The police are not the heroes we need

According to Regina Police Service chief Evan Bray, crime in the city is down. But that didn't stop him from scaremongering and doing his best attempt to justify continued increases to the city's police budget: "People were transitioning back to the workplace and businesses were opening up and, as a result, people’s behaviour started to then demonstrate that crime was starting to go back to normal."

Bray goes on to say: "Drugs continue to be a huge problem in our community. Drugs drive crime, drugs drive assaults, drugs drive overdoses. It’s a big, big problem in our city." Though he is right that drugs continue to be a problem, he is wrong in that they are the source of those problems.

Drugs don't drive crime, assaults, or even overdoses. There are plenty of people who use drugs, like myself, or alcohol for that matter, who don't get addicted, sick, or die from them, and who don't commit crimes because of them. So what drives crime, assaults, and overdoses?

To answer that, I will first ask why do most people drink? Usually it is to "wind down" at the end of the day or to act as a social lubricant. It is to provide an escape from our otherwise stressful and lonely existence. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to understand why someone would turn to something like crack, meth, or heroin to escape a hopeless existence.

The people who most often turn to those harder drugs on a regular basis are the most vulnerable in our communities. Whether it is those experiencing mental health issues, poverty, employment precarity, or all of the above, these issues tend to isolate people in a society that expects us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. This is both nonsensical and a sign of an immensely immoral and, dare I say, sociopathic society.

Drug addiction, mental illness, and poverty have all played parts in my life and the lives of those around me. I grew up in poverty. I have family members who are drug addicts and who have mental health issues. My partner works with drug-addicted youth. If "illicit" drugs were not a thing, I highly doubt that it would have made the lives of any of these people better. They would just turn to alcohol, food, porn, etc. in the face of social isolation due to their class status or mental health. We cannot criminalize people into a life of meaning and belonging, nor can you solve what is ultimately a demand issue by cutting out the supply. Drugs and the crimes associated with them, are a symptom of our cruel and isolating neoliberal way of life, not a cause.

The ability of the police to actually prevent crime is quite minimal. When they aren't serving their primary purpose of protecting private property, the police serve to react to the gravest consequences of the systemic issues in our communities. The police can hide away these problems by putting people in jail or sending them away on a bus, but they will not solve the growing cracks in our profit-obsessed society.

We have just gone through two years of a global pandemic and are now facing a global military conflict, on top of the already growing issues of economic inequality and climate change. Continuing to pour money into police budgets while ignoring the glaring issues in our society is a recipe for disaster. We won't need a nuclear war to destroy our country because continuing to sweep our home-grown issues under the rug will do enough to speed up this ticking time bomb waiting to explode.