Call It By Its True Name

(Definition from Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

We should call Tyre Nichols’ murder at the hands of several police officers in Memphis by its true name.

terrorism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

terrorist: an advocate or practitioner of terrorism as a means of coercion  (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Terrorism uses fear as a psychological weapon to coerce groups, even entire societies, into submission. It is a way of exerting power against society beyond the terrorists’ legitimate authority.

When police harass, intimidate, abuse, injure or kill and get caught at it, they tend to be described as a few bad apples. But a few bad apples rot the entire bushel of apples unless they are promptly removed. It’s increasingly clear that both of my countries have bushels of rotten cops.

I wish I could say this is only physically lethal in the States. It tends to be more overtly violent there, more vicious, more often outright murderous, as it was for Tyre Nichols. Societal norms matter, even for this. The USA accepts murder, even mass murder, as commonplace. As a general rule, Britons are more horrified by someone carrying a hunting knife than Americans are by someone carrying an AR-15, let alone wielding it. But even in the UK, police sometimes murder.

The Real Target is Everyone

We tend to think of police intimidation and violence as typically being done by white police targeting minorities. Tyre Nichols was a person of color in a city where the majority of people are Black. His murderers were black too. This murder strips away a veneer the media usually trots out to reassure and quiet the public, claiming it must have been racism (or xenophobia) gone wild. I can’t remember who said it this past week, but I remember a Black man saying his mother has always warned him “the only race of police is police.” That sums it up.

We should recognize violence and intimidation by police as part of a pattern that transcends national borders. Its target is not truly minorities. Ask women how they feel about being pulled over on a deserted road at night by police. Only an oblivious woman doesn’t recognize that she could be the next Sarah Everard (murdered by a serving Metropolitan Police officer in the UK) or a victim of the next David Carrick (serial rapist in the Metropolitan Police), and that’s in the UK where all of this is “not as bad” as in the States.

Target women and you’re already targeting the majority of the population. Add people of color, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people, the disabled and the mentally ill, and you’ve got the general target list for most police misconduct toward the public. The picture becomes very clear very quickly.

The true target of terrorism by police is everyone.

Bad Bushels

There must surely be some good police officers, but when there are bushels of bad apples in a department, we have to wonder whether we’re dealing with a terrorist every time we interact with the police. They can order us to do anything. Regardless of how wrong their orders are, we’re convinced that we must comply. We have to do whatever they want. Otherwise we might not survive the encounter.

When I was a kid, a police officer lived next door. I trusted him. I felt sure he was on the side of good. As far as I know he really was. But I’m a woman and gay, so in my teens I learned about police being dangerous. I’m not sure whether they have gotten worse or whether it only seems that way because now nearly anyone can capture video so we can see what truly happened.

After the long list of high profile murders by police in the States, including recently beating Tyre Nichols to death, I can see that through all these years I’ve been wrong to listen to anyone saying there are just a few rogue cops, just a culture change needed in a law enforcement department, or just a need to clean house.

Police Chief Cerelyn Davis in Memphis has said appropriate things and, more importantly, taken appropriate actions without undue delay. Nobody had to pressure her to act. The five most culpable officers have been fired and charged with appropriate crimes. They weren’t allowed to view the videos before having to report their accounts of what they did, so they couldn’t craft their stories around what cameras recorded. The entire special unit they represented, SCORPION (Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods), has been disbanded. The question facing all of us now is what’s next?

What Should Be Next?

I’m not joining the call to defund the police. That is perhaps the worst slogan ever chosen for a societal change campaign. Shrinking the numbers of police or shrinking their budgets and changing their remit to purely law enforcement does not fully address the problem.

There must be something fundamentally wrong about the way we have defined and organized policing to end up with so many terrorists wearing a badge. We cannot continue this way.

In extreme instances, an entire police department has been dissolved and a new one created. Camden is an example. It doesn’t look like a fix for everywhere. The bigger the city, the bigger its police force and the harder it is to either change its momentum or replace it. Starting over will not be an option for the largest police departments.

There’s also a huge risk with replacing a police department. We could simply recreate the same old beast.

We need some organized way to find, apprehend and punish genuine criminals. We’ve already tried militarizing police and telling them to crack down harder on crime. Look at where that brought us. It isn’t the answer.

It looks like we need a rethink of what police are.

Maybe places like Camden have a lesson to offer that isn’t necessarily about replacing the entire department from scratch. Camden changed the focus of policing from raw enforcement to community service. Their police are meant to be part of the tapestry of neighborhoods.

A couple of decades ago I lived in Chattanooga when another experiment in policing was beginning to pay off. Chattanooga moved police officers into its most troubled areas as residents. They didn’t just patrol. They lived there, got to know people there and became a gradual upward pull on the character of the area. Chattanooga did this for a few blocks at a time, quietly and gradually, with carefully chosen officers. I could see the difference from when I had been there in earlier years.

It’s a different angle on Camden’s decision to make police part of the community rather than mainly an enforcer over the community. Camden’s police do barbecues and such with residents. Chattanooga’s police became part of the neighborhood. Not the whole department, but a select bit of it.

Where changing a whole police department and its relationship with a whole city all at once may not be feasible, perhaps changing a piece of both at a time is feasible… moving away from the macho, punitive, enforcement-centered approach that seems to have groomed what we have now.

It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to try something radically different from what we’ve been doing. We need to get rid of the bushels of rot.