

The problem has two parts. One is the use of force by cops who are scared or bigoted or poorly trained or all of the above. A great deal of study and thinking has gone into that issue, and lots of sound policies have been proposed, though too rarely adopted, in scattered jurisdictions among the nation’s 18,000 police departments.

The other part has been mostly neglected, however: the clustering of diverse services so that officers can be relieved of onerous tasks for which they have no expertise. It’s a good bet that you won’t be able to find a police officer who loves being called to a “domestic dispute,” where parachuting into a home without context can mean encountering unpredictable, split-second dangers. Nor do cops relish dealing with people suffering from mental illness, who account for a large number of encounters. In short, police are confronted by issues they cannot address, and need tools and training they do not have.

A Mayor as President?

By David K. Shipler

                American voters have never sent a city mayor directly to the White House. They have never regarded being mayor as sufficient qualification. It’s OK to be a corrupt businessman, a mediocre governor, or a senator who hasn’t managed anything more than his own staff. But to work at gritty levels where ordinary folks meet the schools, police, and other essential services? To navigate the intricacies of race? To witness the intimate impact of government callousness or compassion? All that is deemed irrelevant by the political professionals and the electorate. As America burns, maybe it’s time for some rethinking.

Some mayors in this crisis have found the right tone of passionate eloquence to voice the country’s widespread revulsion at Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They have touched the chords of historical outrage over deprivation and oppression. They have mixed moving pleas for peace with scathing condemnations of those whose violence, arson, and looting have sullied the noble purpose of the protests.

The fine words have not always worked. Being mayor is a tough job, and mayors across the country have been exercising tough love. They’re not all good at it, and ingrained cultures of both police and citizens impede progress even by the most enlightened. But they’ve had actual experience at the grass roots, never a bad thing in governing, especially from the highest post in the land.

That experience has not proved persuasive to voters. Grover Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo, but his stepping stone to the presidency was as governor of New York State. Calvin Coolidge was the small-town mayor of Northampton, Mass., but before and after that, he served in the state legislature, from which he was elected vice president; he became president when Warren Harding died.