Today as I was driving back to church after a meeting, I was stopped at a red light and noticed a very skinny and very dirty homeless man who clearly had some mental health issues, standing on the side of the road staring at his fingers and talking to them.
Suddenly a police officer drove through the red light, stopping in the middle of the street. He jumped out, grabbed the homeless man, threw him on the ground, grabbed his arms in a way that I am certain broke at least one of them, kneeled on his back, screaming at him the whole time and eventually handcuffed him. I swear, if the light hadn’t changed, I would have been able to video at least the end of this unfortunate encounter. I couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I could believe it but the fact that this behavior still continues is utterly baffling to me. This was a 6 lane road, so there were many of us who saw this, but the officer didn’t care and didn’t think he’d be challenged or corrected, probably because, again, this was a homeless and mentally ill person: someone many feel it is okay to reject and to treat like they are sub-human.
Someone reading this might say that I had no idea what proceeded that and they would be right. Nonetheless, this man was not putting up any resistance at all, he was laying on the ground crying in pain but not fighting this officer at all. He had nothing on him, nothing with him, nothing that could have been damaging. There was no reason at all why this officer could not have talked to him politely, asked him questions, taken him gently in, if that is what needed to happen.
When will we start caring about people enough to take seriously that this kind of behavior from the people who are supposed to “protect” us does not, in fact, protect us, but instead creates a society of violence, retribution, vengeance and fear? This behavior will never lead us to remember that we are all connected, and that those people we dismiss as “other” and “not worthy” are our siblings: they belong to us, and we have a responsibility to care for them, to HELP them, rather than harm them more.
I keep thinking of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenging it?” She said that a long time ago, but have we moved any closer at all to true understanding, compassion, and caring for one another?
Our Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye” was supposed to mitigate the amount of retaliatory damage we could inflict on the other. Jesus took it even further, “I say to you, do NOT return evil for evil!” So many people claim to believe and yet I know very, very few who really want to help those who do damage rather than seek vengeance and harm on them.
The truth is that our retaliatory responses make nothing better. Our punishments do not lessen the amount of crime in our society. I’ve written about this before so I will not go into the details here. But this doesn’t work. Restorative justice DOES. It goes so much further in terms of changing people for the better so that crimes are not repeated and people can re-enter society better and more able to be well-functioning and contributing individuals.
This has to begin with what we see as acceptable responses by our law enforcement to those they don’t like or those with whom they are angry. Being okay with the way police abuse even those we reject has to stop. And it has to stop with us.
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