Hello, everyone

I was planning to write you a nice newsletter about my favorite and most frustrating trope—amnesia—this month, but there was just too much going on, and it didn’t happen.

Instead, I’ve spruced up a post from a blog post from several years ago, about one of my earlier experiences with community safety. It’s been on my mind lately, as Minnesota gets praised for ICE resistance.

One of the things I haven’t seen discussed much in that praise is that a lot of the networks and techniques that Minnesotans have been using to stay safer lately originated from the protests about police brutality several years ago.

The techniques carried over because the force being resisted operates similarly, at least with regards to how they treat the demographics they target. If you are not in those demographics, and don’t spend much time around them, the similarities may not be as obvious to you. But if you are, the whole operation starts to look like a bigger, better funded, even more brazen version of the same old playbook.

So, here is a little story today about why a lot of problems need social workers or similar, not cops.

Because I do get tired of seeing people mocking social workers’ de-escalation training by making up scenarios they think only police with weapons could ever possibly resolve, but that I’ve personally handled myself, as some kind of “gotcha” to prove we need armed and militant enforcers of “the law” on every corner.

a long long time ago…like 2010, I worked 2nd shift (2pm-10pm) in a homeless shelter. I worked on a floor specifically for men with both addiction and mental health problems. For most of the shift, I was the only staff working.

Most of the time, the job was chill to the point of being boring. My job was to do the little things that needed doing, and stay ready to respond if shit went down. Most of the time, nothing much happened.
So, one day I’m sitting at my little desk, trying to get up the motivation to organize the food pantry a little bit, and I head SCREAMING.

By the time I’m on my feet, one of the residents was in view. The guy was easily 6ft 4, with a shaved head, and a SOLID build. He was screaming down the hall, and in his raised fist he had, I shit you not, a blood-covered meat cleaver. He was spattered in blood all over. It was a vision right out of a slasher movie.

I knew the man—I knew all the residents. He mostly kept to himself. Sometimes he’d talk to me about his hallucinations and paranoid delusions (no question these ones were delusions, this time. Man eating pythons just can not fit in a half inch radiator pipe). He had a history of getting pretty worked up.

Switch the camera around 180 degrees. At the time I was 120 lbs and 5ft 4 on a good day, and all by my self. Totally unarmed.

Ask yourself—what would an armed cop do in that situation—alone, with a huge man running at them with a huge bloody knife?

I will not pretend for one second that my fight-or-flight instincts didn’t kick in. The ancient parts of my brain that exist to protect me from danger by fleeing or killing something saw this and screamed a great big NOPE.

But by this point I had like 8 years of other training, too; de-escalation training, training on keeping a cool head in a scary situation.

Training that reminded me that I was responsible for the safety of the other 17 men who called this floor their home.
Training that told me that this man was my responsibility, not my enemy.

In short, the opposite of what many police departments train their officers in. They are trained to view people as hostile, to treat their beat like a war zone. They’re trained to act immediately and grab control of the situation however they can. I have been told this by police officers themselves.

I won’t say none of them have de-escalation training, but I will say it’s a bit of a useless add-on when they’re taught to go with their gut feeling of whether or not a situation is dangerous.

Because my gut sure as hell perceived a danger.

Anyways, I didn’t run, and I didn’t attack. I rooted my feet and I asked him what was going on.

That was when I saw that he wasn’t just screaming, he was weeping. He was terrified.

He had bought a new cooking knife—he liked cooking. He’d been looking at it, but one of the side effects of his meds made him clumsy, and he’d fumbled it. He’d sliced open the back of his knee, where there’s a huge vein or artery or something- and was bleeding a LOT.

He was understandably alarmed at the river-like quantity of blood gushing out of him, and had run to the nearest help- me.

In his rush and his fear, he’d just forgotten to put down the damn knife.

The other residents had, thankfully, all stayed in their rooms, because the month before I’d got on several people’s cases for coming out to defend me—with the very best intentions—during a previous incident. Their motives were good, but de-escalating a situation when other people are ready to throw hands is WAY harder. I’d told them to keep their butts in their rooms unless I actually called for help, and God bless them, every single one of them had done it.

This is the point when I called for help. One of the residents got the first aid kit. One called an ambulance. One gave me the literal shirt off his back because our cheap first aid kit didn’t have a tourniquet so we ripped the shirt up to make one.

We helped calm the poor injured guy down, and he got a few stitches, and everybody was proud of how we’d come together to help each other out.

Nobody was hurt beyond that one initial injury. Nobody was traumatized. If anything, the guy who’d been hurt was happier, more engaged with the rest of us, having seen that everyone here would take care of him when he was in need. He hadn’t had much care given to him in his life.

Now, does social work ALSO need reform? Does social work ALSO contain racism and ableism and every other social evil? You bet! Just look at…like anything to do with CPS to look at how these systems break down.

My point here is not that I did a good job and am special. Or that social workers are special. Just the opposite—I am a completely ordinary person who was given tools that let me help people. If the past several months have shown us all anything it is that people given the tools to keep their communities safe will do just exactly that, in droves.

By contrast, every time policy has forced me to interact with police in a professional capacity they made things worse (including the rare occasions when an intoxicated client was authentically threatening me). Every. Single. Time. They escalated, attempted to intimidate, and in one memorable occasion sexually harassed my suicidal client who was trying to get to the hospital, right in front of me, while demanding her phone number and home address.

In my private life they have teargassed me, put my neighborhood under curfew, and harassed my whole block with helicopters looping overhead from 11pm to 5am night after night, week after week.

They didn’t find my car when it was stolen though. Despite the constant helicopter surveillance. The neighbor pushing her baby in a stroller did that.

And I’ve yet to hear of police actually intervening in blatantly unlawful ICE abductions except once, when the target was the wife of the chief of police’s friend.

I won’t go into the bias in the system, the blatant issues with seizure and forfeiture rules, or the ways police unions have repeatedly defended their claim, in court, that they have no obligation to protect people. Others have explained all of that far better than I could, and you can find any of that if you look.

I will just share my experience with handling violent or nonviolent but scary individuals with nothing but a handful of skills, a desire to help, and a sense of responsibility to my community.

But I know, firsthand, that we can do better than this. Because a lot of us already are.

Before I go, I will remind you all that I have compiled a bunch of centrist and even conservative news sources describing ICE activity that you can use to talk about what’s going on in this country here. And, as my action item of the month, I will ask for your help in spreading this petition around, telling politicians that you do not appreciate the government giving oil companies, specifically, immunity from prosecution for the impact they have on communities and the environment. Now is not the time for reduced accountability.

Thank you, as always, for this spot in your inbox!

See you next month,

Lee Brontide