Comment by rayiner
11 years ago
I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especially in the widespread practice of focusing resources on keeping violence in poor minority neighborhoods from spilling into higher income white neighborhoods.[1] And in any case historical practice has wiped out any trust that might exist between those communities and the police.
Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
[1] As well as the practice of ignoring the deaths of gang members. Maybe they got themselves into their predicament, but you're not going to build trust among their friends and family by treating their deaths as inconsequential, especially given the prevalence of gang membership along a wide spectrum of involvement.
> Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
You arrest and prosecute the perpetrators just as quickly and with just as much or more punishment than the "regular" public would get. And you keep doing that to any cop who breaks the law. You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones.
IOW you show the community that you (the local government) means business when it comes to ending the problem.
"You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones."
This is why I say the police are corrupt. Looking the other way is corrupt, even if you didn't take part in the corruption.
Would the officer in McKinney the other day feel compelled to resign if he hadn't been caught "red handed" on video? Would his fellow officers have even reported him? I seriously doubt it, and because many of us probably have that doubt then it's up to the police to make that idea unthinkable among the public.
> how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
Time.
Unfortunately trust is earned, and once it is lost it takes twice as long to win back. Baltimore might have issues between the police and community for tens of years to come, but if they start working closely with the community, and actually making changes based on community feedback you may see it turn around slowly.
It may also help to recruit from within the community, more black officers, and more locals in general. That will help sew the bonds of trust between the police and the community (rather than it feeling like us Vs. them).
In general the police need a much better attitude from the top upon down.
Camden is touting their experiment with it as a success.
I don't know how true that is or if Camden is typical enough that the experience would generalize.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/us/politics/obama-to-limit...
Camden is plenty "typical enough" in terms of poverty-stricken, gang-filled neighborhoods.
What might exist in Camden that doesn't exist elsewhere is that, at least as far as local government goes, Camden doesn't have the governing tensions that exist in other cities, with a rich "governing class" (read: white yuppies) doing all that they can to "protect themselves" from "the others". Like all cities, it gets thoroughly screwed by the State, but at least locally, has far less of an internal "us" and "them" than, say, Philadelphia (which lies just across the river, and has neighborhoods with similar problems to Camden, but less policymaking authority to address them).
Like all cities, it gets thoroughly screwed by the State
I'm no expert on this, but I can think of important counterexamples, so I'm not sure this is true at all.
Counterexample #1 - New York. It seems that this name is pretty much synonymous with the city plus a bit of surrounding area, and the upstate regions are completely forgotten. In particular, the areas that have to host NYC's water supply get particularly hosed: their economies are significantly based on tourism and fishing, but the flow of the Upper Delaware is entirely governed by NYC needs, ignoring the fish. Further, the State has banned fracking, largely in order to guarantee the integrity of the reservoirs, and at the expense of the only opportunity that those living on the Marcellus Shale have to escape their rut.
Counterexample #2 - Austin, TX. Again relating to water, it seems that the city gets priority access to water (a scarce commodity in much of TX). Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan were sacrificed, emptying to something around 30% capacity (I forget the exact numbers) until our recent floods, so that Ladybird Lake (the center of the city) could be kept beautiful and full - and they're even talking about building a water park. So suburban and rural interests were subordinated to aesthetics in the city.
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