In preparing to write this, in addition to doing my own research I asked for the input of several police officers and have also received some input from several African American friends. One of the things that becomes more and more obvious to me is that the whole discussion of racism and solutions is extremely complicated and very messy. This first post on policing racism will just scratch the surface.
As I didn’t ask for permission to use the names of the policemen who gave me input, when referring to specific comments, I will use some names of policemen from some old TV shows–Adam 12 and CHiPs .
While some people will say that it is disrespectful to call a police officer a cop, that was the most common name the officers with whom I communicated used to refer to themselves so I will often use that term throughout my blog.
When referring to Blacks, the politically correct way to refer to them has changed multiple times in my lifetime and each individual has a preference on what they prefer to be called. I heard that a gal recently said–I’m not black–maybe chocolate—and I’m not from Africa so…
I will use the most commonly accepted terms interchangeably throughout the blog for variety’s sake.
While I think this is a funny image of a false dichotomy, give me Coke or Pepsi any day over Dr. Pepper:)
I have noticed that when someone defends cops, they are often viewed as not compassionate towards people of color. But I have also seen when someone points out what appears to be the abuse of a cop on a black citizen, that this person is viewed as anti-cop.
Yes, it is true that there are those who will defend the actions of law enforcement in almost every situation. But as Officer Reed said, there are also those who shout racism on every encounter between a white cop and black suspect without waiting to hear the facts.
Both of those positions are obviously biased and those who hold them will always find “data” to support their premise and ignore the rest. Neither of those positions are healthy and neither will help us find answers.
Blacks have historically been very oppressed by law enforcement. At the same time I want to acknowledge and express my gratitude to police officers for the professional way in which they handle millions of interactions they have with the public each year. At the same time, we should never put our heads in the sand and ignore abuses when they take place and police officers who betray the public trust, need to be held accountable.
Making a general statement (like cops are racists) may be popular and makes for great headlines. However, as I mentioned in my last post, such statements are never helpful.
We live in a very big country with 50 states, over 3000 counties, and over 19,000 cities. In my opinion, to state that police officers are racist is not only not helpful, but it is inflammatory which may be the goal of some who will make such a statement. To a person, each cop with whom I interacted agreed that there are racist cops although Officer Reed said he had not ever had to work with one.
It was very evident both in the statements of the cops with whom I have communicated as well as what we see in the news, that police departments are very different from one county to another and extremely different in various parts of the country. Officer Poncherello related to me that he worked in a canine unit for a number of years in Oregon. He was surprised to hear some of the statements made by trainers in Washington state with whom he worked. They would say things like “Let your dog tear them up”.
To end this post, I have decided to take a step back and talk a little about what causes racism today. A statement by officer Malloy initially surprised me. He said, “it is natural to be racist”. “It is something you have to fight against constantly”. When you live with “your people” and know nothing about another group with whom you interact at some point, it is normal to have distrust of that other group.
Whether or not you agree with his statement, I think we can all acknowledge that at times we don’t feel comfortable in any situation when it is something different. How we were raised will have a big impact on how we respond to someone different from us.
When I see a person shouting racist remarks at someone of a different color, I can guarantee, that the person yelling has no real relationship with someone of that color. Depending on our upbringing, we may easily reject what we don’t know. We must take time to make the unfamiliar, familiar and to make the abnormal, normal. I think the challenge is to get outside of our comfort zone and interact with people who don’t look like us on more than a superficial level.
As we continue this discussion about police & racism, among other things, we will look at some ways that officer Poncherello said a police department with whom he worked successfully addressed the issue of distrust.
Other topics we will address are systemic racism, brutality, statistics, accountability, etc. Feel free to suggest more topics for me to address.