On June 24, there was a grand announcement on Capitol Hill: Republican and Democratic negotiators had reached an agreement on a police reform bill. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) issued a statement declaring, "After months of working in good faith, we have reached an agreement on a framework addressing the major issues for bipartisan police reform.” But they didn’t provide many details, and it was clear that there was no resolution of a major sticking point: reforming qualified immunity—which basically protects police officers and other state and local officials from personal liability—to make it easier to sue police officers for brutality.

Since then, there hasn’t been a lot of news—or obvious progress—on this front. The headlines have been dominated by congressional deliberations on the big-ticket infrastructure bills. On Sunday—as the congressional summer break was nearing—Scott told Fox News host Martha MacCallum, “There is hope for the bill.” He insisted that daily conversations among legislators and advocates were underway. Yet two weeks earlier, Scott had seemingly set the end of this month as a deadline for passing the legislation. And this weekend, he was holding firm on the qualified immunity question. Chokeholds, the militarization of the police, no-knock warrants—all were open to reform, he pointed out, but not allowing lawsuits against individual officers. Bloomberg reported, “a person familiar with the talks said a deal appears increasingly unlikely, although talks are continuing.”

This isn’t surprising. My hunch is that leading Republicans gazing toward the 2022 midterm elections would rather demagogically tar Democrats as the defund-the-police crew than hammer out a bipartisan police reform bill. When House Democrats in March passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, Republicans proclaimed it would undermine policing across the country. And although the GOP has refused to investigate the brutal assault on law enforcement officers during the January 6 attack on the Capitol—so much for “blue lives matter”— it hopes to exploit the current spike in the murder rate, depict Democrats as the anti-cops party, and scare the hell out of voters.

Even if a compromise package is reached, the legislation will likely not do all that is necessary to address police violence. A recent and provocative article in the Washington Monthly makes the convincing case that effective police reform needs to do more than place restraints on law enforcement officers. It needs to help them. Under the headline “The Vexing Obstacle to Police Reform: A Cop’s Miserable Life,” Gordon Witkin, a former crime beat reporter and past acting executive editor of the Center for Public Integrity, writes, “My two years of night police beat and ten years of beat reporting on law enforcement—including ‘ride-alongs’ with cops in multiple cities, Washington and New York among them—has led me to unsettling conclusions, and questions that will require some societal soul-searching.”

Witkin rejects the cliche about “a few bad apples” and notes there are a lot of bad cops. Yet he asserts that many of them didn’t start out bad: “Instead, they slowly turn bad because of the twisted, unhealthy conclusions they draw from their time on the force. It’s what noted police psychologist John Nicoletti calls ‘Too much, too long, too many, too ugly.’” Witkin assigns a good chunk of the blame to the 911 emergency-call system: “The 911 system seemed like a good idea when it was created in the late 1960s for emergency calls. But Americans got addicted to instantly available cops. By 1996 there were 268,000 911 calls daily and now there are 600,000, many of which are not related to crimes in progress or an imminent emergency but to non-threatening disorderly conduct problems or taking reports on car accidents or burglaries that occurred hours or days before.” Officers, he explains, are overloaded with 911 calls and under pressure to respond and stabilize—not necessarily resolve—the situation quickly.

The cop experience, Witkin points out, is overwhelmed by the 911 deluge: “One consequence is that cops now have little interaction with the neighborhood’s solid citizens—the school kids, the local businessmen, the ladies sitting on the stoops. No time for that. Since 911 calls drive everything, the overwhelming majority of folks cops deal with on a day-to-day basis are going to be agitated. They’re angry. Frustrated. Traumatized. Injured. Drunk. High. Some are dying. And some are violent.” Coping with this is not easy for officers, Witkin says: “It’s a toxic stew. I was alarmed when I participated in ‘ride-alongs’ of a creeping agitation and frustration that gradually overtook me over the course of an eight-hour shift.” And he didn’t have to do it all over again the next day. The emotional toll it takes on officers is heavy: “Psychologically, the ‘inputs’ are all bad. Crime is terrible. We can’t make a difference. We’re 911 robots and nothing else. This neighborhood is filled with dirtbags. Everyone hates us. No one has my back except for my partner. What it all adds up to is this: The biggest problem with American policing is cynicism. A whopping dose of bad attitude that is likely to get worse during an officer’s career.”

Some officers obviously handle this better than others. But Witkin contends that many require extensive assistance in doing so:

It’s clear to me from years of covering them that cops need way more psychological intervention—and they need it on a rigorously enforced basis. In some departments, a certain number of citizen complaints triggers intervention. In many departments, any officer involved in a shooting must meet with a police psychologist. But that’s not enough. Requiring patrol officers to meet with a trained police psychologist every quarter would seem like the minimum to break the spiral of cynicism. Regular get-togethers in peer support groups run by cops trained in such therapy might also short-circuit bad attitudes. Wellness check programs for cops, where they literally check in on each other’s mental health, how they’re coping, etc., are growing as well.

And the internal culture must change so police officers don’t fear that counseling will make them look weak or unsuitable for the job. That’s a heavy lift.

A few cities have instituted a 311 line for non-emergency calls to ease the 911 burden. Several police departments have started working more closely with social service and health care agencies to deal with the mentally ill and homeless. Some are training cops in deescalation techniques. But much of this doesn’t reach the heart of the problem that Witkin identifies. Can you have a humane police force if it is staffed by stressed-out, under-pressure officers who are constantly interacting with the worst among us in dangerous circumstances? Yes, there’s always talk of better training for cops. But Witkin contends the need runs much deeper than that. This argument is not about being sympathetic toward police officers who abuse their authority and brutalize—or kill—people. Those criminal cops ought to be prosecuted and punished. The aim is to help other officers avoid the psychological damage that can lead to a cynical or violent state of mind. It’s a strategy for keeping cops from going bad. This is a tough mission: not just reforming police practices but reforming the culture and the basics of policing itself. And that certainly seems a task far more arduous than working up a police reform bill before Congress goes on vacation.

How Can a Senseless Death Make Sense?

I live in a small town on the border of Washington, DC. It’s a tight-knit community. And many of us were shocked when one of our neighbors, Jerry Black, who worked for the Peace Corps, was killed in late June during a date night with his wife. They were downtown on a block full of upscale restaurants when Jerry was struck by a stray bullet during a gun fight that broke out. His horrific death received more attention than many of the gun killings that regularly happen in the marginalized neighborhoods of DC. (There have been more than 100 homicides in the nation’s capital so far this year.) But his widow, Cathy Feingold, is trying to use her family’s loss to help those whose tragedies don’t draw the headlines Jerry’s death did. She has established a fund in Jerry’s name at the TraRon Center, which works to assist DC kids affected by gun violence.

The Washington Post article on the circumstances of his murder and her subsequent efforts is heartbreaking. The night of Jerry’s death, two Black women (Jerry and Cathy are white) heard the gunshots and immediately lept off their patio to help:

One of the women took off her shirt, and wearing just a bra, tried to stop Black’s bleeding. The other woman pulled Feingold close and held her.

“You don’t want to see this,” the woman told her.

The woman asked Feingold her name and encouraged her to let her husband know that she loved him. “We love you,” she told him again and again, speaking for herself and their two sons. The women stayed with the couple until rescue workers arrived. Then, they went back to their patio.

“It was like they had done this before, like it was just another night on their street,” Feingold tells me when we talk on a recent evening. “They just knew what to do, which actually made me sad. They had been through it.”

Feingold never learned their names.

“I’m so mindful this happens every day,” Feingold told the Post. Her attempt to transform her personal nightmare into community good—and to highlight the connection between the out-of-the-ordinary event that claimed Jerry’s life and the violence that many less-privileged people face daily—is inspiring. You can donate here.

What to Read, Watch, and Listen To

Liz Phair, Soberish. In June, Liz Phair, the indie-rock hero of the 1990s, released her first album in 11 years. It’s been almost three decades since her fierce breakthrough record, Exile in Guyville, and the latest, Soberish, melds the edgy guitar-lick-driven alt-pop sound of her earlier work with the challenges of middle-agedom. In a confessional tone, she sings about divorce, addiction, self-destructive conduct, and the never-ending insecurities of love. In near-sacrilegious fashion on “Hey Lou,” Phair imagines a conversation between Lou Reed and his wife, Laurie Anderson. (Bonus points for rhyming “asshole” with “Warhol.”) Check out the official video for the song featuring puppets of Reed and Anderson. On “Dosage,” she reflects on the thin line between the costs and benefits of psychopharmaceuticals: “Dosage is everything. It hurts you or it helps you.” On “Bad Kitty,” she defiantly states, “Misbehaving is the one thing / that always makes me grateful the Goddess gave me eight more lives.” The album is a brew of regret and lessons learned. As for the title, I assumed it was self-directed barb, but in a recent interview, Phair explained its wider meaning: “There’s so many ways that we are not sober. If you think about our obsession with money, we’re not sober when it comes to money. We’re not sober when it comes to materialism or consumption. We’re not sober when it comes to entertainment, and how much we demand to take in without ever caring about how our lives are being impacted by that. We’re drunk on a lot of things that don’t necessarily change our physiological state.” Phair was supposed to hit the road this summer on a tour with Alanis Morissette and Garbage. Yet days ago she pulled out, citing “unforeseen circumstances.” I hope all is well with her. Here are the puppets:

Got any recommendations of what I should be reading, watching, or listening to? Send them to thisland@motherjones.com.

Read Previous Issues of This Land

July 24, 2021: Has Paul McCartney finally won me over?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 22, 2021: My bizarre encounter with Rep. Jim Jordan—and why Speaker Pelosi was right to bounce him from the 1/6 committee; celebrating and grieving with musician Steve Earle; and more.

July 20, 2021: The time a Republican president did the right thing to stop an epidemic; Trump’s big narcissism fail; Nelson Algren and Norman Podhoretz; a new psychedelic Beatles-esque tune; and more.

July 17, 2021: Why the Guardian’s Trump-Russia bombshell—dud or not—doesn’t fully matter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; why Bosch works in spite of Bosch; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 15, 2021: Does President Joe Biden really stand with the Cuban people?; the time I really pissed off the Cuban regime; J. Edgar Hoover vs. MLK; one of the best movie reviews of all time; and more.

July 13, 2021: A coming referendum on Donald Trump; a suggestion for Hunter Biden; a new book on how the super-rich screw us all; and more.

July 10, 2021: Why the Republicans are right to be terrified of the new House committee investigating the 1/6 attack; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Joni Mitchell’s Blue 50; and more.

July 7, 2021: How The Summer of Soul counters the GOP’s season of hate; a debate on the recent UFO report; Garry Trudeau, American Dostoyevsky; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 3, 2021: Donald Rumsfeld, Christopher Hitchens, the Iraq War, and me; the perils of taking a home DNA test; Dumbass Comment of the Week; a Springsteen story; and more.

July 1, 2021: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and perjury; Adam Serwer’s new book; Cézanne’s crime scene; and more.

June 29, 2021: How the new UFO report is bad news for UFO believers; my own UFO tale; HBO Max’s Hacks; an anti-racist anthem; and more.

June 26, 2021: Is Josh Hawley dumb or evil? (The answer is not both); Dumbassery that encourages mass “executions” in the United States; renowned guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson’s new tour and new book (and his claim regarding the best strings arrangement ever on a popular song); MoxieCam™ (before and after photos!); and more.

June 24, 2021: How an alleged 1/6 conspirator who called for executing Trump’s foes hooked up with a prominent Republican Party official; new Los Lobos; and more.

June 22, 2021: Why the GOP is pushing “political apartheid”; Ted Cruz wins Dumbass Comment of the Week; recommendations for an Apple TV+ series and a book on the curious origins of the universe; the first Clash tour of the United States (and being trapped in a van driven by a punk on acid); MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.