By: Tor Brosterf
Someone once asked me, “How can you honestly argue for defunding the police? Haven’t you been outside?” Of course I’ve been outside. Do you think I like stepping over human beings on the pavement? Do you think I like the fear of wondering whether a stray round will clip me through my bedroom window? Of course not. But policing as it has been done, in Seattle and the U.S. more generally, cannot continue.
Take Seattle for example. We have a force which largely lives in communities outside the city limits. In the precincts themselves whistleblowers report posters and dioramas which belittle civil rights groups, including Black Lives Matter. Photos surface on social media showing smiling officers with MAGA paraphernalia and Trump merchandise. One officer coolly dons a F--- Biden tee over the caption, “free speech.” It would be fair to say those who police us in Seattle are not neighbors, friends, or allies.
This outsider status is all the more disturbing because of the powers given to police officers, the immunity courts bestow on their acts, and the military kit they are provided with at taxpayer expense. Given these politically-minded, racist outsiders are armed with AR-15s and the “us-versus-them” attitude of an expeditionary force in enemy country, it is reasonable for citizens to question the resources allocated to policing.
And it is not merely the appearance of menace that should concern you. Police behavior conforms to our worst fears. How much evidence do you need? Black people in Seattle are routinely threatened, physically intimated, and battered before being detained on reasonable suspicion. During the CHOP/CHAZ fiasco, police responders faked communications over radio channels to stoke fears that militias were on the hunt for civil rights protestors. An off-duty officer drove drunk through Interbay and killed a bystander. In response to understandable concerns about policing, officers orchestrated a “sick-out” which left Seattle’s streets unpatrolled during the chaotic Taylor Swift concert weekend. And most recently, and heartbreakingly, body cam footage was made public divulging the casually callous comments made by an officer after his colleague killed a bystander in pursuit of an alleged perpetrator: Jaahnavi Kandula was — giggle — just a regular person, no worries, write a check. These officers are protected not only by absurd immunity precedents but also a police union which combines the worst aspects of corruption and politics.
So when someone asks me how can I honestly argue for defunding the police, I say with a straight face and an honest heart: “EASY.”
What is not easy, however, is arriving at a solution which will please Seattleites. There is a portion of the electorate that cannot envision a future in which the police play no active role. They say criminals and criminality would flourish; after all, when the cat’s away . . . They obliquely reference “recent data” on crime to support their paranoia. Sadly, these folks consider problems through the dark lens of their own souls. Yes, of course, there will always be those willing to be dishonest or physically violent to obtain the things they want: money, sex, power. Heck, we’re lawyers! Human nature and history compel us to believe this to be true. But the answer to hate is not hate. It is love.
What I would ask for in our police is this. Rather than minds trained to confront, to overpower, to constrain, let our police officers live in the community in which they work, use nonviolence to deescalate, and understand the mystery and effectiveness of turning the other cheek.
Until we change the thought processes of the people who police, we will be left with a polarizing issue of whether to fund “them” at the expense of “us.”
