Thinking about Police

Policing is a topic I follow somewhat at a distance. I'm all in on recognizing the racist roots and present day operation of policing, but acknowledge that my middle-class white upbringing leaves me with remnant bits of trust in these authority figures that I know are illogical.

This recent blog post is eyebrow-raising. In it, the writer briefly outlines her research findings on the unfitness for duty of many cops. I'd like to see the academic work behind it, or hear what someone like Phillip Atiba Goff has to say about this.

A post on kottke.org (prompted by a short podcast series called Running from COPS) highlighted how the show COPS misrepresented policing, basically creating a reality TV show instead of anything approaching a documentary. For instance, the crime on the show was 58 percent prostitution, drugs, or violence, when only 17 percent of crime involves those three elements, according to the FBI. There's an eight-minute Vox video on Kottke's post that gives an idea of the podcast's critique of the show (such as the fact that the police always had preapproval of the content, and it was used by department leaders to buff their images when running for reelection or after unrest caused by police brutality).

I didn't get a sense of whether the podcast deals with the militarization of the police over the past few decades or not, but that's another problem with policing as it exists today.

Saint Paul has been facing big questions of policing for the past few months (and longer, of course, but it's been extra-prominent lately). Our murder rate as gone up suddenly this year, almost as high as the last peak number before crime in the U.S. ebbed 25 years ago. This has happened just after we elected a mayor and city council majority that wants to look at real community solutions, and now there is increased pressure to up the police budget (even though it's already above average for a city our size) and invest in unproven tech toys like ShotSpotter.

There's deeper work to be done, and I hope Saint Paul builds on what's been started instead of retrenching into fear and practices we already know don't work.

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Related: I also recommend this Why Is This Happening podcast, in which Chris Hayes talks with prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba, who's often known by her Twitter handle @prisonculture.