thomas leverett weblog: Police Community Relations

Wednesday, June 03, 2020

Police Community Relations

Just by chance, right before the coronavirus hit, I moved to a remote canyon in southeastern New Mexico. My nearest town now is twenty miles away, and has fewer than a thousand people. Mountain people tend to be very conservative, anti-big city, anti-big government, pro-gun.

The police here are incredibly friendly. I have a son who's black, and they found out who we were right away, and were friendly from the first minute. I don't know if those two are related or how related. There are a lot of people in the area who knew who we were and where we lived, right away, too, but everyone's been nice to us so far. Everyone.

So I'll be the first to recognize this is a complex issue: people of color feel degraded, humiliated, angry, afraid, triggered; police feel unfairly blamed for one man's murder; people who focus on justice feel like a lifetime of non-violent opposition has done very little good, an now it's time to step up the pressure. I have opinions on all of that, but now I want to address only one side: that good police-community relations is really in everyone's best interest.

The police know this by and large, and they know it by experience. When they get along with their community, their life is easier, and everyone's on the same side when it comes to bringing someone to justice. When they are antagonistic with their community, they fall behind, and fight a losing battle. I'd even say the vast majority of police know this, and know it so well you don't even have to prompt them or get them to admit it. It's just part of their job. It's integrated into their training. It's been proven true.

So when someone comes along and stokes the flames of hatred, that person is clearly working against what they're trying to do. And if they're smart (the police, that is), they won't fall into that trap, the trap of hatred or blame. It just doesn't help them.

Now on our side it's a little trickier. We all need the police, but lots of us won't admit it. Yes we could replace them with a working system of dispute resolution, rendering them unnecessary, but we haven't done it yet, and far too many of us will call them at the drop of a hat, just because we're all living in fear and because it's possible. We tend to overuse them and trust them too much, but the fact is, we'd need them anyway, and there's no point pretending otherwise. So in this particular situation the best thing we need to do is start with them, because they aren't going anywhere and will be either defending us or not, depending on the situation, the next time we need them.

I'm not so concerned about lawbreakers - really they are the police's problem, and the police have plenty of weapons to figure out who broke what store window and what can be done about that. I'm more concerned about people rushing to the defense of looters - who after all are stealing - and saying they have reason to be violently angry. I'd say, they have reason to be very angry, yes. But no one has reason to be violently anything, it's that simple.

Murderers are murderers, and should pay the price. Looters are stealers, same. We in the large "common people" class need to recognize that we appreciate having someone take care of this for us. Trying to do it ourselves would distract from other important things, like blogging, or wearing masks.