We Need Andy

We need Andy.

For the better part of the last decade, we have been news junkies. Besides baseball, there’s hardly anything worth watching, even with hundreds of options. So, if the TV has been on in our house, chances are good that has been cable news.

That all changed last year. It just got to be too much. I’m not talking about bad news. With 24/7 coverage these days, from all over the world, we’re acclimated to bad news, all the time bad news. Tsunamis and wildfires, scandals and conspiracies, death and death and more death. No, it’s not all the bad news we had to give up, it’s all the anger and hostility, the demonization and the incivility.

Here’s a little experiment. Turn on your favorite news network and turn down the volume. If the facial expressions of the talking heads who are scowling at you just make you want to punch someone, you need to do what we’ve done, and turn it off. In the place of all that division and derision, we’re watching a lot of “Friends” reruns, and we’ve probably seen every episode of “The Andy Griffith Show.” Maybe twice.

Andy is a hero. He solves all the problems in Mayberry and never carries a gun. He knows all the neighbors, and most of the criminals. He outsmarts most of the bad guys and solves most of the issues before they become problems. He’s got a good heart, and there’s a good bit of creativity in his policing. He never goes in “guns-a-blazin’,” but with measured confidence and the courage of patience.

We do not live in Mayberry, and the world has never been as simple as any black-and-white sitcom, but there’s a lot all of us could learn from knowing the neighborhood… using brain-power instead of blunt-force… policing with compassion, and creativity… leading with confidence and calm… These strategies are not Barney Fife fantasies.

We could learn a lot from Andy.

Apparently they already have in the Eugene/Springfield metro area of Oregon. Thirty years ago they created a program called “Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets,” and CAHOOTS team members now take over 20% of the 911 calls that had previously been routed to the police. When there’s a call for a domestic disturbance, a drunken neighbor, a mentally ill or disoriented stranger on the street, a CAHOOTS medic and a trained crisis worker show up. They don’t carry guns, just de-escalation training, crisis training and a knowledge of local resources.

In 2019 CAHOOTS answered 24,000 calls. In 150 of those (0.6%), they had to call for police backup, because someone became violent or a threat to themselves or to someone else. The program coordinator estimates that in that year, a creative alternative to showing up with a gun saved tax payers more than $15 million.

The last year has shown us how easily routine calls, traffic stops, and the attempted apprehension of unarmed assailants can escalate and become deadly. So, there’s also no way to know how many lives CAHOOTS saved by not showing up with a gun.

I’m guessing Andy would recommend this kind of creativity in policing for any community.