Transcript of Public Service Announcement
This is a Public Service Announcement
Attention People of Twitter:
It seems at first glance to make logical sense to call for the arrests of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. Because ideally, it would be illegal for police to break down someone’s door in the middle of the night and then spray the apartment with bullets.
But we don’t live in that world. And because we don’t live in that world, it does not make sense to call for the arrests of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.
First, the sentence “arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” avoids naming the party that will actually do the arresting. It’s omitted, I think, because if we all called for the cops to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, more people would realize how flawed it is to expect people who are equally implicated in a broken and unjust system to turn on their colleagues and arrest them for participating in that same system. They might as well arrest themselves.
Instead of calling for arresting the cops who killed Taylor, we need to be shouting:
END THE WAR ON DRUGS.
The police broke down Taylor’s door because they thought she was involved in an ex-boyfriend’s alleged drug dealing. We have reached the point where we, as a society, condone breaking down someone’s door in the middle of the night on the suspicion that they might be tenuously connected to a low-level drug dealing operation. This is disproportionate, unnecessary, and, as we saw, ultimately causes the deaths of innocent people. Possession must be decriminalized.
We also need to be shouting:
STOP OVERUSING SWAT TEAMS.
SWAT teams are “specialized” teams of police officers intended to deescalate hostage situations and mass shootings, but in reality they are commonly used to break down people’s doors in the middle of the night to serve drug warrants (Balko, p. 249). This is a disproportionate use of force that kills innocent people. Police officers can serve drug warrants in their normal uniforms during the day. If no one answers the door, they can try again another day. Both police officers and the communities they serve will be safer for it (Balko, p. 326). We need to pass a law to limit the use of SWAT teams to their intended, extremely narrow, function.
Police are not going to arrest themselves for doing what they perceive to be their job. It’s our responsibility to change that job. Words have power, and we need to use words that call for real change.
Thank you for your time.
Attention People of Twitter:
It seems at first glance to make logical sense to call for the arrests of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. Because ideally, it would be illegal for police to break down someone’s door in the middle of the night and then spray the apartment with bullets.
But we don’t live in that world. And because we don’t live in that world, it does not make sense to call for the arrests of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.
First, the sentence “arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” avoids naming the party that will actually do the arresting. It’s omitted, I think, because if we all called for the cops to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, more people would realize how flawed it is to expect people who are equally implicated in a broken and unjust system to turn on their colleagues and arrest them for participating in that same system. They might as well arrest themselves.
Instead of calling for arresting the cops who killed Taylor, we need to be shouting:
END THE WAR ON DRUGS.
The police broke down Taylor’s door because they thought she was involved in an ex-boyfriend’s alleged drug dealing. We have reached the point where we, as a society, condone breaking down someone’s door in the middle of the night on the suspicion that they might be tenuously connected to a low-level drug dealing operation. This is disproportionate, unnecessary, and, as we saw, ultimately causes the deaths of innocent people. Possession must be decriminalized.
We also need to be shouting:
STOP OVERUSING SWAT TEAMS.
SWAT teams are “specialized” teams of police officers intended to deescalate hostage situations and mass shootings, but in reality they are commonly used to break down people’s doors in the middle of the night to serve drug warrants (Balko, p. 249). This is a disproportionate use of force that kills innocent people. Police officers can serve drug warrants in their normal uniforms during the day. If no one answers the door, they can try again another day. Both police officers and the communities they serve will be safer for it (Balko, p. 326). We need to pass a law to limit the use of SWAT teams to their intended, extremely narrow, function.
Police are not going to arrest themselves for doing what they perceive to be their job. It’s our responsibility to change that job. Words have power, and we need to use words that call for real change.
Thank you for your time.
About this Piece
After reading The Hate U Give, which includes a fictional depiction of a police officer who is not charged in the shooting of an innocent, unarmed man (which we’ve seen over and over again in real life), and Rise of the Warrior Cop, which lays out the history of the war on drugs, the proliferation of SWAT teams across the country, increasing immunity for police officers, and declining protections for everyone else, it became clear to me that our justice system will not function unless we change it. For this public platform piece, I began to think about the repeated calls I have seen on social media to arrest the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, and how these well-meaning posts seem to be missing the much larger, incredibly urgent problem. We saw recently that the District Attorney was quite literally legally unable to arrest anyone for Breonna Taylor’s death. That’s how flawed the system is. We need to be calling for very specific systemic changes. In this piece I imagined a public service announcement that could be broadcast to the people of Twitter who have called for the officers’ arrests in the past, to mobilize them to call for real, lasting change.
References
Levenson, E. (2020, September 24). A timeline of Breonna Taylor’s case since police broke down her door and shot her. CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/us/breonna-taylor-timeline/index.html
Balko, R. (2014) Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Public Affairs.
Thomas, A. (2017). The Hate U Give. Harper Collins.
Levenson, E. (2020, September 24). A timeline of Breonna Taylor’s case since police broke down her door and shot her. CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/us/breonna-taylor-timeline/index.html
Balko, R. (2014) Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Public Affairs.
Thomas, A. (2017). The Hate U Give. Harper Collins.