Rural Policing (Part 2): Community solutions

In my previous post, I discussed police shortages in rural areas, some adverse effects of these shortages, and the rise in sheriffs making individual determinations as to what laws they will enforce. 

I am extending the discussion from that post by exploring how communities, particularly those of color, have found their own solutions for the lack of adequate policing and general lack of resources. I also explore the "punishments" these communities receive while police officers are kept mostly unaccountable. 

I was inspired to continue this discussion after watching Check-It, a documentary in which a queer community forms a self-defense group after multiple people experience brutal attacks for their sexuality. While the self-defense group was initially characterized as a "gang" because of their brutal attacks on homophobic assailants, the group has now created a clothing label and funded a community center where they provide members with resources, help people develop practical skills, and organize fashion shows. Check-Its change was triggered when some of its members ended up in jail, causing others to realize that their violence inevitably kept some members in the cycle of poverty they all wished to escape. 

Key to the development of the Check-It community was the lack of adequate police response and even violence by the police against victims who sought help from them. Similarly, rural people take up arms to defend themselves because of a similar lack of adequate police responses to violent crimes, as I discussed in part I. Like those in Urban, D.C., many rural people believe their individual gun ownership will reduce crime rates.  It seems that police everywhere are failing people everywhere.

However, a crucial problem arises when abandoned groups of people take their defense and protection into their own hands: the court system fails them after every other part of the criminal justice system has done so. For instance, when queer people, and more predominantly people of color, engage in self-defense, they disproportionately end up in jail.

That was the case in Out at Night, a documentary discussing the lives of four lesbian women who each were sentenced to over eight years of prison for stabbing a man that charged at them after yelling homophobic epithets. Despite meeting all the elements of self-defense and having video and witness evidence, the women's self-defense claims were rejected, and all four women were charged with gang assault. 

This was also the case for Luke O Donovan, who ended up serving 2 years for pulling a knife on a group of men that attacked him and yelled derogatory remarks at him. Surely, these are not the only instances in which self-defense claims have resulted in the imprisonment of innocent people. 

Furthermore, it is often the case that women will end up in jail for fighting back against men who abuse them. This hole in the legal system can be particularly damaging to rural women who often face heightened instances of domestic violence. Exemplified by Brenda Golden, an attorney, and Muscogee Nation citizen, who had the police called on her for hitting her ex-husband with an ashtray after he would not stop abusing her. 

The horror of these instances is that, after being failed by the police, who cannot or will not help them, people take matters into their own hands and end up in jail anyway. This punishment happens at the hands of those who would not help victims in the first place. What's worse is that the root of this problem is not particularly clear or simple. Cynthia Lee's, Minnesota law review article suggests that self-defense's "reasonable person" standard is to blame for the horrors. While Phyllis Chesler suggests that the problem arises out of our gendered expectations, " Women are held to higher and different standards than men, who are expected to be violent; people do not expect and will not tolerate women to be violent, even in self-defense." 

The silver lining that comes from this issue is that communities find ways to help their members, even when the state and police fail to step in. This brings me back to Check-It, who seemingly came to the realization that self-defense measures can have varying results, instead, they turned their efforts to providing resources that help people change their lives. 

While rural members who take up arms and stay at home might not experience such devastating outcomes, similar resource centers are created in rural communities. This often occurs through churches, as exemplified in The Overnighters, (another documentary), where homeless rural people, including homeless LGBT+ people, seek refuge in their local churches.

It seems that community work is crucial to solving policing issues; something that marginalized communities have always known and provided for each other. How many problems could be fixed or reduced if we offered more funding for communities to provide better resources for themselves? And should we leave communities to resolve these issues alone? Or is a complete revamping of our criminal justice system?