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SONYA MASSEY’S KILLING ARGUES FOR UNARMED RESPONSE  
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Tahir Duckett
July 27, 2024
New York Times
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_ Alternative response programs, in which unarmed civilians, instead
of armed officers, are being dispatched to respond to thousands of
calls for service could prevent numerous police killings. _

, Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

 

On July 6, Sonya Massey called 911 to report an intruder
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After Sean Grayson, a sheriff’s deputy, and another officer found no
intruder outside of her home in Sangamon County, Ill., they knocked on
her door. The situation escalated after Ms. Massey went to turn off
her stove. Within seconds
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Grayson drew his gun and shot her in the head.

The death of George Floyd in 2020 drew public outrage and calls for a
wide variety of police reforms. There is still a lot we don’t know
about the Massey situation, including if she was experiencing mental
distress. But the killing of Ms. Massey is a cold reminder of how
little has changed in the years since.

It’s true that there have been piecemeal reforms at the state and
local level. But at the federal level, the George Floyd Justice in
Policing Act was unable to get past partisan gridlock in the Senate
— and, in any case, many experts agree that the act would not do
enough to reduce rates of police violence in the United States.

Amid a stalled federal legislative agenda, arguably the most
significant development since 2020 is what appears to be a newfound
willingness to prosecute officers who use unjustifiable deadly force.
Between 2016 and 2019, only 43 police officers
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charged with murder or manslaughter related to an on-duty shooting.
From 2020 to 2023
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more than 70 officers were charged. And yet, more than 1,100 people
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shot and killed by police officers last year — the highest one-year
number on record.

Mr. Grayson was fired and charged with first-degree murder, but that
is unlikely to reduce rates of police violence. Such violence often
arises because we ask the police to serve in an impossibly wide range
of roles, many of which they aren’t well-suited for.

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Police officers are charged with too wide a range of duties: from
monitoring the status of your vehicle headlights to clearing homeless
encampments and maintaining youth curfews. All of this amounts to tens
of millions of U.S. residents having at least one contact with police
officers each year [[link removed]].
If we want more effective law enforcement and fewer police abuses, we
need to start seriously investing in the programs across the country
that have shown promise at taking work off the plate of law
enforcement.

About 20 percent of police killings involve someone in mental
distress. To meet the needs of residents experiencing issues like
homelessness, addiction and behavioral health crises, cities like
Albuquerque, Durham, N.C., and Denver have launched alternative
response programs, in which unarmed civilians, instead of armed
officers, are being dispatched to respond to thousands of calls for
service.

Before launching these programs, both the police and the general
public often expressed concern that unarmed responders will be hurt on
the job, most likely by someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
But in the past few years, no crisis teams in any of these places have
had any known
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injuries while on the job and people in need are getting more tailored
responses for help.

These programs are a political winner; most police officers surely
didn’t sign up for the job to arrest someone for sleeping in a
Starbucks bathroom, and police chiefs have expressed enthusiasm about
a reduction in the number of calls on their dashboard.

Many programs have started in recent years, perhaps the most enduring
legacy of the George Floyd protests. But even the biggest programs
only respond to a fraction of the calls that come in and few programs
operate around the clock.

Community violence intervention programs rely on several overlapping
strategies: outreach to high-risk individuals to offer services,
focused interventions to prevent retaliatory violence, mediation and
cognitive behavioral therapy to prevent violence before it happens.

This isn’t a question of defunding the police — it’s about
funding some of the most promising community-led innovations in
municipal governance in recent decades. President Biden’s
administration has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in
community violence intervention and alternative responses, with
bipartisan support in Congress, and the investment may be yielding
results. We are in the midst of one of the steepest declines
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the homicide rate in recorded history, despite the fact that little
seems to have changed
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police staffing in recent years.

Nonetheless, House Republicans recently proposed slashing federal
funding for the Department of Justice’s community violence
intervention initiative — a clear step in the wrong direction. The
federal government spends tens of billions on policing each year; it
should similarly allocate significant annual investments into
community violence intervention and alternative response.

Cities across the nation are showing us that we can widen the way that
we think about community safety. Until we narrow the scope of what
police officers can do, we’ll continue to see officers bring
violence into situations that don’t require it.

_Tahir Duckett is a civil rights lawyer and activist. He is the
executive director of Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in
Community Safety._

 

* police killings
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* strategic non-violence
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* community response
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