A Case For a Police-Free World

The problem with saying, “Not all cops are bad” completely misses the point that the institution itself is inherently flawed. I’m sure on an individual basis, some police officers are good people, but that does not take away from the fact that the police force needs to make some serious changes in order to support the communities they claim to protect.

The amount of power granted to people who have gone through minimal schooling is something we must consider more closely. While it takes roughly 880 hours to become a police officer, it takes 1500 hours to become a barber. I guess this means that it must take more time to handle scissors properly than to handle a deadly weapon properly.

From here, there are two paths we can take. Either we can require more schooling for officers that covers a hell of a lot more information that definitely cannot be covered over a 22 week long period, or we can slowly reallocate these responsibilities to people in other professions, taking away the unnecessary power that police officers wield over society.

At this point in time, the amount of respect an officer is granted is practically higher than the amount of respect afforded to doctors. While doctors, who have gone to school for 40,000 hours (roughly 45x longer than a police officer), can be sued for malpractice, police officers are protected under something called “qualified immunity,” which allows officers to evade lawsuits, enforcing a practically zero accountability system within the police force.

For a society that respects law enforcement so much, it’s a bit counterintuitive to not hold them accountable for their actions. Those who claim to care about Blue Lives should also be concerned with this lack of accountability within the system. If officers are expected to enforce the law in their position, how can they do so properly and accurately if the law doesn’t apply to them directly?

You can find out online if your doctor has ever been sued for malpractice, whereas this information is not made widely available for police officers who have disciplinary records. These officers can change locations and get new jobs, continuing to harm civilians and communities with their incompetence and, oftentimes, deadly mistakes.

In addition, there is no database that lists every case in which an officer has killed someone. While we do know the names of those lives who were lost at the hands of police brutality: George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, among many others, we do not know the hundreds, or even thousands, of others who wrongly lost their lives to negligent officers since the conception of the police force in 1838.

The police force is seen as a permanent feature of our society, but it has only been around for the last 182 years. At one point, we lived without it, and in the future, we can live without it again. Of course, this is not something that can happen overnight. It takes time to dismantle oppressive and broken structures. The habit of relying on police to control crime needs to be replaced with other, more socially beneficial, structures.

The four major responsibilities of police officers are to: enforce laws, prevent crimes, respond to emergencies, and provide support services. I’m going to go through each of these duties individually and assess their relative importance, whether they could be addressed in other ways, and discuss how the police force, as a whole, has failed to successfully fulfill each of these roles.

1. Enforce Laws

Lawyers need to go to school for seven years in order to practice law. Judges need a law degree and a minimum of eight additional years of practice as a lawyer in order to interpret law. Why does it only take someone twenty-two weeks in order to enforce law? There seems to be some disconnect here. How is that nearly enough time to understand the very laws you are enforcing?

If the laws that are created are enforced to retain order in our society, how can we expect chaos to not ensue when people who have little to no knowledge are in such important positions of power?

An alternative could be having people who are trained in law, and clearly understand the rules we set in place, enforce the law. As I mentioned earlier, cops are distanced from the laws they are enforcing due to their position. If they don’t understand the law and they don’t have to follow it, then they don’t belong in the field.

2. Prevent Crimes

Crime is a complex topic spurred by deeper issues such as poverty, inequality, drug abuse, trauma, and mental illness. To claim that a cop has the power to prevent crimes is a ridiculous concept that nowhere near addresses the root issues that actually cause it. An individual does not have the power to address these complicated issues, and if someone did, it would require far more knowledge into these topics than what can be covered in police training.

In this position, cops are playing a game of whack-a-mole. An issue arises and they slam their hammer down, but immediately after, another mole comes up and they repeat the process indefinitely. They never ask, “How can we prevent these moles from popping up in the first place?” They just blame the mole for popping up and place full responsibility on the individual. 

There are a multitude of professions who focus specifically on each of these issues, and more resources need to be allocated into mental health professionals, trauma specialists, social workers, addiction counselors, and urban planners to identify which communities need these resources most desperately.

3. Respond to emergencies

There are a ton of different professions who respond to emergencies, but we never hear cases of EMT brutality, paramedic brutality or nurse brutality. This is because first responders receive deescalation training as a part of their profession. Currently, this is only required for police officers in 21 states.

Instead of handling emergencies effectively, far too many cops reach for their weapons. If they don’t have the proper training to handle emergencies, they don’t belong in situations where emergencies may arise.

4. Provide support services

These are the lower end situations that arise that many officers do not focus on. These responsibilities are taken on by security guards, and largely outsourced to other trained professionals. Already reallocated, it’s necessary to delve any deeper into this responsibility because it’s already out of the hands of police.

This does raise an interesting point, however, which is: if 1/4 of police duties are already outsourced, then it is possible to outsource the other responsibilities to other professionals. 

At this point in time, we can see that police are fairly obsolete. They are unnecessary parts of our society, and should not receive the respect and acclaim that they currently do.

If they want to protect our society from crime, they should go back to school and fully understand their profession on a deeper level. Until then, they are doing far more harm than good. The system needs to change, but it can only begin to mend once we understand how the system currently stands.