So, most everywhere cops are responding to 911 calls. And because response time remains a key metric used for pay and promotions—woe be the police chief presiding over slow response times—cops are under pressure to stabilize any situation they find and get back “in service” to respond to the next 911 call. They’re doing triage, responding to symptoms rather than solving problems—and they know it. The patrol car will be back later this week to deal with that abusive marriage or that mentally ill person or that drunk or that drug dealer or that noise complaint, and nothing will change. In cop-speak, these are repeat customers.
“One thinks of 911 as a major advance in American law enforcement, but it had several less than beneficial consequences,” write former New York and Los Angeles top cop Bill Bratton and Peter Knobler in their new book, The Profession. “In our haste to get to every call and handle them quickly, cops began to lose the intimacy of their relationship with the neighborhood they were policing.”
And one consequence is that cops now have little interaction with the neighborhood’s solid citizens—the school kids, the local businessmen, the ladies sitting on the stoops. No time for that. Since 911 calls drive everything, the overwhelming majority of folks cops deal with on a day-to-day basis are going to be agitated. They’re angry. Frustrated. Traumatized. Injured. Drunk. High. Some are dying. And some are violent. In crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods, a disproportionate percentage of these folks, for complex reasons that no doubt include racism, may be people of color.
