The Future is Local: Feeling Safe in Your Town

And the trap therein

There have been signs going up in my neighborhood for a few months about a burgeoning “neighborhood association” that’s trying to get some activism going. I finally made it to one of their meetings a few days ago, featuring the Chief of Police in the city where I live. The evening re-taught me an important civics lesson: trusting government to make you feel safe is a fool’s errand that inevitably does more harm than good.  

The Chief was clearly used to speaking at these kinds of community events, and he had a big crowd this time. There were close to 100 people at this thing, packing into over half the space of a local restaurant. My neighborhood tends to be populated by older people of the “way things used to be” generation, exactly the kinds of tend-to-be-conservative mature-types who are finally waking up to the reality that they’re going to have to organize to “get things done.” They were ready to hear about Law and Order, and the Chief was happy to oblige. 

He hit all the topics you might expect for this crowd. He introduced the local Lieutenant. He talked about homelessness and Fentanyl. He discussed pending legislation and how crazy some of it is. He talked about budget concerns and the resulting staffing issues. It was all red meat for concerned older people whose primary concern is community “livability”. 

But two things really struck me. 

First, in talking about California’s current legislative push to effectively decriminalize petty theft and create diversion programs for drug crimes, the Chief remarked (I’m paraphrasing) “It’s reasonable to believe that in the 90s we over-incarcerated a lot of people unnecessarily. People spending two years in prison for a baggie of speed was excessive. But things have swung so far the other way now that things are totally out of control.” 

Second, one of the final questions in the inevitable Q&A (always an adventure at a meeting like this) came from a comparatively young mom, who was very concerned about sexting/catfishing scams among schoolkids, and the prevalence of drugs in schools. This is not an unusual thing for a mom to be concerned about, but what struck me was the nature of her question for the Chief: what can “we” do to back you guys up and help your efforts to fight these things? 

Those two things nagged at me all the way home, and in a classic moment of fridge logic I only realized the problem as I walked back into my house. Those things are related, but the relation can only be seen once you realize the second is exactly backwards. Let’s take these in reverse order to see why. 

How can we help the cops? 

This is exactly backward. The cops are not the leaders of public safety. The citizens are. The cops are supposed to back up the citizens, not the other way around. If you’re a parent concerned about catfish/sexting scams and/or illicit drugs floating around school, then you are the primary line of defense for your children. You need to talk to your kids about the dangers of these things. The classic parental-advice pieces are as valid today as they have ever been: don’t give your personal information to strangers, don’t take a pill someone just hands you, and don’t drink a drink you didn’t see made or did not open yourself. Don’t allow anybody to give, take, or do anything to you that you don’t understand. The greatest trap parents fall into is expecting others to tell their kids these things, and expecting others to reinforce these things. 

I get why those conversations don’t happen. They’re uncomfortable conversations to have. Such concerns from parents are almost always met with eye rolling and sighs and reassurances that “no, mom, of course I’m not going to do that.” But the conversations have to get had anyway. More than once. Parents trying to avoid those uncomfortable moments with their children only set their children up for danger. Begging the cops to take the lead on it makes it even worse. 

Parents have been begging the cops to “protect” communities for as long as there have been cops. People want to “feel safe walking down the street!” or “feel safe sending my kids to school!” But here’s the problem: your feeling of safety is not real safety, and comes at a cost. 

Preach, Tom.

We might have overreacted back in the day …

This brings us to that aside the Chief made about over-incarceration in the 90s. Do you remember why this became a thing in the 90s? “People” didn’t feel safe. Crack and other scary new drugs were scaring parents who were already primed (by things like the heavy metal/Dungeons & Dragon Satanic panic of the 80s) to be scared and feel like their kids were unsafe. They appealed to government to make them feel safe. And government was happy to oblige by arrogating to itself more power. Draconian laws got written that laid heavy punishments and real prison time on largely nonviolent crimes. Those laws were vigorously enforced by police departments who had been greenlit by parents who wanted to feel safe. 

As a result, however, whole demographics of people grew up AFRAID OF THE POLICE. The flip side of one set of parents’ fears about drugs harming their kids was another set of parents’ fears about overzealous drug enforcement harming their kids. It’s a shot and chaser: the War on Drugs caused Defund the Police. That other set of parents, the ones whose children were targeted by draconian drug enforcement, raised a generation that did not feel safe WITH the police. Their pleas to feel safe rose to ascendance in the halls of government, and have swung the pendulum the other way as they seek to “feel safe” from overeager policing, which was, remember, driven by a different set of parents’ yearnings to feel safe. 

The problem here isn’t the police. It’s populations of parents who want some kind of outside force to make them feel safe. And “feel safe” is the key here. The police don’t actually keep anyone safe. They show up after the fact to assign blame and penalties when someone has done something bad to somebody else. They don’t prevent anything. They’re inherently reactive, not proactive. They are enforcers, not preventers. When seconds count, the police are minutes away. 

But they’re also an arm of government, and the great conceit of government actors is convincing people that they are essential and can actually protect you. So when parents yearn to feel safe, the police are right there along with the rest of government, ready to reassure you so long as you keep voting for them and letting them tax you. 

If you’re a parent and you’re worried about your kids, talk to your kids. Do it often. Build a home life and relationship with your kids where they can feel safe talking to you about hard things, knowing they are going to get the truth from you without judgment. If you don’t feel safe, only you can do what is needed to change that. Only you can change how you feel, and only you can decide what criteria must be met for that to happen. You and only you control your life and your family environment. Outsourcing your feelings of safety to somebody else will never work, and will actively hurt someone else. Sooner or later, that hurt will end up being dealt back to you. 

The future is local, and the most important work you ever do will be within the walls of your own home, and doing that work is the best way to feel safe letting your kids out into the world. That work cannot be fobbed off on government, no matter how much they promise you otherwise.