Classify what we expect from police officers in regards to health, safety and respect

As a psychologist who has helped select, support and train police officers for the past 39 years, I have observed the constant challenges and frustrations of generations of dedicated and idealistic law enforcement men and women. And as a citizen, I have also witnessed the harsh, humiliating, discriminating and deadly incidents involving police use of force that we are all now demanding must stop.

Voices have increasingly called for dismantling and reorienting law enforcement and its various functions. And even the overall purpose and societal impact of the law enforcement system itself have been criticized. In a recent New York Times op-ed, philosophers Todd May and George Yancy argued that the important issue is not weeding out “bad apples” or providing better training: “Not why do (police) regularly fail to perform their duties correctly and thus need reform, but rather, what duties are they succeeding at?”

May and Yancy conclude police departments are succeeding at “keeping people in their place. … They succeed in keeping middle-class and especially upper-class white people safe … (and) in keeping people of color in their place so that they don’t challenge the social order that privileges middle- and upper-class white people.” And, they say, police departments “succeed in suppressing those who would question the social order.” May and Yancy argue the whole policing institution is racist, whether individual officers themselves are racist or not, because of current law enforcement’s overall impact of defending the established inequities and discrimination in our society’s status quo.

These authors are not saying the individual men and women in law enforcement are necessarily racist or intend to restrict freedom or to keep people of color down. They argue that problems with racism among police don’t come from a few bad apples, but rather that “the tree itself is rotten.” Rather than supporting police reform, May and Yancy suggest exploring “how to build healthy and safe communities of mutual respect and see which institutions we need to reach that goal.”

In my opinion, the key concepts here are health, safety and respect. As we look at restructuring the various services law enforcement has come to provide in our country, a number of them could logically be retained under safety: crime intervention, investigation and prevention; corrections supervision; 911 crime dispatch; traffic control and special units related to crime or danger, such as SWAT, sex trafficking, child victims, sexual assault, narcotics and terrorism.

Other current police functions might be better served if we conceptualized as related to health: mental health outreach, housing, and wellness checks; emergency medical assistance; crisis intervention; non-crime 911 calls and accident response.

And some current police functions might benefit from being considered as matters of respect: property checks and protection; crowd control; dispute intervention; civil rights investigation and protection and ordinance enforcement.

Policing has come to mean much more than enforcement of laws for citizen safety. And it is questionable whether keeping the “order” in “law and order” really makes sense when really police have come to provide so many additional human services for everyone in a diverse society.

Expecting police officers (and departments) to provide for safety, to protect health and to maintain order and respect seems an unrealistic and unnecessary burden on individual officers, academies and agencies. Additionally, and very importantly, it may also overly militarize or weaponize the image of those public employees charged with reaching out to the community.

All of us, and our society itself, need each of these safety, health and respect services to maintain the general welfare in a diverse, multifaceted and ever-changing country — to protect life, to guard liberty and to maximize opportunities for each person’s pursuit of happiness. The complex questions before us are how best to design, present and administer these services to maximize accountability and transparency, to minimize negative perceptions, to increase trust and access, to lessen fear and divisiveness, and to realistically enable our public service and safety employees to do their jobs as comfortably, effectively and respectfully as possible.

Daniel Claiborn is founder of Forensic Psychology Associates, a firm that provides psychological evaluations and support for more than 60 Kansas and Missouri police and fire departments.

This story was originally published July 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Classify what we expect from police officers in regards to health, safety and respect."