When I was fourteen, I joined a branch of the Boys Scouts of America called the Law Enforcement Explorer Scouts. The Los Angeles Police Department had developed a grow your own program through scouting and I thought it would be a great experience to see if this might be a viable career path for me. I quickly learned that it wasn’t.
I was a highly successful recruit, having been awarded the “Outstanding Explorer Recruit” at graduation from a six-week training program with about 600 other teenagers at the Los Angeles Policy Academy. For six weekends, we underwent classroom training about the laws and “PT” or physical training where we went on 5 mile runs through the mountains and did all manner physical training. At the end of the six weeks of training, we were tested on our knowledge and physical fitness and I came out on top. I was really proud of myself and excited to see what came next at the local San Fernando Valley police station where I was assigned.
Needless to say, I was a law enforcement explorer scout for less than a year. The policemen with whom I interacted and overhead talking to their peers quickly convinced me that their worldview of humanity was different from mine. I saw men who seemed to view most civilians as criminals just needing to be caught doing wrong and I recognized a level of power tripping that actually frightened me. They seemed to bask in the level of power they could exert over people with impunity and they wanted me to believe this was a marvelous thing. I was repulsed to say the least. I looked to other policemen who seemed motivated to actually protect and serve to contradict what was being said and acted upon, but they were silent. Without a word of explanation, the outstanding explorer recruit for all of Los Angeles County, simply quit.
In retrospect, I realize that my training and perhaps that of police officers in general was absent any mention of the necessity of ethnics, character, integrity, and service. The motto “To protect and serve” was never unpacked as a core value. In fact, it was never even mentioned. There were no personality tests to root out the anti-social, psychopathic, power-hungry, bigoted, and just downright cruel individuals from their ranks. My distrust of the police began when I was fourteen when I saw them up close and personal. Even the good ones were too cowardly to influence the toxic culture I experienced.
Since then, I have had several interactions with the police in Ventura County, a county away from Los Angeles, where I raised my family. We, too, have a problem with racial profiling. Black and brown young men at the University where I work were routinely followed and stopped by the police. The students were traumatized by this. As the advisor to the Black Student Union (BSU) I called for a meeting between the BSU and the local police department. The first time they sent a Latino officer and he apologized for the profiling but explained that he could do nothing about it. He advised the students to be respectful and to comply with the officers’ requests. I complained how officers were following the students until they could find a reason to pull them over and how they were negatively affecting the mental well-being of our students. The complaint was met with a shrug. “Then whom are you protecting and serving?” I asked with less respect than I intended.
Another time they sent the only black police officer on the force to meet with the students. This officer pointed to the BSU president who was dressed in a green track suit, and said, “If I saw you driving on the streets in Thousand Oaks, I would find a reason to stop you.” We all gasped. His reason was that the student was by virtue of his skin color and dress a person who didn’t belong in the area and was therefore suspect. In an instant, I was fourteen again. I called the department to complain about the systemic problem and was then seated on a community panel where I took part in several one-day training sessions at the police academy to talk about the impact on community members of color when police are not there to protect and serve them, but to look for reasons to criminalize them instead.
My other interactions with police were also disturbing. I have received two speeding tickets in my life where the police officer had discretion to say, “Please slow down” instead of giving me a ticket. Neither took that route and the disparity in treatment was apparent when my white male middle-aged boss confessed that he was going 85 miles an hour on the freeway to go golfing and only got a warning. Of course, I was disgusted by this, especially because my tickets were both while driving to work.
The first was at 6:30am on a side street, just one block from home, where the speed limit had been lowered the week before. The officer stopped me and addressed me by name as he knew me from my years doing emergency foster care. He asked me if I knew what the speed limit was and I replied that it was 35 miles an hour. He informed me that it had just been changed to 30 miles an hour. I said okay. And then he asked me for my license and registration. It was at that moment that I realized he was going to give me a ticket which I knew to be unfair. I said two things to him. First, I pointed out that from the direction I was headed there was no posting of the speed limit visible. Second, I asked him whom I was endangering that a ticket was warranted as there was not a single other car nor a pedestrian was in sight. I already knew my fate was sealed because I recognized this police officer for who he really was: a white man who could exercise authority over a black woman in a BMW in an affluent neighborhood. I just wanted him to know that I recognized him for the kind of officer he actually was.
The second ticket was along similar lines. On my way to work in a brand new car with a bigger engine and more power and so I hadn’t realized my speed, which actually wasn’t that excessive. I explained that to the officer but he gave me a ticket anyway. Again, no grace nor mercy for people of color in this area. The next time I was stopped, the officer actually had no reason as I quickly exclaimed that I was going the speed limit. The officer asked me where I was going? Home, I said. Where I was coming from? The movies, I said. And then he let me go. What the hell was that? I was shaken and angry by the mental abuse.
And finally, my son was injured after a neighbor sent his dog after him. While in the emergency room getting stitches, a policemen appeared to take the required police report. My son explained the events and the officer appeared to listen and take notes. However, when I requested the police report for my attorney, I learned that the officer never filed the report, completely against department policy. At my insistence, the police department sent a different officer to our home to take a new report. My hope is that that officer was reprimanded, but I seriously doubt it.
What is clear from my perspective is that police reform is long overdue. You know there is a problem when you believe you can’t call the police even if someone is breaking into your home because you know the police will shoot your 6’4″ black husband. People of color keep learning the hard way that police are likely to shoot to kill your mentally ill child if you call them. Police are not mental health professionals and we should not ask them to do this work under any circumstances. I am not for defunding the police, but I am for funding community health care crisis managers and for major police reform.
The reform that needs to take place begins with whom they hire. The current problem is in the police screening process and their training. They need to refrain from hiring individuals who exhibit qualities and character traits that are incompatible with the motivation to protect and serve. They need to remove those officers who demonstrate qualities incompatible with these values. And finally, they need to focus officer attention on de-escalation techniques, dealing with actual crimes and true community threats. They should give warnings for minor offenses like selling loose cigarettes and not seeking to arrest folks who are no danger to society. Walking down the street should not be provocation for being stopped and questioned. Driving to school in a nice car shouldn’t automatically trigger suspicion.
Our country would be better off if the police were actually hired, trained, and deployed to protect and serve everyone, including people like me. That’s really what the Black Lives Matter movement is about. The time for better policing is now because we all deserve better.