> Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use violence in situations where the average citizen would be arrested.
> So when we turn a problem over to the police to manage, there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we should try to figure out how to not get the police involved.
> Political protests are a threat to the order of this system. And so policing has always been the primary tool for managing those threats to the public order. Just as we understand the use of police to deal with homelessness as a political failure, every time we turn a political order problem over to the police to manage, that's also a political failure.
That's a rather pejorative way of expressing the point. (Thanks NPR.) It would be better to say that policing is about protecting law-abiding citizens from people who are acting antisocially and often violently.
Many of those people are simply criminals. They belong in prison, and often force is required to get them there.
Others are experiencing mental-health problems to varying degrees. Some force may be required, but it's a lot to ask that policemen also serve as social workers, psychologists, etc. The place I live has a parallel organization to provide this, and they work hand-in-hand with the police. It seems to work pretty well.
The lack of such a parallel organization is not a failing of policing, though. It's a failure our elected politicians, and perhaps ultimately ourselves.