I have spent my life as a high school teacher working with teenagers. The core challenge of adolescence is that of crafting an identity that sustains you and that is validated by friends, family, and society at-large. You struggle with what it means to be an A-student, a D-student, an artist, a musician, an athlete, gay, queer, a Man, a Woman, white, Black, and all of the diverse identities that make humans beautiful. But specifically, as my students and other young people determine what it means to be Black in America, we collectively witness, over and over again, state violence upon Black bodies.

This summer, our entire nation was awakened to the plight of communities of color, who say that they are over-policed – too many random stops – and under-policed – children shot in the streets. We have heard from communities across the state who are concerned about response to crisis in their neighborhoods.

We must first reject the umbrella term “policing.” What we mean is that the government must support people in crisis. Crisis could mean breaking down on the side of the road. Crisis could mean a domestic dispute that leaves one or both parties feeling unsafe. Crisis could mean hearing a window break in your house. Crisis could mean being approached by someone with a knife. Crisis could mean being upset and wielding a knife. 

Our current arrangement is broken. We pay officers too little, we ask them to do too much, and we compensate them with job security and obscure pensions. Officers in Louisiana make, on average, just over $42,000, while they are asked to be social workers, conflict resolution agents, and protectors of our communities. For years, politicians have kicked the financial investment down the road by offering low salaries in exchange for job security and complicated long-term pensions. That system fails to reward, attract, and retain the community leaders that we want on our forces. Most Louisianans believe that you ought to pay someone a fair wage to do a job. Let’s make our response to crisis work like that.

The federal government should pay officer salaries at a rate of $80,000 per officer for a set number of officers based on the population. Many jurisdictions employ around 22 officers per 10,000 civilians. Cities should then have the ability to decide whom they would like to hire. Those salaries could be for mental health workers, social workers, armed officers, investigators, traffic agents, or addiction service managers.

 We must trust communities to make those decisions.

In some places, mayors and city councils would choose to maintain a force similar to what we have now, only with more competition for those jobs. In other places, innovative crisis-response systems to address the needs of communities will arise. In exchange for the pay increase, officers would have to agree to accountability measures, including dismissal, just like professionals in the private sector do.

One essential role of the government is to support people in crisis. Like most Louisianans, I want to do that by reducing federal waste, increasing investment, listening to communities, and paying people for a job well done.