Today, Utah police repeatedly shot a 13-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome. For no good reason. He happened to not be Black, but that didn’t save him. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/08/linden-cameron-utah-autistic-shooting/
When Golda Barton dialed 911 on Friday, she hoped emergency responders could help hospitalize her 13-year-old son, who has Asperger syndrome and was having a mental crisis.
Instead, a Salt Lake City police officer repeatedly shot Linden Cameron after he ran away, leaving the boy in serious condition with injuries to his intestines, bladder, shoulder and ankles. Barton says he was unarmed, and police said they didn’t find a weapon at the scene.
“He’s a small child. Why didn’t you just tackle him?” Barton said in a tearful interview with KUTV on Sunday. “He’s a baby. He has mental issues.”
As an old, reasonably well-off, white guy living in a upper-end mostly red suburb, my reaction to “Defund the police” slogan was that it was a poorly-chosen phrase to describe a desirable goal: redirect some of the funds spent on police military armament and training to more socially-useful ends.
In other words, things like good public schools, social services, youth services, health care, and all of the other beneficial community aspects that my wealthy suburb can afford because its residents can afford to pay high taxes, ought to be supported in less-affluent communities by redirecting some of the funds now spent turning those communities into heavily-policed ghettos.
I’m not so sure anymore. Perhaps the police ought to be abolished: completely disbanded and replaced by something else. I’m no longer confident that the growing number of incidences of police violence against citizens can be dismissed as the actions of “a few bad apples.” It seems increasingly clear to me that although there may be a few “good apples” among the police, the majority of the barrel is rotten.
I don’t know what the solution is. We certainly do not live in a Utopia that requires no organization to deal with criminal and antisocial individuals. Until recently, it seemed as if Minneapolis had a plan to replace its police department with a more “holistic” and public health-oriented approach to public safety. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/minneapolis-commission-takes-proposal-disband-police-n1235874 But -- not surprisingly – structural resistance seems to have once again stymied social progress. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/minneapolis-falters-in-plan-to-disband-the-police