Police aren't the cause of our violence
LA Daily News Opinion

by Sunil Dutta, Guest Columnist
Sunil Dutta is a sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department's Internal Affairs Group.

Sunday, March 6, 2005

A few weeks ago, while on my way to interview someone in the Southeast Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, I heard a call of a shooting in progress. Since we were very close to the shooting location, we decided to respond to assist the officers. We were there within seconds, but it was too late. It was chaos, with four separate crime scenes and officers struggling to maintain control.

It looked like three black males lay dead and a fourth was shot in the leg. I stood near the third and discovered that he was still alive. He had been shot point blank at the back of his head. He was clawing at the bullet entry wound and trying to say something. While I struggled to hear what he was saying, I saw his hand drop to the ground. He was dead.

He was 14 years old. But the media did not even carry the news of this multiple homicide. There was no community outrage, no demonstrations and no denunciations.

Ever since the shooting of Devin Brown, I have been waiting in vain for someone to state the obvious. But Godot never comes. Haven't we seen this before: A tragedy occurs, police are involved, people are outraged, the media throw some cheap shots with half-baked analyses, political pressure builds and a policy is modified or created.

In the big picture, nothing changes. We wait until the next tragedy or controversy to erupt when this cycle would be repeated. Since no one has mentioned it, allow me say it: Police are not the problem.

Officers are not the racist, trigger-happy, brutal, heavy-handed monsters as portrayed in the media. Officers reflect the society they are a part of.

All of us are the problem, because we have consistently failed to address the underlying social issues that have turned us into the most violent and the most unequal society in the industrialized nations -- despite being the strongest and wealthiest country in the history of the world.

Scholars from around the world flock to our universities because we are the best in science and humanities. Our researchers win numerous Nobel prizes. We train people from the world over to become better administrators. We tell other nations what to do. We even discuss exporting freedom to the darkest corners of the planet.

Despite all this, decades have gone by and we haven't addressed our own failures -- crime, homelessness, mentally ill wandering the streets, a permanent underclass, inner cities with endemic high unemployment, poorly paying jobs, lack of medical coverage. ... It is obvious that we don't care, after all. If we wanted to make a change, we would have by now.

An ideal society needs no police, let alone cops who must carry handguns, shotguns and rifles. But we don't live in an ideal society. As long as officers carry a gun, mace, batons and handcuffs -- the tools of their trade -- it is axiomatic that they would be used.

In the best of circumstances, even when cops use perfect judgment and circumstances are ideal, using force to arrest someone is not pretty to watch. And in the worst of circumstances, when human lives are taken because officers must shoot, the ugliness is amplified to a gross level.

Why don't we abolish the police to avoid the ugliness, controversies, and tragedies?

To those who criticize the police, I say you are guilty of perpetuating the miserable social conditions that ensure we have crime-ridden neighborhoods. I accuse everyone in our society of being guilty, of not providing solutions, of being in denial, of transferring their responsibility to the shoulders of the cops. The society has chosen a group of men and women to do its dirty work, so that the rest can smile and enjoy their bourgeoisie existence.

When inconvenient facts can't be ignored, there is always this group to blame.

From 1985 to 2002, officers have shot at motorists an average of six times a year. In this 17-year time frame, officers fired their guns approximately 102 times. In the same time frame, more than 10,000 people were murdered in Los Angeles.

No, cops did not kill these 10,000. Who are we fooling by blaming the police for social problems?

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