Public Safety
Future of Public Safety
Community Engagement
Positive interaction between officers and community members has been a policing strategy since the nineties. However, it has always been police coming into communities and not vice versa. Establishing community oversight boards with real power over officers and policy will start to build mutual trust.
Economic Justice & Education Justice
Most criminals break the law out of necessity, not because they want to. Those with fewer education and job prospects are more likely to need to commit a crime. Providing a competitive education to all can be a great equalizer. However, education only lowers crime if there are job prospects for every graduate. Achieving both these objectives can dramatically lower crime.
Narrow Cops’ Focus
Police Departments take over jobs that should belong to other government departments. Domestic disputes and encounters with mentally disabled individuals are highly emotional jobs that belong in the hands of mental health professionals. Responsibilities for monitoring traffic violations must be moved to communities and unarmed officers. Narrowing the focus of police departments allows them to more effectively respond to truly unpreventable crime.
Redistribute Cops Resources
Resources must be redistributed toward more important institutions such as public education, healthcare and housing. If we can guarantee these three things to everyone, crimes of necessity will drop sharply. If police departments and politicians hope to gain the trust of their constituents, the budgeting process must be transparent and open to public opinion. When the people call for a redistribution of cop resources, we must be listened to.
Law Enforcement Must Be Well Trained
Proper training has to be centered in all areas of public safety. A six month crash course prepares no one for the situations faced in the field. Congress must enact national standards on police training that increase training hours and update curriculum. Cops must be taught Critical Race Theory because, as the enforcers of the law, they must understand where it fails. The public won’t feel safe unless our alleged protectors can actually fulfill their jobs.
Failures of Law Enforcement
Cops Depend On Crime For a Paycheck
The alleged goal of a police officer is to end crime in all of its forms. The fallacy of this goal becomes clear when we recognize that police officers would be out of a job if crime were to disappear. It is naive to expect that an institution that relies on crime for its survival would ever be successful in eradicating its impact.
Cops Overcriminalize People of Color
American police departments started as slave patrols and do nothing to atone for their history. Law Enforcement have disproportionately targeted, jailed and killed people of color through CointelPRO, the war on drugs and mass incarceration. Departments focus their resources on communities of color with no regard for their true needs. By and large, police departments do more to fuel distrust in these communities than promote safety.
Police Departments Drain Community Resources
Cities and towns across the country struggle to provide enough resources to fund a competitive education, affordable housing or equitable healthcare. Communities have enough resources to fuel these programs, but dedicate too much for the police. Providing resources for excessive overtime, military-grade weaponry and intrusive surveillance technology cost local governments the ability to fulfill their other duties.
Cops are a Reactive Force
Modern policing is geared much more towards responding to crimes rather than preventing them from taking place. Law enforcement failure is often due to complacent police departments remaining a reactive force. When basic, modern policing came into use in 1829, crime dropped sharply, because it was much more effective than the incoherent systems it replaced. However, today’s law enforcement problems are clearer than ever. We must design a proactive public safety network that stops crime at its root causes.
Cops aren’t prepared for many aspects of their job
Cops work not only on Law Enforcement but also public health, transportation and even marriage counseling. Cops are trained for about six months before they are cleared to serve in the field. In those six months, they learn about laws of arrest, criminal laws, human relations, traffic regulations and ethics. Six months does not allow the officer to become an expert in any of these areas. Police Departments have to leave aspects of their jobs to experts: transit workers, social workers and mental health professionals.