Abolish the police?

If we abolish the police in the 21st Century, why should people need XK9s in the future? 

Wait! That wasn't the question at the top of your mind?

Learn more about Jan's XK9 Books on her website. She writes science fiction police procedurals about sapient police dogs on a space station. Cover artwork for The Other Side of Fear is © 2020 by Lucy A. Synk; Cover artwork for What’s Bred in the Bone is © 2019 by Jody A. Lee

Actually, it wasn't my first question, either (although I do have answers). When I originally learned about the movement to abolish the police, my first question was why would we do that? 

Then I realized that by asking that question I had already marked myself as a person who owns property and benefits from white privilege. 

Clearly, there was a disconnect happening. I needed to remedy it by educating myself.

Why would we abolish the police?

Let's start with my "Why would we abolish the police?" question. The answer depends on why the questioner thinks the police exist. Well, their motto is "to protect and serve." But protect what? Serve whom? That's where it starts to get dicey. 

(Meme courtesy of Cheezeburger.)

Functionally, throughout their history police forces have existed to protect the property and persons of some of the people from basically everyone else (except when they don't protect property or the personal safety of civilians). And in recent days we've heard many authorities cite "protecting property from destruction" as a reason for cracking down on protesters who linger past curfews.

They also don't exist to protect public safety in all the ways we tend to believe they do. Did you know that according to the Supreme Court, the police are not obligated to protect a person from physical harm, even when it is threatened? 

Above all, they primarily exist to serve the current power structure, for well or ill. And that's a big part of the problem. If you have a racist or corrupt power structure, police exist to support it. 

Minneapolis police advance through tear gas on a group of protesters. (Photo courtesy of Scott Olson/Getty Images, via NPR).

Do we have a racist or corruptible power structure in the USA?

I feel kind of silly, even writing that question. Of course we do.

We certainly have a racist power structure in the USA. If anyone can have lived through the last several years and still doubt that, they probably live in a gated community, are relatively wealthy, white, and only watch Fox News. In other words, they very carefully tune out many distressing aspects of reality. 

But you can't close your eyes, cover your ears, yell "La-la-la-la!" and magically transport yourself into a post-racial America. No such place exists.

Do we have a corruptible power structure in the USA? A look at the situation in Ferguson, MO, in 2014 offers a window on such a power structure. It was a community mostly run by the minority population of white people, with a mostly white police force. Racial profiling led to repeated arrests for petty infractions, and jail time when fines weren't paid. The city basically criminalized poverty, as well as driving or doing almost any other action while black.

The most discouraging part? This list only hits the "famous ones." (photo courtesy of KISS).

But wait! The police are the "good guys!" Right?

Well, they're certainly supposed to be. Both in real life and in our media, they're portrayed as (and quite often are) brave, self-sacrificing, and strong protectors of the weak or vulnerable. 

The District of Columbia has been at the forefront of the "community policing" effort. But is it enough? Many don't think so. (Photo courtesy of Governing)

But again, whether you view them as good guys or not depends on your experiences. After some of the experiences and understandings explored in this blog post, you may be starting to feel less happy with the police.

But . . . abolish the police? Entirely? Is that realistic? And is it even remotely desirable? Don't we actually need the police for a lot of important things? 

What about murders? What about armed robbery? Car theft? Rape? Human trafficking? Fraud? How would we deal with those things, if there were no police? I have yet to find comprehensive answers from the "abolish" advocates, other than promoting a decentralized approach that parcels out some duties to other agencies. 

But unpacking many of the angles will take at least another blog post or so. I'm looking forward to examining how the "abolish" and "defund" advocates may turn out to inform (or not) the process of reforming, reducing or in some cases completely dismantling the ways policing is done--as well as implications for the future (both ours in reality, and in my science fiction).

IMAGE CREDITS:

The covers of Jan's books are from her website. The meme about protecting and serving "the right way" is from Cheezeburger. The photo of the cops and the tear gas is courtesy of Scott Olson/Getty Images, via NPR. The very long list of unsafe things to do "while black" is from KISS, and the photo of the officer doing "community policing" is from Governing. Many thanks to all!

Is a realistic level of diversity too much to ask?

I've recently had an opportunity to read and enjoy two mysteries and an urban fantasy mystery, all within the span of about two weeks. But an odd thing struck me as I was reading them.

In two of the three, there was a stunning lack of diversity.

Not a single, discernible person of color. The only ethnicities identified were second-or-later-generation Irish-American, or longtime small-town residents of Appalachian Scots-Irish ancestry. Everyone else in those two books seemed to be thoroughly-assimilated European-Americans, although that wasn't spelled out.

Not just white, but heterosexual--or at least, from the way relationships between characters were handled, everyone was assumed to be not only white, but straight.

Here's a gorgeous spring morning in North Carolina's part of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, photographed by Dave Allen. It's certainly not impossible that a small town in the mountains could be an ethnic monoculture.

Now, I'll grant that the population of a small town in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina might not have too many outsiders living there. I grew up in a small, semi-rural town in Southwest Missouri that had (at the time) only white folk living there, so I know it's possible, although even my formerly-"lily-white" home town now has in the last 30 years become significantly more integrated.

But we sure did have gay people (oppressed, closeted gay people, I'm sorry to say. But they lived among us, a naturally-occurring segment of the population).

Yes, maybe there are pockets of white monoculture in isolated towns, where "polite society" still doesn't recognize "the gays." But in New York City? In Queens? I'm sorry, but for a group of NYPD cops not to encounter a single ethnic face or meet a single LGBTQIA person or person of color in the entire book just strikes me as weird. Worse, it threatens my suspension of disbelief.

Detail of a street scene in Flushing, New York by Ben Parker. Here's a colorblindness test: do you see an ethnic mix?

“But that’s not part of my concept,” the author might say. “It’s my art, and I’ll write it as I please.”

Okay. It certainly is true that the First Amendment says they have a perfect right to write a book with only white or "default-race" heterosexual characters in it if they want to. I will stop to note that one classic hallmark of white privilege is a lack of consciousness that pink skin and European ancestry isn't really a "default" setting.

For a writer, however, there's also another, very practical problem with that "it's not my concept" conceit, and it hasn't got the slightest thing to do with "political correctness."

Not everybody out there in the reading population is white. Not everybody is straight or cisgender. And the everybody-else-from-everywhere readers also enjoy seeing people like them showing up in a book every once in a while, as an ordinary person (not a stereotype).

Depending on how you define “white,” there are a range of possible futures for the “white majority.”  The Census Bureau's prediction that the US population will become "majority-minority" in 2044 has been disputed. But the likelihood is that, depending on immigration patterns and birth rates, at some point in the mid-21st Century there won’t be a “white majority” in the US anymore.

But we already live in a world where LGBTQIA individuals exist--as they always have existed--in our midst. If at least a small percentage of your characters aren’t LGBTQIA, you’re misrepresenting reality (or you’re clueless).

Documented evidence that there ARE gay people in New York City: a recent Pride March, photographed by Filip Wolak.

Recent estimates that seek to control for bias indicate that up to 20% of the population “may be attracted to their own sex.” Others dispute both polls and perceptions. Numbers on transgender individuals are even more fuzzy.

My experience suggests that the 1-in-5 or 6 guesstimate is probably not too far off, and that transgender folk also are seriously under-reported. I don’t get out that much, and I know at least three of the latter. All of them are much happier, now that they can look and act like their real selves. And they'd probably like to see characters like them, fairly represented, from time to time in their fiction options.

Authors who'd rather not look like some kind of strange, historical relic within another decade or so might want to keep all of this in mind, when they begin concept work on their next stories.

IMAGES: Many, many thanks to Dave Allen and Pixels, via Pinterest, for the gorgeous view from Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you like the photo, you can get it printed on lots of things at Pixels. I also deeply appreciate the New York Sun and photographer Ben Parker, for the street scene from Flushing, Queens, New York. I also greatly appreciate Standing Up for Racial Justice, for its self-demonstrating example of white privilege in action, and I also very much thank Time Out New York for its article on the 2018 Gay Pride March in NYC, as well as Filip Wolak, who captured an evocative photograph of the event. This post just wouldn't be the same without these images and their creators. Many thanks!