{"id":51311,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51311"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:08","slug":"policing-is-a-dirty-job-but-nobodys-gotta-do-it-6-ideas-for-a-cop-free-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/policing-is-a-dirty-job-but-nobodys-gotta-do-it-6-ideas-for-a-cop-free-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Policing Is a Dirty Job, but Nobody’s Gotta Do It: 6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time to start imagining a society that isn’t dominated by police.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A protestor holds up her hands in front of a line of NYPD motorcycles.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

After months of escalating protests<\/a> and grassroots organizing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, police\u00a0reformers have issued many demands.<\/a> The moderates in this debate typically qualify their rhetoric\u00a0with “We all know we need police, but…” It’s a familiar refrain to those of us who’ve spent years in the streets and the barrios organizing around police\u00a0violence, only to be confronted by officers who snarl, “But who’ll help you if you get robbed?” We can put a man on the moon, but we’re still lacking\u00a0creativity down here on Earth.<\/p>\n

But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers\u00a0have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police\u00a0have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the\u00a0“disorderly conduct” of the urban poor<\/a>. Like every structure we’ve known\u00a0all our lives, it seems that the policing paradigm is inescapable and\u00a0everlasting, and the only thing keeping us from the precipice of a\u00a0dystopic Wild West scenario. It’s not. Rather than be scared of our impending Road\u00a0Warrior<\/em> future, check out just a few of the practicable, real-world alternatives to the modern system known as policing:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Unarmed mediation and intervention teams<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Unarmed but trained people, often formerly violent offenders themselves,\u00a0patrolling their neighborhoods<\/a> to curb violence right where it starts.\u00a0This is real and it exists in cities from Detroit to Los Angeles. Stop believing that police are heroes because they are the only ones willing to get in the way of\u00a0knives or guns \u2013 so are the members of groups like Cure Violence<\/a>, who\u00a0were the subject of the 2012 documentary The Interrupters<\/a><\/em>. There are\u00a0also feminist models<\/a> that specifically organize patrols of local women<\/a>,\u00a0who reduce everything from cat-calling and partner violence to gang\u00a0murders in places like Brooklyn. While police forces have benefited from military-grade\u00a0weapons and equipment<\/a>, some of the most violent neighborhoods have found\u00a0success through peace rather than war.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The decriminalization of almost every crime<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      What is considered criminal is something too often debated only in\u00a0critical criminology seminars, and too rarely<\/a> in the mainstream. Violent\u00a0offenses count for a fraction of the 11 to 14 million arrests<\/a>\u00a0every year, and yet there is no real conversation about what constitutes a crime and what permits society to put a person in chains<\/a> and a cage.\u00a0Decriminalization doesn’t work on its own: The cannabis trade that used\u00a0to employ poor Blacks, Latinos, indigenous and poor whites in its\u00a0distribution is now starting to be monopolized by already-rich landowners<\/a>. That means that wide-scale decriminalization will need to come with economic programs and\u00a0community projects. To quote investigative journalist Christian Parenti’<\/a>s remarks on criminal\u00a0justice reform in his book Lockdown America, what we really need most of all is “less.”<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Restorative Justice<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Also known as reparative or transformative justice, these models\u00a0represent an alternative to courts and jails. From hippie communes to\u00a0the IRA<\/a> and anti-Apartheid South African<\/a> guerrillas to even some U.S.\u00a0cities<\/a> like Philadelphia’s experiment with community courts<\/a>, spaces are created where accountability is understood as a\u00a0community issue and the entire community, along with the so-called\u00a0perpetrator and the victim of a given offense, try to restore and even\u00a0transform everyone in the process. It has also been used uninterrupted\u00a0by indigenous<\/a> and Afro-descendant communities like San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia for centuries, and it remains perhaps the most widespread and far-reaching of\u00a0the alternatives to the adversarial court system.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Direct democracy at the community level<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Reducing crime is not about social control. It’s not about cops, and\u00a0it’s not a bait-and-switch with another callous institution. It’s giving\u00a0people a sense of purpose. Communities that have tools to engage with each other<\/a> about problems and disputes don’t have to consider what to do\u00a0after anti-social behaviors are exhibited in the first place. A more\u00a0healthy political culture where people feel more involved is a powerful\u00a0building block to a less violent world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Community patrols<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            This one is a wildcard. Community patrols can have dangerous racial overtones,\u00a0from pogroms to the KKK to George Zimmerman. But they can also be an\u00a0option that replaces police with affected community members<\/a> when police\u00a0are very obviously the criminals. In Mexico, where one of the world’s\u00a0most corrupt police forces only has credibility as a criminal syndicate,\u00a0there have been armed groups of Policia Comunitaria<\/a> and Autodefensas<\/a>\u00a0organized by local residents for self-defense from narcotraffickers,\u00a0femicide and police. Obviously these could become police themselves and\u00a0then be subject to the same abuses, but as a temporary solution they\u00a0have been making a real impact. Power corrupts, but perhaps in Mexico,\u00a0withering power won’t have enough time to corrupt.<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Here’s a crazy one: mental health care<\/strong>\u2028<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              In 2012, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed up the last trauma clinics<\/a> in some of\u00a0Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. In New York, Rikers Island<\/a> jails\u00a0as many people with mental illnesses “as all 24 psychiatric hospitals in\u00a0New York State combined,”<\/a> which is reportedly 40% of the people jailed\u00a0at Rikers<\/a>. We have created a tremendous amount of mental illness, and in\u00a0the real debt and austerity dystopia we’re living in, we have refused to\u00a0treat each other for our physical and mental wounds. Mental health has\u00a0often been a trapdoor for other forms of institutionalized social\u00a0control<\/a> as bad as any prison, but shifting toward preventative,\u00a0supportive and independent living care can help keep those most impacted\u00a0from ending up in handcuffs or dead on the street.<\/a><\/p>\n

              Go to Original \u2013 rollingstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              It’s time to start imagining a society that isn’t dominated by police. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the “disorderly conduct” of the urban poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}