The Gordian Knot of Crime, Guns and Police

We are facing a long-delayed reckoning in America.  We have observed the ceaseless saga of drugs, crime, increased incarceration, police militarization and over-policing from the safety of our protected neighborhoods.  We know that something is terribly wrong, but we haven’t the will to demand change, because, for us, it is an abstraction that doesn’t really impact us.

In recent years, the videos of unarmed black men and women being killed by police have launched the BLM movement and sparked efforts to reconsider the style of policing prevalent in our country.  But there are stark partisan differences in opinions on these efforts.  Conservatives view the BLM movement very negatively and claim that it has resulted in police being hesitant to perform their duties and therefore caused higher levels of crime and violence.

It is evident that policing in neighborhoods of color has become a warlike activity.  Police and conservatives claim that the increased crime rate and omni-presence of guns in these areas requires hyper-vigilance and a different set of behaviors than ordinary policing.  Civil rights groups and liberals believe that there is systemic racism throughout the police force and that profiling and uber-aggressive policing are key factors in the escalation of force and violence.

While it is clear that policing in America needs to be re-evaluated to address such things as racial profiling, unprovoked stops and overly aggressive reactions to non-threatening situations, there is much, much more to this escalating problem than police reform.

America is beset by a tangled web of societal problems, not just policing problems.  The combination of poverty, joblessness, broken families and schools, drugs and guns has created a volatile mixture in most of urban America and threatens to extend its reach into suburban and rural America as well.  The COVID pandemic has exacerbated these problems even further.

Is there more crime in neighborhoods of color? Is policing a dangerous job in those areas?  Perhaps so.  But is the solution to simply increase police presence and level of force and put more people in prison?  Of course not!  That only creates a vicious cycle that will eventually result in widespread civic chaos and a societal death spiral.

The Gordian Knot of declining civil stability is not hard to describe.  Impoverished single parent families lose their children to the streets at an early age.  The schools are broken and ineffective.  Drugs and guns are everywhere.  Jobs are at best menial and low-paid, and often unavailable, especially after one has a criminal record.  Crime, especially drug and gang-related, is rampant and seductive, as it offers a much higher return on time invested than any other activity.  Men who cycle in and out of prison abandon families and are surrounded by other men traveling similar hopeless paths.

Conservatives bemoan these characteristics and somehow draw the conclusion that people of color have only themselves to blame for their own cultural degradation.  They continue to believe that the solution is for our society to severely limit any assistance so that ‘these people’ will be forced to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and correct their flaws and criminality.

But the problem has steadily escalated for more than 60 years, through both conservative and liberal political administrations.  It is not going away.  Indeed, it is at a crisis point and threatens to unravel our society.

The details of a solution are not easy to discern.  But what is obvious is that some steps must be made, or we will face increasing unrest in our society.  Here are the steps that I believe would begin to positively impact the situation:

• Change drug laws to minimize police activity around drugs, eliminate sentences for usage, drastically reduce it for selling unless a weapon is involved
• Dramatically increase drug rehab and counseling programs – treat drugs as a social problem rather than a crime
• Police should be trained more extensively on defusing tense situations and avoiding physical altercations whenever possible
• Create a national jobs program for people with criminal records and require their participation when they are released from prison.
• Outlaw all possession of guns outside the home unless hunting or target shooting in approved facilities.  Use random searches with severe consequences to enforce this.  Yes, I know this has the potential to amplify racial profiling problems, but it is the only way to transition to a safer policing environment, which is the sine qua non for reducing police brutality.  And yes, I know the old trope that says when you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns, but I am quite certain that is a fallacious argument against stricter control.
• Invest energetically in schools in poor areas, including pre-kindergarten, day care and after school programs.  Ramp up youth programs. Get kids off the street.
• End the practice of police performing traffic stops.  Use technology to capture speeding, stoplight running and other traffic violations, and allow police to notify drivers electronically if their lights aren’t working or if their tags are not up to date. 

It will take time for these changes to make a big difference, but there is really no alternative.  We are putting band aids on a festering wound that will kill us if no other treatment is initiated.  The Gordian Knot of our legacy of slavery and neglect will not be solved by a simple blow of the sword as Alexander the Great is purported to have done.  It will require a careful untying of all the many strands.