In the idealistic Americana paintings of Norman Rockwell, police were seen as community minders and menders. But not all communities look like those paintings. And not all police departments – particularly Chattanooga’s – reflect our communities.
That fact has become all the more problematic in the year since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis officer. With that stark image of an officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck, American policing has become as polarizing as politics at large – spurring calls for police reform, even “defunding” the police.
Those defunding calls are misguided, but they do contain a grain of renewed opportunity for reform.
“Pretty clearly, if you look around the country, [defunding] doesn’t work. I think it’s very unhelpful language anyway,” Chattanooga’s new mayor, Tim Kelly, told the Times Editorial Page last week. “I do think we’re quite serious about looking at alternate models of crisis response. So we’re figuring out ways that we can look around the country, at other cities’ successful models of responding to repeat calls or mental health care crises.”
In fact, Kelly says his budget-in-progress will contain more funding for police – primarily for pay increases to recruit, retain and fully staff the 500-person department that now is only at about 300 and change.