Like many, I spent Tuesday afternoon watching the conviction of Derek Chauvin in last year’s murder of George Floyd.
Just as the verdict was handed down, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was shot by police. And just days before that, body cam footage was released showing the tragic death of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old child who was killed by a Chicago police officer after he had put his hands in the air.
Closer to home, on April 14, 28-year-old Jake Wood, a Maliseet man in Mars Hill, Maine, also died after being shot by an officer with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office. Statistically, Native Americans are more likely to be killed by law enforcement than any other group in America. According to family posting through the Facebook page Native Lives Matter, Wood was having a mental health emergency.
The case is currently under investigation so I can’t speak to the details, but it makes me wonder about the reasons we call the police, and who may be able to better serve us in some situations.
Clearly, racism is a factor in police killings in this country. That’s undeniable when we examine the statistics. Beyond that, though, we also need to be looking at the entire system of policing.
In America, we call the police for absolutely everything. Last Saturday morning, I called the police because of a stray dog. We call when someone is driving erratically, when there’s a wild animal in a residential area, an altercation with a landlord, a child being abused, a teen having a mental health crisis, stolen potato chips, counterfeit money, the list goes on and on and on.
We rely on one group of people, a group that in Maine receives just 19 weeks of initial training, to handle so many different situations.
Some politicians have twisted the phrase “Defund the police” to make it mean something different, but at its core it’s about redistributing those funds to places they can be better used. This is why the movement to Defund is so important. Currently, the system is set up in such a way that we have no one else to call. If we redistributed funds to groups like social workers, for instance, we could call in people better equipped for each individual situation.
Defunding the police should be a bipartisan effort, because even police officers know they are being called in for things they aren’t trained to handle. We don’t need an officer with a loaded handgun for every situation, and fixing this broken system will save lives.
Photo: Jake Wood via Native Lives Matter, Facebook
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