For years, people in Black communities have been reticent about calling in the cops, because of the distinct chance that it would result in the arrival of an armed racist bully masquerading as a peace officer.

It appears that this reticence is spreading to white communities as well.

This is going to make Cops’ jobs more difficult, and I am not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing:

………

For decades, many Black Americans have believed that cops’ presence will either make a situation worse—or won’t have any impact. And the solution has sometimes been to not call the police at all, even in circumstances where they felt unsafe.

But it’s not just communities of color anymore: White people are now occasionally rethinking whether it’s a good idea to rely so heavily on law enforcement, especially if summoning the police could potentially harm someone. And entire cities have considered whether police officers are the best response to certain kinds of offenses.

Floyd’s fatal arrest last May seems to have hardened that perception. Even the teenage corner store clerk expressed regret over having taken the counterfeit $20 bill from Floyd, which later caused another employee to call the police. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” the clerk, Christopher Martin, said on the witness stand during Chauvin’s murder trial. An owner of the store, Cup Foods, decided after cops killed Floyd that from then on he and his employees would only call the cops to report violence, according to the New York Times.

………

While the dialogue about when it’s appropriate to call the police and if they really keep people safe isn’t new, it’s a conversation that some white communities seem increasingly willing to join.

Misha Viets van Dyk, the national chapter network organizer for Showing Up for Racial Justice, which organizes white communities for racial and economic justice, said their organization saw a “giant wave” of white people concerned about police accountability this past year.

“As people learn about their own background or the backgrounds of people around them, they see more and more reasons why putting their trust into this institution of policing is one that harms us,” Viets van Dyk said.

A Gallup poll conducted after Floyd was murdered last summer found that Americans’ confidence in the police had slid to a record low of 48 percent, the first time in nearly 30 years without a majority.

Maybe if cops weren’t also tasked with raising revenue through traffic tickets and citations for other minor offenses, law enforcement in the US would be less dysfunctional, but as it stands right now, law enforcement in the US is profoundly dysfunctional.