Black people, especially men, are still being murdered by police. The narrative still goes, the person runs away or even pauses with their hands up and are shot dead. While I continue to hear about these murders, I can’t help but think of myself as a Resident Advisor at my school. In my training they taught us certain skills to ensure a situation goes smoothly, if a student breaks a school policy. They always encourage to respect the students and put safety above everything else. If a situation escalates, we have the option to get campus safety involved. When involved, campus safety is encouraged to work with the students and keep the situation calm.
Now, being a police officer clearly comes with entirely different and more extreme risks than an RA or campus safety officer. However, there are still situations that could be handled more smoothly, that escalate for no reason. There are still people getting shot for not doing anything at all. I personally feel police are trained more on action and how to stop someone, than they are on how to deescalate a situation and calm people down.
I've been thinking about how many lives could be saved if there were more officers that thought and acted like RA’s. Situations would be handled differently, through communication and not physical abuse. Hot tempers and extreme fear would be obliterated. And most importantly, police officers would take on the role of protecting all humans rather than policing them. We would all respect each other more, because of their example. I don’t see the police as having a reason to shoot someone in the situations I described in the beginning; but some people do. Imagine if those people saw how police, our beloved, underpaid, citizens of the law, respected the rights of ‘criminals’. Everyone would then understand that although people may break the law, they still have basic human rights. Again, I understand some situations that police officers run into require more aggressive action, but there are too many,I have seen in which aggressive action was taken but not needed. What a world it would be if we simply showed respect.
