First of, ACAB. There’s no denying that American police are steeped in institutionalized racism and violence.
But secondly, I’d like to point out that conservatives will never view men’s mental health as a real issue (cops are disproportionately male), and liberals will never view cops as human enough to have mental health issues.
The United States is the country with highest rates of civilian gun ownership in the world. Every police encounter has an inherently higher risk of gun violence. Now, cops frequently provoke when they should deescalate. But multiple things can be true at the same time. Policing as a profession attracts narcissists and sociopath, policing as an institution enables that behavior, and policing in a country with rampant gun ownership is a highly stressful and traumatic experience.
I say this as a survivor of a mass shooting. Gun violence changes how you look at your environment and the people in it. There is no room and no person that escapes your unease and suspicion. I can only imagine what a work environment that perpetually affirms those suspicions could do to one’s mental health.
None of this excuses police brutality. I just think that we need to start looking at cops as legitimately mentally ill people, whether they are sociopathic or traumatized.
Destigmatizing men’s mental health means every man’s mental health, and the left’s inability to address this blind spot is allowing the manosphere to dress its alpha male bullshit in police and paramilitary aesthetics.
I take issue with this. It’s because I see cops as humans with all the mental issues and trauma that I think we load too many expectations on them while simultaneously absolving them when they abuse their power.
Narrow the scope of policing. Have more social services and emergency mental health resources so cops aren’t expected to do all that. And hold cops responsible when they do abuse the power they have.
“Defund the police” never meant “Remove all funding for police”, it means “Reallocate potions of police funding to more comprehensive social services”
I’ve taken a listening course taught by a former cop. It turns out there is an active curriculum for police on how to actively listen to diffuse situations; it just isn’t taught as default to all cops.
That’s a good point. Conservatives often excuse the abuse of power because the scope of police work demands it, without acknowledging that there are non-police alternatives that are likelier to descalate a situation.
I think this ties into their inability to acknowledge mental health as a real and treatable issue. Perhaps because doing so would require acknowledging their own while being inhibited by the shame and cultural conditioning they grew up with.