The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I suppose police are like health insurance, you don’t need it til you need it. But I have to say, I try my damnedest to avoid them at all costs. Not just because I figure they have better things to do than mess with the likes of me, but because the few encounters I’ve had have been fairly unpleasant. When I reported stolen items a couple of times, they made it very clear that 1. my items were gone forever. And 2. they wouldn’t waste their time filling out a report. Once they even told me they knew who it probably was that stole my stuff, but petty theft wasn’t high on their To-Do List.

I get it. We don’t have a lot of deputies on the island and we certainly don’t have many who bother with the South End. You know what? That’s okay with me. The little crime we have isn’t all that serious, unless driving 50 in the 35 speed zone is heinous to you. Drugs, domestic abuse, petty theft, that’s what we have down here and if it means living without heavy police intervention, fine. When we do have something serious, they call in the SWAT teams, folks who know how to handle felons on the loose. Or neighbors’ girlfriends who go after their low life boyfriend with a gun. The cops here work traffic. I sleep about as soundly now as I did when none were on duty after midnight the first years I came here.

So the protesters on the streets of America have been crying Defund the Police. At first I thought the terminology could have been better. Maybe Re-Imagine the Police. But defund is okay too. Take the money, redistribute it to social agencies, mental health professionals, specialized drug intervention units, shelter for the homeless, all those things cops shouldn’t be doing anyway. And when we’ve defunded half the police force, take the ones who are left, the ones who want to be part of their community as peace keepers and protectors, and train them in those skills. What we have now are heavily armed military minded personnel with way too much testosterone jamming their brainpans. Which they’re encouraged and which is undersupervised. They’re headbangers first, Officer Friendly maybe never.

Are they racist? Sure, some of them. But mostly they’re stationed in the poor parts of town to keep the citizens there under control. Black folks, white folks, everybody who’s down and out. Is there more crime there? Sure, poverty breeds crime. So we garrison the centurions where trouble is most likely to break out. Is this the best way to go about pacifying the crime zones? You ask me, putting a cop on foot who knows the ‘hood, knows the shopkeepers, knows the troublemakers, knows what’s going on and … here’s the deal … knows how to deal with this as a fellow member of the community, his community, chances are he or she can smell trouble and nip it in the bud. Is this liberal snowflake bullshit? Sure, some of it, but we’re learning this month that Stormtroopers tossing gas grenades and shooting rubber bullets is a symptom of something much more troubling going on in law enforcement. Wouldn’t bother me one bit to try something else for a change, look at a larger picture, maybe see if crime isn’t more of a social disease that can be cured, not beaten with a baton.

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