Rethinking Policing

Today's society is constantly shifting, leading to an ever-greater recognition that traditional policing needs to change in response to overpolicing, racial profiling and situations where vulnerable populations face more punitive than rehabilitative measures. A preferred future vision for policing includes offloading what has become routine police responsibilities to social problems - like first response to mental illness or substance abuse - to civilian specialists like mental health professionals. This would give the police greater opportunities to address specific challenges while also engaging communities more fully. What is frequently missing from this preferred future is the political will to make it happen. Very few police leaders believe the police should be the first responders to homelessness, mental illness or substance abuse. But they are good troops and carry out their lawful assignments and responsibilities, even when it is probably contrary to their own interests. When political leaders decline to fund appropriate specialists to form society’s first responders in these case, the police get stuck with the responsibility. Most of the time police responses to these social ills are resolved without incident. However, when they turn deadly, these “low frequency, high impact” events frequently drive a wedge between the police and the people they have sworn to protect

To achieve this preferred future, where the police are NOT the first responders to calls involving mental illness, for instance, significant investments must be made by the elected leaders in charge of taxpayer dollars. Across the country, they are generally reluctant to do this. The result is a continuation of a first response model that everyone acknowledges is illogical and fraught with peril. Yet it continues.

In this section, we explore alternative thinking about the fundamental responsibilities of the police. We examine how policing can be “reinvented” to achieve better outcomes while avoiding the demonizing of the men and women of policing who try so hard to protect their communities and daily risk their lives for perfect strangers.

We acknowledge that this re-thinking of police responsibilities is not easy nor inexpensive. It will require investments in training officers diffrently, hiring specialists in behavior science, building infrastructure, conducting research for evidence-based strategies, and creating platforms for consistent community engagement. The expected outcomes from such a transformation include deeper trust between community and police forces; reduced incidents involving vulnerable groups; efficient and effective use of resources; and more empathetic and just policing .