This is my story of how I responded to the recognition of the militarization of our police forces and concludes with the results of my challenging visit to my local police department. This story starts though with a major flood in my close-in mostly white and 'hip' north Detroit suburb in Michigan last Monday night. I couldn't get home from my office at 8:00 PM and I was completely naive about what was happening. All of the main roads were flooded as were most of the side streets. After 90 minutes of looking for a way home, I stopped a local cop to ask for a little help. I was getting pretty anxious. Calls to my children weren't being answered as, unknown to me, they were fighting floods in their own homes. The cop was cold and officious, seemed aggravated by me, and essentially said, "find your own way home lady". Clearly he was stressed but in my 71 years as a white woman I've never had a cold, edgy encounter like that with police and I've had plenty of tickets. It weighed heavily on me. I did find my way home eventually. Then that night and Tuesday I began to see the reports coming out of Ferguson. I found the images of a militarized police quite frightening along with the communications from the various police representatives, until Ron Johnson became involved. The attitude I felt by the policeman during the flood had that same tone of defensiveness, the same coldness, and lack of empathy or care. I felt devastated just thinking about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of that every day.
The pain I felt for the people of Ferguson, the open racism displayed there, and my fear for all of us in this increasingly militarized world, along with my own quick but negative police experience, made me need to ACT. So impulsively on Friday, my day off, I went to our police department. My goal was to inquire about the type of equipment owned and used in my city, specifically inquiring about military type equipment. How militarized was our police Department?
This did not go well. The first officer I encountered, sitting behind a thick plexiglass partition, was anything but welcoming. He mostly acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. He was defensive and argumentative, and stated he knew nothing about Ferguson, hadn't heard anything and challenged me about where I got my news. I mostly just restated my reason for the visit - to find out about their police equipment. "Well, don't you want us to protect you" became his motto. By now a couple of other police gathered and one came out from behind the barricade, and actually said, "that's a good question" and then proceeded to tell me how they couldn't answer it, blah, blah, policy, blah. "Really", I said incredulously. I was respectful but persistent. I'm also sure I had a little edge myself. Eventually this police person said that the city would have to go elsewhere if they needed heavier equipment, and he also had the mantra of "don't you want us to protect you?". I left saying that clearly they were not in charge of policy and that I would need to go to the city council, mayor, etc. for actual information.
I disliked the attitude of defensive argumentativeness, and so it was a pretty uncomfortable experience. I wasn't sure I trusted even the little bit of information they shared, especially now, today, after reading a report from the Detroit Free Press very specifically outlining the huge extent of the militarized police equipment given to the State of Michigan. I was very impressed with the reporting today. I don't know how to link, but here is the URL:
http://tablet.olivesoftware.com/...
Clearly I have to follow up with my city leaders. If I were to do this again, I would have taken in a picture from Ferguson so they couldn't pretend they didn't know what I was talking about. I would have been more prepared with the correct terms for the equipment I was talking about and I would have a better answer for "don't you want us to protect you". It seems to me that that statement/question is the justification for this craziness, at least the local justification. And I can still do this with my city leaders: city council, city manager and the mayor.