Healthcare, Education and the Police Problem
As more and more videos and news articles of black people being beaten or killed by the police are coming into the open almost daily, American healthcare and education are forced to grapple with some uncomfortable truths. It was only last year when Michellene Davis, an NJ hospital executive, wrote a question in response to the introduction of police in schools that turned her life upside down for a brief moment:
“Who is going to train them not to shoot black children first?!?”
What followed was a firestorm that led to her issuing a public apology for her statement. As a black woman, given what is going on in our country, what did she have to apologize for?
The American healthcare system, child protection system, mental health system, and now schools rely on police as the final solution for what are deemed unsolvable problems. Police have also expanded their roles by teaching health classes, drug prevention classes in elementary schools, and are coaching sports.
What should be safe and welcoming environments for people in their time of greatest need or in contexts we expect learning to take place are quickly becoming economies and marketing opportunities for the police.
America has increasingly relied on the police to solve problems they are not designed to solve effectively. So what is their job really and why are police departments so entrenched in health and human services or education? How did we get to the point where they’ve become the problem-solvers for contexts and situations they have little to no training in?
Underneath all this lies a bigger problem, something more insidious that is leading to permanence. We’re becoming friends, allies with the police. Over the past three years, I have been engaged in an effort to remove police from our schools based on the overwhelming data that demonstrated such programs create more harm than good. Teachers and school counselors would express their support of my position privately but not publicly because “I have to work with them and I don’t want to step on toes.”
What was I asking the Board of Education to do?
-Add familial oversight and feedback into the program
-Track data on searches, arrests, etc
-Make children aware of their rights when coming into contact with police in schools
-Provide children and families with the ability to confidentially file grievances
These are not unusual things in an education or healthcare setting; in fact, they are necessary but police departments play by different rules.
Health Care and Education are required to provide highly accountable environments, they are that way to ensure safety, predictability, and comfort for the people they serve. Not only does the introduction of police change that, but it also causes the context to rely on the most vulnerable part of its system to deal with the hard issues.
Why?
Because force is an easy way to get someone to do what you want them to do or to just disappear.
Boards of Education, Hospitals, Mental Health facilities, and other Human Service providers often boast about their “great relationship” with police in a context that produces, almost daily, videos of black people at the end of a gun, taser, or chokehold.
Even if police departments turn the problem around overnight we are still left with the question, “What are they doing here, to begin with?” If your answer is “To protect us.”, I have to wonder from whom?
In practicing mental health over the course of 20+ years, I have never had the need to call the police for fear that my client was going to do something to me. I worked in different contexts and different levels of care. On one hand, I could count the number of times I called the police and that was primarily because the policy required me to.
By the way, the Supreme Court ruled a long time ago the police have no obligation to protect you — that’s not their job. They can choose to protect you, but they don’t have to.
Institutions that provide care and education should begin to figure out different ways of solving problems that don’t involve police not just because of what it means for black people but because it makes us lazy, authoritarian and unaccountable. They should, at the very least, start asking hard questions. Instead of demanding apologies or trying to silence, they should learn more about why Ms. Davis feels the way she does. We also need to stop worrying about stepping on toes and remember that our first priority is our patient, client, or student.
References/Additional Reading:
https://www.nj.com/essex/2018/10/rwj_executive_apologizes_for_comments_about_police.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/cop-fired-parkland-shooting-job-back-back-pay/story?id=70678466
