Compromising authority

Police profession faces lack of interest, support due to past mistakes

George Floyd’s death in 2020 sparked a major, attentiongrabbing movement in the midst of COVID-19. One of the main messages of the movement was to defund the police and show a lack of support for the force in order to directly stop police brutality that, in some cases, have led to death. While the police nationwide have not been defunded, they have still faced repercussions of the movement including an increased hatred for the force and lack of humanity from their community. According to a Gallup poll, less than half of Americans had confidence in the police department’s abilities.

“I think it was late 2021[when] I heard about it and I was a little disheartened,” Fishers Police Cadets lieutenant sophomore Addison Luckcuck said. “Yes, obviously there are police officers who take the role a little too seriously, a little too power hungry, but [the] majority of police officers, especially in Fishers, are good people.”

Defunding the police has been a concept since the 1960s. However, the ideology became more mainstream in the summer of 2020. This was due to the immense social media magnification of police brutality.

While police brutality has been a problem for decades, what made 2020 different was the demand for the entire police system to change rather than just the indictment of guilty police officers. This pushed the narrative that the entire police force was flawed in how they were trained rather than the wrong people abusing power.

“A lot of times people will bring up the argument [that] ‘there’s just a few bad apples’ well

Malak Samara samarmal000@hsestudents.org

that’s not really true,” junior Luke DeLong said. “There [are] a lot of really good people that are police officers. There [are] a lot of really bad people that are police officers. It just boils down to the system that they’re put through, the kind of training they get and the power they’re given can lead to being abused in a lot of ways. That’s the real issue that people are finding, not with the officers themselves necessarily.”

The ‘defund the police’ movement, if successful, would mean reallocation of funding that currently goes into the police department and would go into different branches of the police or other government agencies. This is primarily to achieve the goal of completely changing the system of policing and accomplishing the end goal of reprogramming the training of police to prevent further incidents such as Floyd’s death.

“At surface level, completely defunding the police department is not a good idea,” DeLong said. “But I think what a lot of people are trying to accomplish is actually moving funding to different places. So I am for giving less funding to things like militarygrade weapons for the police and moving more funding to rehabilitation programs and better quality of living in communities to try to prevent crime rather than increased punishments.”

DeLong also highlighted the fact that defunding the police would be an opportunity to rebuild the police system from square one. This would provide the chance to reflect on all of the flaws and attempt to counteract them by developing new ways to approach problems. With this being said,

DeLong is unsure about how attainable this goal would actually be.

Another opportunity that has come out of the ‘defund the police’ movement is the fact that it has caused not only police officers to be more cautious with their power but also caused their supervisors to keep a closer eye on their activity. An asset that has been utilized more recently is cameras. Not only do people have their own phone cameras to record any interaction they have or see with the police, but police officers themselves are required to wear body cameras in order to remind them that if they were to abuse their power, it will not go unnoticed.

“For a long time in my mind, people don’t really speak their opinions but now that people are able to voice their own opinion, I think it’s a good thing,” senior Justin Tscherne said.

“Departments are now watching more closely at their officers making sure that nothing bad is happening. They’re being more [conscious of] misuse of power. They’re watching more closely than they would’ve normally.”

On the other hand, Tscherne believes that while there are advantages to the ‘defund the police’ movement such as the demilitarization of the police and control on who does or does not carry a gun, he highlighted potential dangers that also arise from the movement.

“I think we shouldn’t militarize our police,” Tscherne said. “I don’t think every police officer needs to carry around a gun.The whole defund the police can go either way because, yes I don’t want to have a militarized police, but at the same time, I feel like we still need to have that upper hand against somebody who is trying to threaten innocent people.”

Additionally, many people fear that defunding the police puts the general public in greater danger. There is a belief that if the police are not as headstrong or do not have the resources necessary, more crime will pass.

“Defunding them and taking away resources that are valuable, it’s not a good thing to do,” Luckcuck said. “The main goal is just protecting citizens.”

Both Luckcuck and Tscherne are lieutenants from the Fishers Police Cadet Program. Luckuck explained that the program is an opportunity to learn about the history of police officers as well as train to pursue the role as a profession. As lieutenants, they are responsible for the cadets as well as plan the events for the day while also ensuring safety and productivity.

Being a part of the program has given Luckcuck and Tscherne more insight into what goes on in the background of policing as well as get a closer look of how certain messages, movements or actions can affect the police force. More specifically, Luckcuck and Tscherne have noticed the increased lack of support and how it has made the job harder.

“They need support just as much as any other person,” Luckcuck said. “It’s like sending someone to the Olympics and then just cheering on the other team as they’re competing. It really sucks, but having that support and having that encouragement from your community to keep doing your job, that’s really important.”

Furthermore, people who don’t support the police also tend to mistrust them and their intentions. Both Luckcuck and Tscherne have attributed to the fact that the police force is for the people and wants to ensure safety. However, Tscherne emphasized that if people distrust the police and intervene in their work, it is putting not only the police officer’s safety at risk, but others at risk, too.

“People will interfere with police activities because they don’t like them; I’ve seen videos of civilians interfering with police,” Tscherne said. “It’s hard for us to do our job when other people are interfering because they can get hurt, we can get hurt, the suspect could get hurt and in the end we just want everybody to be safe.”

Not only do dangers arise when people intervene in an officer’s work, but people are susceptible to more danger when the mistrust in the police force continues to grow. This is due to the fact that it causes the general public to be less likely to seek help from the police when it is necessary and needed.

“The unwillingness to call police officers when there is trouble [is especially dangerous],” Luckcuck said. “If you have a such deep hatred that when someone is in your house, you’d rather take care of it yourself versus calling the police, that can turn out very bad for sure.”

A criminology study of 14 police departments found that there was a massive decrease in recruitments of officers since 2020. For example, the number of police officers in the New Orleans police department decreased by 20% in just the last two and a half years, even with the doubled efforts to recruit officers. Luckcuck has even seen a decrease in staff throughout her program, as well as lack of community support within the city of Fishers.

Since generation z has been at the forefront of the ‘defund the police’ movement through their use of social media platforms, protests and efforts to continuously bring attention to police brutality, concern rises about what kind of threat the generation has on the future of the police force. Many believe that as generation z is integrated more and more into society as they grow up and begin to take on professions, there will be an even higher decrease in police recruitments as much of generation z strays away from that path.

“We’ll probably see recruitment go down, just from what I know about the trend in our generation’s political beliefs and progressive nature,” DeLong said. “I have to imagine that a lot of us are for change in things like the police department. People aren’t going to join unless they see that kind of change.”

While there are concerns about the future of the police force due to the lack of support from mainly generation z, some see their want for change as a light of hope. There could be more room for effort towards the reprogramming of the police system so there are less opportunities for police brutality in cases such as George Floyd.

“It feels like we’re going backwards, like we’re not making progress,” DeLong said. “I have to believe that that’ll change when our generation takes power. The trend that we’re seeing right now, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be change anytime soon, but I think that if we believe that there will be change, we will see it eventually.”

In order for that trust between the community and police force to be mended and rekindled, both DeLong and Tscherne believe that there needs to be more open communication between both parties. Otherwise, the chances of positive change and safer communities begin to dwindle.

“I think that police departments need to be more open with the community,” Tscherne said. “I also think that people in the community should accept [the police force] and instead of bash the police, they should learn about them. Both the police departments and the community need to put in effort to heal and restore trust in each other.”