During its meeting on Sunday, September 13, the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (OAFP) Board of Directors will discuss a resolution titled “End Police Brutality” submitted by the Central Ohio Academy of Family Physicians.
WHEREAS, the current president of the AAFP and OAFP member Gary LeRoy, MD, released a statement on May 31, 2020, entitled “The AAFP condemns all forms of racism,” and stating that “as a healthcare organization, the AAFP considers racism a public health crisis;” and
WHEREAS, the events over the past month in the United States have laid bare the racism in the police forces; and
WHEREAS, police are more likely to use or threaten to use physical force with Black people than white people; and
WHEREAS the average annual rate of police killings in Ohio of all people is 2.662, but the average annual rate of police killing of Black people is 8.12, a rate nearly four times higher; and
WHEREAS, police brutality disproportionately affects Black people, and is a form of structural racism; and
WHEREAS, in 2016 the AAFP Congress of Delegates passed a resolution stating that the AAFP recognizes that “discriminatory policing and the use of excessive force pose health and safety hazards to individuals and communities of targeted populations, particularly people of color and other minority groups,”
BE IT RESOLVED, that the OAFP publicly support legislation that addresses the demilitarization of the police and other policies meant to eliminate police brutality in Ohio
BE IT RESOLVED that the OAFP support efforts to reallocate funds from police budgets to schools, health care, and social services in Ohio.
OAFP members are invited to submit comments below about this resolution. Comments submitted will be considered by the board as part of the discussion.
Standing against the ugly practice of police brutality and militarization would be an important step for the OAFP to take towards confronting one of the many layers of systemic racism that leads to such terrible and disparate health outcomes in our patients of color.
I fully support this resolution.
In a time of such great social inequality and unrest, it is important that we reflect on how we got here. I am happy to see that the OAFP is engaging in this space, though the answers are neither quick nor simple.
While it is certainly not the lone cause of the current divisiveness in our country, the militarization of police departments demonstrates how easily humans can be prompted to turn on each other.
If anyone is unfamiliar with the Stanford Prison Experiment, as famously conducted by Philip Zimbardo, I encourage them to take a few moments and educate themselves on how quickly the roles we are in play a significant influence on how we behave. While it’s outcomes have been re-analyzed recently, as an good science should be, the study’s principles are appropriate here.
Militarizing our local police departments by providing military-grade body armor, assault weapons, and other military gear to the officers places them in the same frame of mind that the men in the Zimbardo study found themselves: taking on authoritarian roles, physically harming the individuals they were meant to protect/guard, and in some cases causing irreparable psychological harm despite stopping the study after only six days.
Prioritizing public finances to supply our police forces, who are sworn “to serve and protect”, with tools of war demonstrates how far away from a just and equitable society we have traveled.
It’s time that we stop the militarization of our police departments against our own citizens. It has gone on for far too long.
I am excited to see the board considering this resolution – police violence is a public health issue in our communities and we as family physicians should be a part of advocating for the health & safety of our patients, particularly those vulnerable to discriminatory policing and the increased militarization of police forces in Ohio. As a member, I strongly support the OAFP adopting this resolution.
I believe that this resolution demonstrates that the principle that those who demand tolerence are the most intolerant. While I personally deplore the actions of unncessaer brutality by anyone, especially authority figures, I do not agree that one can condemn the entire group of individuals of the same. To do so and defund the police or reallocate those funds would be naive, lack wisdom and be contrary to common sense. Those governmental authorities who have done so have generally seen an increase of criminal activity and lawlessness – it that what we want as physicians to occur? I also do not please most citizens view the community police as part of the military, but as local peace officers for benefit of the community. I do believe that our State should assist, however, in developing policies and guidelines to protect all citizens and discipline those who violate those principles. To defund the police for the atrocious behavior of the few is comparable to defunding the reimbursement to physicians for the similar behavior of physicians listed in the Ohio State Medical Board monthly report.
I strongly support this resolution. Racism is a public health crisis and policy brutality of Black people is a part of this. The fact that police are more heavily funded than education and health care combined is a huge disservice to everyone but especially to the Black communities as these communities are already underfunded compared to white communities. If we can support education, health care, and other social services in Black communities, the benefits are likely to be far reaching.
I strongly support the OAFP adopting this resolution. We must demonstrate to our communities which includes patients in all sections of Ohio that we do not tolerate police brutality of any kind.
It is imperative as physicians and specifically as family physicians that we make our voice heard regarding police brutality. We must stand with our community!
I appreciate the OAFP taking up this issue and support this resolution. We see the emotional and physical trauma caused by direct and indirect contact with law enforcement everyday. As family physicians we need to work in any way we can to reduce this trauma.
I strongly support the OAFP addressing this issue and taking this stand. The history of policing within this country and within this community stems from an ugly past rooted in racism and those roots exist visibly to this day. I agree that so many community-serving initiatives would be better supported through the financial means currently awarded towards militarizing police forces. As family physicians, we ought to not just the health of our patients but the health of our community as a whole, as this has been shown to have far reaching and generational health effects. I fully support this motion and look forward to seeing similar initiatives.
I fully support the resolution to end police brutality against African Americans. We need to change the way policing is done in this country. Reallocation of funding for social and mental heath is a start.
I strongly support this resolution. No ones matter political beliefs, we cannot ignore the toll on mental and physical health that plague African American communities caused by the trauma of losing loved ones at the hands of law enforcement. This is a public health issue.
I join the majority of the physicians who are commenting by supporting this resolution. Police brutality has long been an issue in our nation, and the actions of the police have often been the source of increasing agitation and brutality, rather than the solution to our problems.
Whether the issue is the police who harass, injure, or murder innocent people, or merely that they have not adequately learned to de-escalate problems, they are often the source, rather than the solution to our problems.
As a resident of East Cleveland, the poorest community in Ohio and one of the poorest in the nation, I have witnessed counterproductive behavior on the part of our police department. Some of those have been the reason for multi-million dollar legal settlements. The police are often the source, rather the solution to our problems.
During the 12 years I served on the East Cleveland school board, I learned of police who came into classrooms and brutalized students who were responding to trauma in their lives with minor misbehavior. I also learned of schools that exchanged their security guards for art teachers and had fewer behavior problems. Police are often the source, rather than the solution to our problems.
When I was young in the Sixties, a friend of mine was jailed for failure to signal a left turn, and another was jailed for jaywalking. We believed that the actual reason was that they were young men with long hair. They were perceived as “other.” Police are often the source rather than the solution to our problems.
As physicians, we must take responsibility for being the solution to as many of the sources of stress, injury, and death as possible.
I support moving a significant portion of our police budgets to schools, to social services, and to health care, especially to mental health care.
I support this resolution. Police should be retrained to defuse situations-not make them worse. Seeing the videos of African Americans murdered at the hands of the police over minor infractions woke me up to what has been going on for years.
A black doctor was sitting on the porch of a white doctor in my neighborhood and a neighbor called the police. Five policemen showed up and pointed guns at him
I strongly support this resolution and urge my colleagues to do so as well. Police brutality impacts the lives of ourselves, our colleagues, our team members, our patients, and our communities. As family physicians, we are the front line. If the health of our communities is being negatively affected, it is our job use our power and privilege to advocate for change. I have only been practicing in Ohio for a short time and have already had two patients killed by police officers and four more families torn apart due to deaths secondary to police brutality. I should be attending these patients’ weddings and graduations, not their funerals. I’ve long lost track of the number of my patients who have been incarcerated for minor offenses and the number of patients for whom I’ve cared in the ED and inpatient settings as consequences of police brutality and unfair law enforcement for communities of color. These outcomes may not kill our patients, but they severely affect our patients’ ability to care for their families, disrupts their chronic care management, and places barriers for future generations. We know from data regarding mass incarceration and systemic racism within police departments (as in the rest of society), that our Black siblings and patients are disproportionately affected by this. Even without the data, it’s clear to me in my work as a physician. We have a lot of work to do to create an equitable society for all of our community members, but standing against police brutality and refunding important community programming are crucial first steps.
I support this resolution and recognize why reapportioning funds to improve Ohio’s schools and healthcare delivery systems offers a smarter strategy for creating opportunities for harmony and for human flourishing.
People who are concerned about the well being of our populace will welcome all actions that improve the training of police and provide services that allow them to protect the public while protecting the individual rights codified in the US Constitution. Police officers who are trying to do the job correctly will welcome the removal of officers who violate the public trust and will appreciate the freedom to report those violations.
Funding that militarizes the police does not in fact protect either the police or the community and would be better used in community services and violence prevention.
I hope that all Ohio Family Physicians can see that this resolution deserves their support.
The last resolved should be struck. This is simply not acceptable.
I strongly support the adoption of this resolution. The concept of policing has been transformed into more of a military presence than is effective or safe for our citizens. The persistent violence against persons of color has to end, and as family physicians we can see firsthand the effects of community trauma on our patients. We need more community funding in education, civic engagement, and health promotion, rather than militarized police departments.
I strongly support the adoption of this resolution. It is crucial as healthcare providers that we advocate for the health and wellbeing of patients and to work to assure that all have access to needed services to support their mental, physician and social wellbeing. Moving to shift support for access to mental health and social services and away from the current practice of police to solve everything with force will save lives and support better health and happiness.