Wednesday, 29 May 2024

A message to Chief Commissioners of Police everywhere [Content Warning: discussion on, and links to articles on, harm, abuse/misuse/lack of use of power, violence, unrealistic expectations]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in news links, quotes are shown italicised and blue, and my comments are in a different shade of blue.

 

To Chief Commissioners of Police everywhere,

There is a Wiradjuri word: Yindyamarra, which is often translated as “respect”, but the word actually conveys a more complex concept (see here) that also includes: 

  • doing things well - which means “doing things thoughtfully”, so it doesn’t necessarily mean doing something to be of high or commercial quality: it means thinking about why and what you are doing things. It means doing things in a way that aims to avoid harm, but aims to be as respectful of resources - and thus is, in the modern vernacular, as sustainable - as is possible; 
  • being aware of the impact one has on others - which, in itself, is a complex concept that includes aspects such as consideration of the responses we trigger in others by our deeds - something that Stan Grant wrote about when he left the ABC, which he did so in a way that I could relate to because of my experiences in Buddhism, experiences which included a Thai colleague who had spent six months as a monk discussing the impacts of our expectations on other (e.g., dietary requirements and preferences on party organisers), and that obliges us to consider the community overall.

In the context of police, policing, and the community the police are serving (or are meant to be serving) that means: 

  • police should be mindful of the impact they are having on the community - the whole community, not just the most privileged - when undertaking their duties, including the harm done by things such as strip searches; 
  • the community should be mindful of the impact they are having on police  - especially when the source of problems lie elsewhere, not in police ranks. 

To consider that in more detail, as I wrote, police exist to serve community - not the rich and/or powerful. 

If a community has one rich person, and 900 others, the rich person’s valid “share” of police resources is 1/901 - and that includes a fair share of the presumption of good faith/innocence/etc. Their possessions may make them more of a target of theft, but their rights to access service are not higher than others, and they have no more say than any other one person. 

I won’t go into aspects such as inequity and that the rich often have inherited, rather than “earned” their wealth and social status, but I will remind you of the shift from monarchies to democracies that was marked in early stages by things such as the Magna Carta. 

Similarly, people who own homes are not inherently more entitled to help than the homeless - or, to phrase that more accurately, people who are homeless do NOT have less right to access police help as a result of their being homeless. Homeless people are at greater risk of assault than people who own homes, and thus in fact quite possibly validly have greater need of police help. 

Thinking the homeless somehow “deserve” such assaults is as wrong and contemptible as those amathiacs who think women may have somehow “provoked” or “deserved” sexual assault. 

Any police who hold such views (whether expressed or not, as such false beliefs will manifest as “unconscious” bias) are professionally unfit to serve.  

In assessing such matters, it is important, however, to be mindful of social inequities: the rich have ready access to communication, the poor and disempowered do not.

That often means public protest is used so that the disempowered can gain the attention of the powerful, and lead to changes - such as a wide range of work conditions (leave, limitations on hours worked, etc) that police enjoy, and matters such as access to health care and education, and the right to vote of all adults who do not own property or more than a specified requirement for property ownership ... rights which benefit police. 

Public protest is an essential right for effective democracy. 

That also includes against businesses. Businesses are driven by profit, and that has led to some appalling damage in the past - such as:   

It should also be noted that, while provision of jobs is important, provision of a sustainable future for the species is more important - and claims of trickle down benefits have been proven to be utter rubbish: see, for instance,    

The rights of others means there should be limits on protests - such as: 

  • no physical damage to property; 
  • reasonable mindfulness of noise (on hospitals, for instance), but that does NOT mean all protests should be quiet! 

If individual police have problems with public dissent, then, morally, they should surrender the benefits that have been won for them by those means by others who had the courage to express dissent with existing, flawed social conditions ... and there is an argument that they may be unfit to wear the uniform.

If police decisions and organisations claim to be neutral but act in a way that allows the status quo to continue, then, much as silence in past decades over domestic violence meant police played an active role in perpetuating that problem, then those police decisions/organisations are actually being active agents of existing problems.  


This is where I need to introduce another word: Winhanganha, which is teamed with Yindyamarra to give us Yindyamarra Winhanganha - meaning, “to live well in a world that is worth living in”. 

What makes living in this world worthwhile is not money - beyond meeting basic needs (which are more than survival): it is emotions such as fulfillment.

Accepting this concept of a worthwhile necessitates adopting a broader perspective on policing.

Meeting quotas for arrests or having a personal sense of satisfaction as a result of doing ones job is not more important than, for instance, disempowered people being able to draw attention to problems - or the errors of the powerful - by public protest. 

That latter point requires awareness that what the rich consider order is not more important than issues such as allowing dissent (including public protest when those in power are ignoring valid points of view), or properly addressing the social causes of poverty. 

As a side note: extremist interpretations of that principle that allow hate speech - especially those that allow stochastic terrorism - are not fulfilling that principle - in fact, such interpretations are a childish, vindictive attempt to undermine it out of petty irritation at having to change into a more decent person and police officer. 

The motives of those who have such interpretations are open to challenge - and should be challenged, as it is quite possible that such attitudes (including unconscious bias, something being deliberately addressed by New York police) could contribute to inadequate or wrong responses to domestic violence, being a bystander in incidents of bigotry unless physical violence is used by the hater, and the accumulation of resentment. 

The police uniform is NOT automatically viewed as something to respect, as recently noted by the Chief Commissioner of my home state’s police: those who have received inadequate help will be wary of it, and those who have received outright abuse by police will actively fear that uniform and those who wear it, even when they are out of uniform. 

I personally know many people who are in the categories of wary or afraid of police, and many who have changed their lifestyle to avoid any risk of having to interact with police - including, in some aspects, myself. 

It is reasonable to give genuine consideration to the possibility that police are training the community they serve to be afraid of them - which is possibly misinterpreted by those police as “establishing authority/control” over a scene or situation, and leaves me aghast at the personal psychological damage done by such abuse. 

This is disturbingly reminiscent of the psychological approach of breaking military recruits down so their personality and individuality can be expunged and something recreated in the form of a mindlessly obedient automaton.

It is worth a reminder at this point that police are there to serve all the community - including, when requirements around ethical and proportionate behaviour are noted, those who break the law, and freedom to have a dissenting political opinion is an essential part of democracy - and of simple  human  decency. 

Problematic aspects of behaviour will may contribute to this include:   

  • aggressive, toxic, and alpha-personality problems - including the “own the streets” attitude which is threatening to many minorities;
  • lack of a reasonable understanding of humanity/the human condition/etc, which is also related to bigotry and/or bias;
  • failure to understand that ultimately, in a democracy, the laws that the people want and are passed by the peoples’ government include matters such as anti-discriminations laws. 

People who police may be uncomfortable with are still under the protection of the law, and is some police cannot provide that to those people, those police are guilty of dereliction of duty, and may be unfit to serve. 

With all humans, trying to suppress emotions rarely works - facial expressions, body language, and how one is treated all generally “give the game away”.

The core of the problem is, in my opinion, likely to include incompetence with emotions - that is normally sanitised down to discomfort with emotions, but a more accurate term is incompetence. 

This obviously a problem for the community in terms of impaired policing (including compensation payments), but it also a problem that will contribute to wear and tear of police. 

Unhealthy “coping” strategies, such as drinking, are a sign of this issue. 

This incompetence often is allied with a range of biases and bigotries. 

In the worst cases, if individual police (from desk to Chief Commissioner) or certain stations/groups within police lose the trust of the community and/or the individuals in the community they are meant to be serving, those police cannot function. 

They have lost the social licence which is fundamental, and not irrevocable, in order to be able to police.

The preventative solutions likely include: 

  • accepting that all humans have emotions and are flawed at managing them, and incorporate evidence-based training on this; 
  • look for and manage unconscious bias (it is unmanaged unconscious bias that is the greatest concern), as has been done for several years by New York police;
  • manage accumulations of biases from years of negative (“challenging”) interactions with any specific group; and 
  • better assessment of character, including potential problems such as authoritarianism, militarism, toxic masculinity, bigotry, and unmanaged unconscious biases, during intakes. 

That last point raises a commensurate issue, which is that the community needs to have Yindyamarra considerations of police. 

That consideration needs, in my opinion, to include: 

  • acknowledgement of the often inherent emotional and mental harm of the nature of the work (as with soldiers serving in war, the police equivalent of the military’s rotation of troops from front line to reserve areas may be needed - but these MUST include situations where police see that members of sub-groups are capable of functioning well and being successful, not just charity work that may reinforce unmanaged unconscious biases. I have written about this previously - see “More on relief duty for police”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2024/02/more-on-relief-duty-for-police.html   ); 
  • acknowledgement of the stress, and thus harm, caused by understaffing and other financial constraints; 
  • a patient acceptance of real life limits on what police can do when interfacing with them; and  
  • for activists to be mindful of the question:   do you fight to change things, or to punish?

Another way to term that is both police and the community they serve need to both attempt to live up to Yindyamarra Winhanganha, and remember that Ngumbaadyil - all are one. 

And remember that many of us already do. 

 

As a final point, when Yindyamara by police fails to happen, the sorts of outcomes which can result include: 


These outcomes show a distinct lack of Winhanganha, which is of detriment to us all - police and the community - as Ngumbaadyil: all are one. 

Ngumbaadyil also means that the responsibility for fixing these problems is shared.

Responsibility in the first instance lies with police training and behaviour, but in the second instance with community - especially the laws that the community expects our representative democracies to enact, the sometimes damaging constraints of financial and performance expectations, and general community expectations that may be unreasonable (especially in light of cumulative damage from years of service). 

I would like us all, police and the communities police are meant to be serving, to work together on this.

 

 

Yours faithfully, 

Kayleen 

 

 

For my regular readers, and any others who may be interested, here are a few links which may be of interest, value, or use:

 

And some past posts of mine with are relevant to (parts of) this post: 

  • “(Some) police and other subclinical psychopaths”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2021/04/police.html   This article is based on a news article about events in the USA, and in my post I commented “it highlights the need for improved ongoing mental health support of (including rotating out of frontline duties as soldiers are rotated out of combat duty) and assessment (for increasingly hard line attitudes - which is a sign of psychological scarring, and thus unfitness for duty) of police”, and I also pointed out other people with this problem     


Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

  • this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/  

 

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