t be problematic when encountering someone with a psychotic episode or delusion or someone who otherwise cannot understand, hear or comply with the police. How can you expect a patrol officer to make a meaningful clinical assessment of a patient in the field? How would you respond?
We can’t expect an officer who’s trained to use aggressive methods to establish their authority to turn it off as quickly. Luckily, in most places in Europe, Brittain, Canada and Australia, the standard approach is a crisis response that includes mental health workers, and police only assisting when necessary. This method works for crises, but what about other public disorders? Regarding minor violations like public drinking, public urinating, and sleeping in parks, tubes, trains or sidewalks, what should be done by the police?
Intoxication, mental illness and homelessness in themselves are not criminal. Police were always expected to provide care for the most impoverished population, primarily to reduce their impact on others. Warnings and ticketing do nothing to improve the situation of a person that is sleeping rough. Neither does banishment. This is even harder when writing about ‘offences to the moral order’. We are all aware of the horrors of international human trafficking, but criminalizing all sex work is ineffective. The “white slave” narrative is the form of a policing era that emphasized restoring morality to the cities, “which had been “polluted” by the massive influx of eastern and southern European immigrants”, writes Vitale.
–> “The culture of the police must be changed so that it is no longer obsessed to control the poor and socially marginal. That said, there is a larger truth that must be confronted. As long as the basic mission of the police remains unchanged, none of these reforms will be achievable. There is no technocratic fix.” this is the final conclusion of The End of Policing.
Community policing, more CCTV, body cameras and better training are not the right ‘fix’, it only expands the reach of the police into communities and private lives. We don’t have to put up with aggressive and intrusive policing to keep us safe. The book titled The End of Policing describes some interesting alternatives. If you’d like a better description of how policing works, especially in America, I highly recommend you read this book.
Extraordinary Investigation, Officer
Besides police officers, the Netherlands counts about 23,700 ‘peace officers’. They work at approximately 1,100 different agencies. 3900 of them are municipal enforcers, 2450 environmental boas (green and grey), 850 school attendance officers, 4800 public transport boas, 700 social investigators and 10,800 generic detection boas.15 These officers have a Special Enforcement Officer (SEO) status (Buitengewoon Opsporingsambtenaar) or BOA/Handhaving in Dutch. Therefore they have some police powers (detaining suspects, asking for identification, making an arrest, issuing fines within their power of offences and use of force). The majority of BOA officers carry and use handcuffs. A few of them carry police batons, pepper spray and occasionally firearms too, but only with permission from the Ministry of Safety and Justice. [source] Being a BOA doesn’t mean that you’re employed by the police or marechaussee, they have their own supervisors. To become one all you have to do is a 6-month course, which means 4 hours of study a week and it doesn’t cost much! Everyone can do it! You’ll be paid € 2.910 a month.[source]
BOAs are intimidating and often aggressive. On many occasions, I saw them using extensive force to detain citizens. I frequently watched them monitor train stations, occasionally frightening travellers, constantly questioning, searching them and even pushing them to the ground. BOAs pace in groups. They walk with significant steps, their breasts forwards and their voices loud. BOAs are often white men with the small-penis syndrome. (Probably not all of them, but those SPS BOAs are the ones that made themselves most visible to me.) Their targets seem to be primarily men of c