7.9.16 - What If We Only Recruited Police Officers From The Upper Classes?

This is a hastily-written and improvisationally conceived idea, but it's so crazy it just might work. I stand by it only in the most experimental of capacities, but fuck it, this is literally a private blog. For now.

Let's start with this. Right now, barely 30 hours removed from the Dallas police killings, the only fashionable thing you're allowed to have on your Facebook page is some statement of compassion for the scourge of police brutality against black people. Support for the officers is generally a matter of "we need to solve this the right way! No violence!" Don't get me wrong, this feels like a good thing. Actually, I think it's been incredible how the national mood seems to have responded with calls for greater solidarity instead of fracture. I was really worried when I first heard about this.

But let's not kid ourselves. The people who are leading the charge to anchor the conversation around these enlightened viewpoints are relatively elite members of our society. It's not the nation's truck drivers who -- as a class -- are trying to make sure we know that black lives still matter. It's us college-educated, media-savvy elites on the white/establishment side of the equation who are doing the tear-shedding for BLM.

Now, policing in America is about to go through a period of pretty significant change. Possibly the most significant culture change in the careers of a lot of the officers. And it seems like part of that change is going to involve altering the makeup of the police departments: making sure Ferguson, MO doesn't still have an all-white police force occupying a black town.

So if police departments are going to change their recruitment philosophies, and if mostly young elites are the ones dictating the discourse on what police should do, wouldn't it make sense to comprise the force of that class of people?

I know this is a ridiculous, entitled argument. But here's the thinking.

We know that wealthier white Americans have a greater racial tolerance than poorer white Americans. Lower classes are uncomfortable sharing space with minorities, down there at the bottom of the totem pole, so they tend to view minorities as nuisances rather than aggrieved and oppressed groups. If you wanted to put together a racist tennis team, let alone a police department, you would draw from the working class. Yet this is exactly where the force tends to draw from.

In other words, pundits and academics can dream up all the new training and policing tactics they want. It'll still be fundamentally racist people implementing them.

If the police department drew from the upper classes, however, they’d get higher-educated cops who would be more accepting of the vastly different experiences of the people they serve.

Upper-class cops would be more secure in their social standing, which would translate to less tension when someone questions it. Whereas working-class cops see challenges to their dearly-clung-to authority from every direction, a well-heeled cop would be inclined to brush off more.

Crucially, these cops would be closer to the ruling class of elites in general, especially the media class. Police perspectives would be broadcast more, which would both engender sympathy from the public and submit police views to more discourse. That can only help, right?

I think a big part of the media’s disdain for cops stems from a class divide. The white working class is exactly who the media doesn’t like: unsexy, low-class people. This is the class that spawns Trump voters. But if the media saw their peers on the force, they’d probably start talking about it as a noble profession again… the way they did when the media was itself more blue-collar. And when cops did encounter frustrations, they would have much more access to the channels that can influence the Overton Window. More real shit would be out in the open.

Being more educated would also mean that police would be less hidebound as an institution and more willing to try new things. Academics would be welcomed in to try new methods, tactics, etc. There would be less resentment from the rank and file.

The glaring question is how exactly to attract these people to the force. Actually, I don't see that as particularly hard. There's a ton of precedent for yuppie types entering unglamorous lines of work in the name of altruism. I know a bunch of social workers, precisely none of whom grew up poor. Why? Because their work is an act of social justice and of conscience allayance. To get rich police recruits, all we have to do is make joining the police force into a hard-core corollary to social work. 

The case would make itself. Hey, Brockton: you will be doing incalculable good for society and the populations who need help most. Do you have what it takes to protect and serve all these black and brown people?? White savior complex eats that shit up. Literally the only requirement would be to make the police force a socially-acceptable option for socially-minded people to have their biggest impact. From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to TFA, when there's a heroic movement afoot, you can't keep the elites away.

Plus, the numbers work. It's true that this isn't going to appeal to the majority of kids who might otherwise go into high-end fashion or investment banking or whatever the hell you're supposed to do after Dartmouth. But police departments don't accept a ton of people; even New York City, which is the nation's largest force, only graduates 1200 people tops every year. This year it was under 700. There are definitely a thousand rich kids a year who would want to do the job once it's made to seem gallant and glamorous. Public school teaching already draws plenty of people from the upper classes. People want to make a difference.

As far as salary, hey: you get paid pretty well, you get a great pension and benefits, and oh yeah, you're a white knight all of society looks up to. Even today, most police officers are allowed to retire after 20 years at half pay. Chip in a couple of decades to a valiant cause, make a difference, and head into the world as a conquering hero in your early forties. I could see a lot of kids making this choice.

Compensation wouldn't need to change; department size wouldn't need to change; the system really wouldn't need to change. All it would take is a culture shift on how we talk about and recruit police officers.

As it happens, we already have an example of exactly this type of perception shift: the military. I'm too lazy to find a good source right now, but, the armed forces these days are attracting better-off recruits than they ever have before. Decades ago, the service was associated with poor people: guys who couldn’t get a college deferment, etc. Now, it’s more heavily made up of children of elites. Maybe it's because only children of elites feel an attachment to the American agenda, but then again, it probably has something to do with the ridiculous reverence we've decided to heap onto the military since 9/11. Again: that hero thing attracts people sitting pretty on a perch.

Educated, well-off people love posting to Facebook about the need to do something to curb police brutality. This is a chance for them to do it. Sourcing from richer tranches of society would make police forces more likely to embrace the kind of ideological commitment to racial harmony that is desperately needed right now. Most of all, they'd stop reposting the same couple articles and see what it's like every day.

In closing, I need to reiterate that I agree with like half of this argument