"Shoter tov tzhe shoter met!שוטר טוב זה שוטר מת" said a good pale friend of mine with several degrees and full ownership of a nice apartment. He was making an angry statement about both Israeli racism and police brutality because he was playing with an unfortunate saying of racists about Arabs (Arav tov hu arav met). I used to live in Hadar, Haifa where some fairly genteel folks (along with the rest of us ) had a serious beef with the police. But as my friend went on to describe his opinion on the police he paradoxically revealed why we must search for solidarity with these people.
"I am some majority guy who is a lowlife unemployed and has no money and no hope and can not find a normal job, I have no education at all....I know I'll become a police officer. I'm good at being violent." said my friend mockingly in his broken English. He drew the obvious tie between who the police are in Israel, and who they are in the USA. Unfortunately this cruel stereotype comes from somewhere. Joining the police is one of the few ways a working class guy can make a living nowadays. And, yes, we the working class are violent. We aren't the only violent ones, but our community bleeds violence in a way wealthy ones do not. Take child abuse. Rich people can abuse their kids. Child abuse is happening in Beverly Hills and the Upper East side. But statistically, in spite of the system's underservice of the poor, we see their kids as abused children more often. Poverty leads to crises, and poor people can not cope in the ways rich people can. Destressing through a weekend at a resort-spa may not be available to the borderline homeless.
The real revolution will happen when we -those who live in ghettoes- begin to understand how difficult it is to be a good cop. When our compassion takes into account how miserable it is to interact with us. As a doctor I saw my share of prisoners, and thugs. They are not an easy crowd. To this day I talk about one gangbanger so proud to have killed multiple people that he got commemorative tatooes for each murder who complained to the hospital staff that I lacked compassionate bedside manner with him. We must understand not every cop is a killer; and they must understand not every black person is gangbanger like my whiney mass murdering patient. We must understand how the system is working to break our natural solidarity as working class people. We must honor those lawkeepers who walk into dangerous situations to protect us. We must not forget that at the scene of accidents, including shoot outs it is them that are tasked with not only catching criminals, but administering life saving CPR sometimes before any more specifically trained personel show up. The media almost never highlights the everyday heroism of law enforcers who happen to use their basic life support skills and save someone. The media seems caught in some kind of imaginary soccer match between blacks and the police. On the most illogical side is Fox news. Shortly after a recent decision they put up an article about how the police live in fear. Seriously? They are rolling into our communities with guns and now tanks; and they should be the ones afraid? What about me and my family?...we don't have any guns or tanks let alone a state legal apparatus behind us. Obviously the outpouring of protests are because people like myself, unarmed black people are both scared and fed up. Only in the distorted reality of the mainstream American media does this situation get turned on it's head. But this is a bit of a distraction from the underlying problems and questions. Why don't police come from communities they police? Why are police not trained better to diminish violence in confrontations as opposed to escalating it? How can we come to reasonable police community partnerships where law enforcement has serious buy-in from the community? How can we get out law enforcers better training? To what extent can we give communities autonomy in policing themselves and yet avoid more Zimmermans?
And finally, who will dare extend the red roses of solidarity to our brothers in blue?
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