What if we were tripping to help instead?
Black & Blue Lives Matter Together
Our nation’s visionary efforts to transition to community policing predate the 2020 pandemic and the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Subsequently the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement encountered reactions like, ‘All Lives Matter,’ and ‘Blue Lives Matter;’ reactions that have crisscrossed the country from city to city. Ironically the call to ‘defund the police’ has led to refunding the police in the face of reported crime surges in major cities. That’s the way reaction works, right?
Tripping Him and Tripping Ourselves?
Take this ‘Tripping the Policeman’ meme, for example. What is also tripped up here? Why can’t we find more creative and non-polarizing ways to affect policing and effect a new normal? Where is policing already more like public safety; like firefighting for instance? And where are activists and community organizers partnering with governments and progressive law enforcement to help us get there? How can the rest of us create the trend; start tripping over ourselves to make change happen, after decades of studies and research have accumulated to show that we can make it happen?
Community Helpers // handprints // firefighter // policeman (Amy B. /pinterest.com)
The Black & White of Blue & Red
Are we ready for community policing to be more like firefighting–ready for our ‘blue lives’ to matter more the way ‘red lives’ matter? Or do we prefer business as usual; crime and punishment as we know it, and civic warfare maintained at the level of carnage and corruption–with the loss of life and the loss of nobility–to which we have become accustomed? Are we ready to make policing more collaborative with citizenry than adversarial with ‘the public?’
Research and development phases are largely over. The data are sufficiently compelling. We can build alternatives if we really want to. Other societies around the world already do better at this. Many implement strategies that more nearly realize the more humane goals of community policing. Let’s flip the script, instead of continuing to devise ways to trip each other up. Let’s start tripping to help instead.
P.S. Wanted: A meme for tripping to help instead.
