Day: June 6, 2020

I Thanked Two Cops At A Gyro Shop In Missoula Yesterday, Here’s Why

by William Skink

Yesterday I was picking up dinner for the family at the local gyro shop. After paying, I waited around for my grub, along with two police officers. The cops were in a quiet, unguarded moment. After some internal debate, I decided to thank the cops for the difficulty of the situation they are currently managing.

Wait, why the hell would I THANK law enforcement as video evidence of their brutality pours in? Aren’t cops just the fascist thugs of the police state?

I was listening to NPR yesterday and the discussion was about police reform in LA. Amidst calls to defund law enforcement, I found the perspective of Marqueece Harris-Dawson worth highlighting:

CHANG: And this brings us to the third man in our story, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, another native of South LA who’s now a city councilman.

HARRIS-DAWSON: I think there’s obviously a use for LAPD and other police departments.

CHANG: While Bruce Patton wants all guns gone from the LAPD and Gilbert Johnson wants to see the LAPD completely gone, Harris-Dawson just wants to see the police here focus on fewer things.

HARRIS-DAWSON: We ask police departments to solve homelessness. We ask them to solve truancy. We ask them to solve blight, traffic problems, pedestrian safety. We ask them to solve a whole bunch of problems that they oftentimes are not the appropriate set of individuals to do.

Harris-Dawson’s perspective is why I thanked two cops yesterday at a gyro shop. I thanked them because I know, viscerally, what it means to “ask police departments to solve homelessness”. I know how their daily interactions with impossible people burns them out. This is how good cops either leave, or transform into aggressors. They don’t process the trauma of their experiences, which fuels anger, which leads to all kinds of bad things, both for cops and for the rest of us.

I’m sometimes accused of complaining about problems without offering any solutions. Well, this time I have a solution.

In the numerous meetings I have attended, where service providers and law enforcement discussed difficult issues, like homelessness, there was one question that left us service providers speechless. This question would usually come after we had described all the services and programs that exist, and how to access them.

Then the question: ok, so who do I call at 2am to get this person help?

Silence.

At 2am the only two options are jail and the hospital. I know this because I once took a one-legged alcoholic to the hospital specifically to get him arrested and taken to jail.

Let me explain.

I arrived by bike at the Sleepy Inn shortly after 5pm to drop off some food for a client. When I got there, the police had already been called. He was drunk and throwing objects at the wall, scaring the family next door. I identified myself to the officer, who clearly didn’t want to be dealing with this guy. When they realized I knew him in a professional capacity, they happily transferred responsibility to me, and left.

After the cops left, the motel manager informed me that my client had to go. It was winter, so being outside would kill him. It was after 5pm, so his payee (who controls his disability money) wasn’t available to get money for another motel room. I told my client I was going to help push him to St. Pats. My client told me that he was told if he showed up to the ER again, he would be arrested for trespassing.

I said fine, then we’ll get you arrested for trespassing.

And that’s what happened.

I pushed my one-legged alcoholic client to the ER of St. Pats, where I talked to the security guy. I explained that my client was not allowed at the shelter, had just been kicked out of his motel room, and would be coming to the hospital one way or the other, so please call 911. When the police officer arrived I repeated my rationale for arresting him. The police officer agreed with me, and took him to jail for the night. I told the officer I would follow up the next day and connect him to his payee, and that I would beg the motel manager to take him back, because he was also banned from every other motel in Missoula.

What we need, and have needed for a long time, is a facility that is not the jail or the ER, and we need a team of well-paid, well-trained social service responders who can respond at 2am after police and first responders have cleared the call for anything they need to do relating to crime and/or medical.

My work at the shelter slowly shifted my perspective from social service provider to first responder, and that perspective makes me laugh out loud when I read about DEFUND THE POLICE!

I think we need to better understand the impossible jobs (plural) we, as a society, have placed on law enforcement before condemning this wide swath of our fellow citizens to termination.