Laziness is a perpetually and unfairly maligned characteristic in our modern society. A fake quote attributed to Bill Gates says, “I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." I've always drawn a lot of inspiration from that quote, because even though Bill Gates 100% definitely didn't say it, someone did (1). It's one of the very few times I've heard laziness presented in the shining terms that I feel it deserves (2). Put simply, I think any amount of time that people are spending being lazy means less time they're out in the world causing trouble. Not until recently, with the 2020 worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 and its respective Stay At Home Orders, has lethargy been thought of so highly. A personal favorite being the German video that describes the "couch warfare" of the winter of 2020, complete with an aged male actor looking back fondly on his heroic "time served on the front line." (3)
Right now I want to suggest that looking at another current social issue – a rather serious one – can be greatly served if we tried giving it a much more Laziness Positive approach. I genuinely believe that America's current issue of police violence would be greatly served if sloth was encouraged and pursued, on an unprecedented national scale. In every town, hamlet, valley, city, and metropolis, I believe things would be immeasurably improved if we could only convince our police officers to hand off their problems to someone else.
First, I believe an aside is worth mentioning. I'm looking to tell cops how to do their jobs, something that's become a very touchy national topic, at least politically speaking. Obviously, criticism of your job is not something that anyone's a fan of. Cops least of all, apparently. (4) Their main justification being that as it's such a dangerous vocation, no one has a right to direct them in how they do it. (5)
Not to say that it isn't dangerous, but statistically speaking, it's not even in the top 10, ending up in 14, out of the top 25 (6). Compared to Delivery Drivers (7th) or Roofers (4th), it's quite a gap. A second justification to allow the public to have a voice in how police officers do their job is the fact that – unlike a delivery driver or a roofer – there's no capitalist market competition in our police force. Mind you, this is as it should be; introducing profit-seeking motive into our government public assistance industries is just about the worst idea a person could have. But this also means that we can't shop around for better cops, like we could with an inferior delivery driver or roofing company. We have only the one outlet, or source, for this service. As such, we have to make our community wishes known through other methods – essays like this one, voting on local election referendums, speaking to our legislators, things of that nature. We can't speak with our dollars (which, as I said, is as it should be), so we fall back on speaking with our words and our votes.
Furthermore (related to my main point), if a police officer performs their job (let's say) sub-optimally, there are far worse consequences than crossing paths with a nominally inferior delivery driver or roofer. A delivery driver might get your product or food wrong, a roofer might give you a cruddy roof, but a police officer could either destroy your life with unjust prosecution, or in fact even end your life with unjustified violence. The worse case scenario of running into a bad cop can reach to far greater depths than any interaction with the other two vocations which we're presently comparing them to. This paper will be going in to several of those negative consequences, and I believe it's a fair point to confront.
How can laziness help solve some of these issues? Put simply, by encouraging cops to be lazy, they're far less prone to do all the things that lead to so many of the unnecessary consequences of having cops. There's considerable human cost that can be linked to over-excited cops, all of which are solved if we can convince them to try being lazy for once.
For instance, fatalities from car chases outnumbers deaths from floods, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes, combined, and 91% aren't even in pursuit of a violent criminal. (7) That means that a very high number of these fatalities are not somehow in exchange for preventing violence – these aren't violent criminals who are being stopped, so the equivalent exchange, as in "we had to stop him or he would have hurt someone," does not exist. It is only the police officer's presence and pursuit which brings, or at least greatly increases, the chance of harm befalling someone.
I want to also bring attention to the fact that this holds true in personal interactions as well, both with civilians and criminals. If no one in a given scenario has a gun – or in fact any weaponry whatsoever – the appearance of a cop with a gun in their possession is, I believe, escalation by definition. A time and place which was once devoid of a gun, now has a gun in play. I don't believe (or intend) this to be a pejorative dismissal or insult of the officer's training, but I think it does bear irrefutable logic. Whatever the best case scenario might be (peace between two parties, or one taken into custody, or the other) those are not, I believe, greatly changed when a gun arrives. But it can get worse. Once an armed police officer has made their presence known, the worse case scenario has changed. I think one would have to agree at least on this (let's call it) Scenario Possibility Theory. There is some statistical challenges in keeping track of police violence, but the Washington Post shows it averaging about 1,000 people a year, since 2015. (8)
There are currently several ideas being raised to cut down on deaths due to police car chases, from (as previously suggested) legislation (9), non-profit organizations (10), and technological advances in equipment (11). All based on the premise that police officers should personally be doing less when it comes to chasing down criminals. As for the issue of face-to-face interaction, this is where the current national dialogue about defunding police departments comes into play. Very recently, as of this year, a handful of major metropolises have begun forming 24/7 mobile crisis response teams, specially trained to respond to unarmed scenarios, specifically with homeless or mentally ill citizens. Denver (12), San Francisco (13), Los Angeles (14), and Minneapolis (15) have either begun programs, or are currently voting on them. The city of Eugene, OR has had a program of mobile unit unarmed two-person teams for over 30 years. Last year, in 24,000 calls for assistance, they had to call armed police officers for backup only 150 times. That's only 0.6% of their calls. (16) It's left to see what the results will be in these cities with larger population, but I believe we can assume to be looking at some kind of drop in mortality due to police interaction, just by fact of making more scenarios with less weapons in them.
Police will always be available for these calls, as they always have been. And, I believe, they'll also be used far more efficiently, since once they get there, they can have the scenario fully explained to them by a trained medical peer who's already been able to ascertain the situation, instead of showing up and being immediately challenged with two or more conflicting stories, about what's going on, that they'll hear from whatever primary (and emotionally charged) characters that the scene might have. I'd also like to point out, that I believe the victim's wishes should be brought into consideration here as well. If people who call for assistance know that they have a multitude of options, that would also engender a higher likelihood that they'll actually call for assistance. I believe anyone going through something as traumatic as a crime would also – as the primary victim – most likely know the best solution for their current predicament. Or, if not exactly in the mental place for expertise, should at least have a say in what kind of help would come to their rescue. Demanding that both the civil servants and the victims bring their respective troubles and challenges into a One Size Fits All paradigm can only lead to unfortunate and sometimes (recalling the worse consequences mentioned earlier) horribly traumatic and damaging or life-ending results.
None of these alternative solutions, I believe, impinge on the cops' very worthwhile necessity in modern society. I can imagine several scenarios where an armed officer is not only suggested, but certainly preferred. We're merely asking them to do less than the extra they consistently volunteer for. This is about two very specific scenarios where it would yield amazing results – economically, socially, in respect to overall safety and citizen mortality, not to mention engendering a far more positive attitude towards cops as a whole if it leads to less violence at their hands – if we could just convince the police to rest on their haunches and let someone else do it. It wouldn't make them any less heroic. If anything, it would be appreciated. Looked on positively, all for doing nothing.
SOURCES
1) Choose a Lazy Person To Do a Hard Job Because That Person Will Find an Easy Way To Do It
2) Science: Lazy people are likely to be smarter, more successful, and better employees. Who knew?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/the-science-backed-reason-lazy-people-are-smarter-more-successful-and-better-employees.html
3) "Germany hails couch potatoes as heroes of coronavirus pandemic"
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-hails-couch-potatoes-as-heroes-of-coronavirus-pandemic/a-55604506
4) "More than 200 police officers have resigned or retired since Colorado’s police reform bill became law"
https://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2020/08/18/colorado-police-resign-retire-reform-law/
5) "The State Where Protests Have Already Forced Major Police Reform"
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/police-reform-law-colorado/614269/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001/
7)"Police chases kill more people each year than floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning — combined"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/25/why-police-shouldnt-chase-criminals/
8) Police Shooting Database https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-04-22-police-chase-deaths_N.htm
10) Kristie's Law https://kristieslaw.org/
11) Starchase Products https://starchase.com/product/
12) "'My belief is that this is the future of policing': STAR van responds to hundreds of 911 calls where police officers aren't needed"
https://www.9news.com/article/news/community/voices-of-change/star-van-responds-to-hundreds-of-911-calls-police-officers-arent-needed-at/73-b8a7ac06-f01a-4d37-87b9-5435883efe30
13) "Removing Cops From Behavioral Crisis Calls: 'We Need To Change The Model'"
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/924146486/removing-cops-from-behavioral-crisis-calls-we-need-to-change-the-model
14) "LA City Council approves plan to revamp LAPD with unarmed crisis response team"
https://abc7.com/lapd-la-city-council-defund-the-police-nonviolent-911-calls/7027406/
15) "Minneapolis Council proposal shifts $8M from police to mental health response, violence prevention"
https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/11/27/minneapolis-council-proposal-increases-social-services-without-defunding-police/
16) What is CAHOOTS? https://whitebirdclinic.org/what-is-cahoots/
Audience Analysis
Really Just Looking To Justify Takin' It Easy
Similar to the first paper, I wasn't exactly sure how this paper would come out in the end. I knew I wanted it to involve the police force, since that was the issue most at the forefront in my mind this time, since I'd confronted homelessness in my first paper.
I have to admit to personally having a great affinity for the Utilitarian method, and I think any instance where you're using straight factual numbers, statistics, and mortality rates, you're automatically working on a Utilitarian method. Clearly my style is "consequences of different policies," backed up with odds and numbers. This much of a chance of this much pain on this many people. Combine that with (what feels to me) like an overall argument against what you could call an Authority Paternalism; police officers believing that they know how best to solve your/society's problems, and having an assumption that they & only they would have the wherewithal, courage, training, whatever, to solve every scenario. I think this also calls specifically to another solution Mill suggested: You always have the opportunity to do nothing. What's strange here (that I think Mill never predicted) is that you may have to legally force some people to do nothing. Which, admittedly, strikes me as so strange, personally. The idea that some people want to do a job like this one so badly makes no sense to me.
Of course, it's also a version of his "don't restrict other's liberty (like a cop's liberty to give chase) unless it leads to direct damage to another person" rule. I think that the ultimate decision to make is do we want to let cops do their jobs how they want, or do we want a safe society? At least in these two types of cases, those are our choices.
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