About 8:30 one Thursday evening in Detroit, Tony Murray was getting ready for bed ahead of his 6 a.m. shift at a potato chip factory. As he turned off the final light in the living room, he glanced out of his window and saw a half-dozen uniformed police officers with guns drawn approach his home.
As the officers banged on the door, Murray ordered Keno, his black Labrador retriever, to the basement. As Murray let the officers in, one quickly pushed him to the floor and at least two others ran to the cellar, he said. “Don’t kill my dog. He won’t bite you,” Murray pleaded. The sound of gunshots filled the house. Keno’s barking, the 56-year-oldrecalled, morphed into the sound of “a girl screaming.”
Officers searched Murray’s home for nearly an hour, flipping his sofa and emptying drawers. Outside, Murray approached the officers standing by their vehicles. […]
I totally agree that the 3-year indoctrination into the police is a great idea. It is a very psychological type of job and maybe a 4-year degree in psychology would be the best of all types of ways to get into the police force.
This is a symptom of our difficulty in holding police accountable. Unlike other countries we have tasked the police with far too much responsibility from “the drug war”, social work, and social services to housing issues, all on top of crime fighting. Rather than see this as a failure of training, which it is, it should also be seen as a failure of the legislative branch of government to allocate sufficient resources to address societal need. The needs listed above when unaddressed default to police. We do not hold police to account because they have been given conflicting missions. Adding gasoline to this fire is the years long multi-administrative practice of supplying local police with “surplus” military equipment. It is this militarization which taints the “protect and serve” core mission.