Ignoring calls for budget reallocation and structural reform, the City of Paterson responds to community outcry by hosting a “Shop with a Cop Event” no one asked for.
It’s called copaganda.
On December 21st, Paterson’s “Community” Policing Division hosted a “Shop with a Cop” event. On this day, 169 children were accompanied by officers to shop for $100 worth of clothing, shoes, and/or toys. At a time when community members are calling for substantial reforms of a police department that has seen eleven federal indictments over the last few years, this event carries the same moral weight as Marie-Antoinette’s infamous statement, when history recorded her proclaiming, “Let them eat cake” to the poor masses of France.
It is hard to come up with a police department more out of touch with its constituents than is the Paterson police department at this present moment. Instead of redirecting funding for social programs, its bloated budget is used to come up with new initiatives draped in euphemisms such as “community policing” that do little to address the concerns of the public.
Instead, the Paterson Police department engages in what is known as copaganda, the deliberate manipulation of media optics to clean the image of police in the eyes of the public.
Residents of Paterson have been decrying police abuse, neglect, and bloated budgets for years. Instead of having their demands met, the police department responds with events like “Shop with a Cop”.
These sorts of events are part of a new model of “community policing,” one that is informed by a belief that closer contact with the community will instill trust in the police. This argument stands on one fallacious assumption: that distrust for the police stems from the residents’ own unwarranted prejudice.
The Paterson police department’s turn to “community policing” is not a novel program, as the model of community policing has been in place for many years in comparably troubled neighborhoods and cities with scant results.
The posterchild for this model has been the city of Camden, who implemented its own community policing project in 2013.
The term “community” in community policing is a proven misnomer.
Camden’s model of so-called community policing relied on expanded surveillance by way of increased cameras and foot patrols, all the while recruiting community members to snitch on one another.
Camden’s community policing model turned out to be a folly, a euphemism used to expand the police state as it brought in more county officers while further criminalizing the poor by increasing the number of citations given out for minor infractions.
And like Camden, the Paterson Police department is similarly engaging in copaganda to clean up its image, all the while ignoring the calls from community members to bring justice for Jameek Lowery or answer questions regarding the whereabouts of Felix DeJesus, who suspiciously disappeared after an interaction with police in February of this year.
How many more failed initiatives, personnel reshufflings, and federal indictments will it take before it becomes clear that the problems of the department are not simply a question affability, but a reflection of a much more profound problem found in the very nature of policing itself?
That the Paterson Police department turned to funding a consumerist event at the Center Mall in the face of public outcry, distrust, and disapproval is a slap in the face to Patersonians.
That funds could be allocated for such events when organizations doing real community-engaged work, like the Paterson Healing Collective who reach out to shooting survivors to provide mentorship and support, is disheartening to say the least.
Safer communities are not the most policed, as more policing only serves to provide an illusion of safety. Communities are made safer by strengthening community bonds; funding social and public programs, such as recreation, libraries and more. The city of Paterson currently supports these programs and departments with a fraction of what it gives to the police department, the latter of which receives nearly fifty percent of the city’s annual budget.
The Paterson Police department got it wrong: Residents are not looking to engage in materialist consumption with the police but are actually looking to push through material changes of the police.
George Andres is an organic scholar, researcher, and visiting Assistant professor of Global Studies.
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