I recently visited Iceland and I was struck by a few things. First, the country is absolutely beautiful and I felt like I was exploring the moon most of my stay, but I digress.
What I immediately noticed on my first day was the absence of police officers. During my entire one-week stay on the frigid and windy island to our north, I only saw one police car.
Iceland is one of the safest nations around. Granted, there are only roughly 370,000 people on the island; however, I am going to allow my political imagination to think of a better way for us in the United States to coexist. The police officers in Iceland do not carry guns because by and large, the population does not have access to guns. Iceland makes it incredibly difficult for someone to obtain a firearm, so as you can imagine, the obstacles in obtaining a gun significantly decrease those able to purchase or possess a fire arm. And since the population is not armed to the teeth, the police force does not feel the need to be armed and ready for battle, either.
Like many people, as I process Memphis, I am simultaneously reprocessing deadly police interactions with innocent Black people in Staten Island, Ferguson; Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, California—the list goes on and on and on, and my heart is exhausted thinking of all of the families and communities who continue to be retraumatized with each deadly killing.
I think about the building of “Cop City” just outside of Atlanta and the death of a peaceful protestor who was trying to protect the land and prevent the beautiful landscape from turning into a deadly training ground, he too was a victim of police gun violence…and subsequent lies about how he was armed and provoked the attack—a story and a lie we as a community have heard far too often.
I know so many police departments look at certain neighborhoods and see those civilians as the enemy. We do know proper policing is possible because we have seen police officers peacefully detain white offenders as they kick, scream, curse, punch and spit on officers. We have seen police officers bring in white offenders with nary a scratch on them after they have chased their white suspects for blocks and blocks.
I wish I had a solution to this quandary. The anti-Black racism that persists is exhausting. Until we figure out how to decrease America’s obsession with simultaneous gun culture and hyper funding of police departments, I do not see a clear solution in sight. We need leaders who are aggressive about making it more difficult for people to obtain guns and equally as aggressive in finding solutions beyond over-funding police departments.
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC and host of the “Blackest Questions” podcast at TheGrio.