Some recent happenings have gotten me thinking about cops, and how we think about them. How we view law enforcement is the result of more influences than we realize. And that affects how we think about the people who get arrested. #FoolishChurch is going to push us to pay attention to the differences in our experiences and assumptions, because it’s hard to love people we think are being unreasonable. Today we’ll focus on cops. I hope you’ll join me.
I don’t have a lot of first-hand experience with police officers; do you? I’ve never had to call them to come and deal with a situation in my home. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been stopped for speeding maybe eight times in forty years of driving, and I have the distinction of never receiving an actual ticket in any of those encounters. (Chalk it up to my wholesome face.) (And, yes, I realize “wholesome” has a whole lot to do with white.)
One of my best friends is married to an NYPD police officer whom I respect deeply. Another best friend has a daughter who is married to a cop. I married another friend to a police officer. I’m within a few degrees of separation to many cops, but I don’t know much about their lives. To be honest, I’m OK with that. I’m glad they’re on duty, but I don’t want to think very hard about what it’s like to do their job.
I serve a congregation of women who have a very different set of experiences with cops. My church is in prison, so by definition, my people have had first-hand experiences with arrest, warrants, searches, mugshots, booking, and more. They’ve also–many of them–been in situations where they’ve needed to call the police. What do they think about cops? It’s mixed, all the way from fear to mistreatment to feeling rescued.
If we’re paying attention, we know by now that our experiences of policing vary greatly depending on the color of our skin. Just this weekend, another black person–Atatiana Jefferson–was shot by another white police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, another in a long line of too many such wrongs. That shooting happened after a concerned neighbor asked the police to stop by, since the front door was open. “Don’t ever call the cops to check on me,” I heard another black resident say, in the news coverage of this debacle.
I’d say the same thing. It breaks my heart that I live in such a different world–literally–than my black and brown siblings. It’s a tragedy for police departments and communities across our nation, and one that many are taking steps to address. The problem is bigger than the responses to date, but it’s a start.
I am seeing another dimension of these questions of policing and perceptions, having recently listened to a podcast that focuses on the impact of the TV series Cops. The web page for the series says it “provides a real-life glimpse into the tireless work of law enforcement in the U.S.” The podcast that examines it–and a successor program called Live PD–questions how real that glimpse is, and invites us to worry about how these shows shape public perceptions of both police and perpetrators.
I’m not a Cops watcher. I was vaguely aware when the show began in 1989. I quickly knew it wasn’t for me, and I haven’t thought much about it in the thirty years since. But my work inside the prison rendered me intrigued when a friend recommended a podcast called “Running from Cops,” the third season of the Headlong podcast by Dan Taberski. It’s a sobering critique that questions the marriage of entertainment with policing, the presence (or not) of suspects’ consent, and the absence of the “rest of the story” of the people who are being chased down. Here’s a review that gives a good summary of the podcast which is definitely worth a listen.
I found it chilling to realize how pervasively the Cops franchise dispenses its version of reality. New episodes still air weekly, but it’s the syndication of old episodes that fill more airtime than I knew. Those reruns play in blocks, sometimes as many as 16-20 times a day, “a constant drumming about policing in America,” Taberski says. In the first episode, he plays an excerpt of a YouTube video of two young boys “playing Cops,” mimicking the words and cadence of the footage that plays on the series. You hear this young male voice shouting, with angry authority, “Get down on the ground, now.” “So why were you runnin’ tonight?” “On your knees. Stop resisting.” These kids are learning, and practicing, one side of the story about cops and policing.
What these kids–and perhaps many Cops viewers–think about cops doesn’t include the rest of those suspects’ stories, nor (most likely) the very current critique based on race and bias. It’s no wonder we’re so divided.
I have been changed by learning to wonder about the rest of the story. I’ve had the opportunity to explore that, through my ministry inside the prison. There has been room for me to sit with people who might have been on some of those programs, if they’d been filming in Iowa, and hear what was going on with them that night, or over the previous months and years. It doesn’t excuse the crime, but it changes the way I understand the person. I find compassion in myself that I didn’t expect, when I hear more of who they are.
And, I find, all this makes it impossible for me to sit through an episode of Cops with equanimity.
Truthfully, though, I think #FoolishChurch calls me to sit there anyway. This series shows a side of the story that is hidden from me in my work at the prison. Cops doesn’t share the whole story, even of the work of the police officers. But it discloses a part of the story that is worth knowing.
I also want Cops fans to pay attention to the rest of the story! Listen to the “Running from Cops” podcast, or try the Serial podcast, Season 3, which shares vignettes developed from more than a year spent inside the Cleveland criminal (in)justice system. Or 74 Seconds, another important podcast which examines the 74 seconds that preceded the 2016 fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a white Minnesota cop during a traffic stop. You’ll never look at a traffic stop the same way again–including your own. (Maybe especially if your “wholesome” (white) face gets you out of a ticket. Again.)
If podcasts aren’t your thing, check out some of the additional resources I list below. The point isn’t that any of us have to know everything, but when we look at something–and as I said, we’re starting with police–through a range of lenses, we will be primed to better understand the range of experiences and reactions that connect with that area of focus. We’ll love one another better. We’ll make more room for people we might have dismissed. We’ll begin to notice the biases that cloud our vision and limit our understanding.
The practice of this kind of curiosity is essential if we’re ever going to do #FoolishChurch.
A few additional resources:
- The Marshall Project, “nonprofit journalism about criminal justice.” I’ve previously discussed this resource in this blog; you can see that post here. Today’s daily digest was headed with these words: “Lying cops, from sea to shining sea”; here’s the article that prompted that pithy headline.
- Michelle Alexander’s influential book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which has shaped the pubic policy conversation on policing and incarceration since its publication in 2012.
- What books, articles, and other resources would you add, that helpfully shape your understanding of cops? Post them in a comment here or at @FoolishChurch on Facebook, and I’ll add some of those here.
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