Black vs. Blue = Us vs. Them?

These are all good friends of mine. They are earnest clergymen, with a heart to do what’s right. These are South Dallas pastors who came together to call a press conference. The focus of the presser was for better, more extensive training for police officers, decry the violent crime – the skyrocketing murder rate – across our city, particularly in South Dallas and voice their support for the presence of state police here this time to aid the Dallas Police Department with ‘investigations’.

And they wanted to go on record announcing that they were against calls to ‘defund the police’.

Some might consider them out of step. Some may determine them to be naïve. They aren’t the usual suspect of ‘activists’ known in Dallas. Others may believe they are flat-out wrong. Still some may wonder whether or not they belong in this conversation at all.

Let me say, I believe they do. I think its important that all clergy step into the public square and make a statement, particularly in troubled times. So I have no trouble with them speaking out, particularly on defunding the police. I agree with them in principle, but my issue is that they didn’t go far enough in making concrete proposals regarding alternatives to not funding our – or any – police department.

Police work in our communities, tends to fall into two categories: they either ‘over police’ us, or ‘under police’ us. It’s a community complaint that characterizes law enforcement response to both violent and nonviolent crimes. And this inequity is the reason for the calls to ‘defund the police’.

But in the face of the realities which characterize the human condition, rhetoric which says that the police are not needed ‘not needed’, or that we be left to ‘police ourselves’, are equally naive.

Black people are really intelligent and resilient. We are remarkably capable and have faced adversity which would have crushed a lesser people. But we, like most other people in this country are not a monolith, not just in our political choices, but in terms of our values or our virtues. I have argued for tolerance and compassion whose virtues and values whose variant expression of those character differences express themselves in criminal activity. But I don’t always trust the capacity of those share my values to be strong enough, wise enough, or for that matter virtuous enough to detect or deter all of those who don’t.

No, we need the police…But not just police, we need better trained, mature, police. Men and women who have training and experience in de-escalation techniques and practices; men and women who see the community in which I work, worship, and play as citizens they are called to serve and not a militarized zone that they are called to ‘occupy’. We need police in our community who want to be there, not just because it’s their ‘job’, or because it’s they were ‘assigned’, and we don’t need anyone there because they’re afraid to be there. We need officers who recognize the difference between how civilians react and how ‘professionals’ respond.

In other words, we need to know when officers are hired in Dallas, we need to know – as much as is humanly possible – another Derek Chauvin (George Floyd), Timothy Loehmann (Tamir Rice), or Darren Wilson (Michael Brown) hasn’t been hired. And if you say that these are isolated incidents, I will say tell you that In 2019, 259 Black people (who represent just 13 percent of the nation’s population) were killed by police in the United States. This compares to 182 Hispanics, 13 Native Americans, and 406 White people.

Because we need police who are responsible and accountable, who respect Black lives, as much as they do all other lives, I want to go a little farther than my friends and make some specific recommendations regarding what would go a long way towards making such officers more qualified.

One thing that would help, longer training for our police. In Dallas, basic training at our police academy is 36 weeks. In Germany, for instance, police training lasts for at least 130 weeks. One rationale? Intense training on alternatives to deadly force.

The difference between other industrial nations, rates and U.S. police involved in officer involved killings, is pronounced. Even countries with the highest crime rates in the world see significantly lower numbers of fatal deaths by police. British officers shot their guns just 51 times between 2003 and 2013. Canada averaged 12 fatal police shootings each year between 1999 and 2009. In Japan, no one has been shot by the police since 2012. In 2019 U.S. averaged more than 33 deaths per 10 million citizens. In Germany, 1.3, if that has something to do with training, we need to investigate this. There needs to be much more to the qualifications for carrying a badge and a gun than other than being a veteran, or having graduated from high school.

Secondly, we’ve got to end qualified immunity which shields police from accountability, especially in questionable police conduct – and that doesn’t just mean police involved shootings.

We need to strengthen the Dallas’ Police Review Board. It was reconstituted in 2019, with 15 members appointed by the Mayor and City Council and three paid staff members. But the Police Review Board still needs more teeth. It needs subpoena power, without which the public has little to no confidence in that the Board.

Finally, there needs to be ongoing meaningful, honest conversations between police and the community. This definatly takes place within the context of ‘community policing’ (which needs to be defined, because short of policy requiring that police at least within the city – let alone the ‘community’ they serve – it’s nearly impossible to garraunty authentic community policing). And it needs to be more than police ‘reporting’ to the community. There needs to be conversations about the type of police and policing taking place within communities – particularly communities of color. This conversations may get tense. There will issues that must be dealt with in which police and the community may be uncomfortable. But if there is really going to be a relationship between police and communities where communities have a say in how they are policed, these conversations must take place. And they cannot simply take place on the heels of tensions when unpopular police action takes place or when communities feel unsafe.

Finally let me say this. Everyone understands that police do a hard job. They do a hard job in spite of personal, emotional and professional challenges: sick kids, marital troubles, financial issues, job promotions that don’t come through. We ask them to work no matter those conditions. The thing is, they are policing citizens facing those same issues. And in those interactions with those citizens, police are – almost all the time – the ones who have a gun…and a badge! This means they have a responsibility to develop professional, responsible, responses to the citizens over whom they are called to exercise a real measure of authority.

A tough job? Yes, that’s why everyone can’t do it. And a reason why we need to keep working with those who do.