It really is difficult to see what you do not see.
It is hard to conceive of something outside of your experience.
My question is designed to get you reading more, but it is based on an observation. My goal is to advance the conversation. I don't have all the answers and my simplistic suggestions do not cover all variables, but there is a perception gap in what rural America believes about police and what urban dwellers believe. And it is based upon experience.
Never-mind that Southern law enforcement, in the days of Jim Crow, was often participating in or turning a blind eye toward violence against black bodies in small, rural towns ... some of that may be over in those small towns as they have become more responsive and their citizens have become enfranchised. There are exceptions.
Why is it difficult for rural Americans to conceive of urban police brutality?
I think there is a simple, if not simplistic explanation that may apply in some cases.
Because it does not exist in their experience.
That is, in the experience of a small community, with a small police force, elected sheriffs or chiefs appointed by elected officials, whose members live in the community, eat where their neighbors eat, go to church with them, are representative of the diversity of the community, and accountable to the people.
This presupposes that there is a low level of disenfranchisement in terms of voting and participation and that the community is healthy.
In such a community, if there is a loose canon in a police department, people know and they speak up.
There are avenues for correcting the matter.
There is accountability and there is cooperation. The police know the people and the people know the police, by name - usually first names.
In big cities, police only display their last names. They may live outside the community. Accountability is far removed from the common people. There are multiple layers. There is very little proactive work possible. There are no relationships.
But this is reversed in small communities with small police entities which the communities feel they really own and that are responsible to them.
That sounds a lot like community policing and that is why we advocate it.
The answer to many of our current problems is small, community policing structures that are demilitarized and hyper-relational.
I have seen it work in one of the most troubled neighborhoods in Fresno - until the funding ran out.
If I were to envision a new paradigm for resolving crime and protecting our communities, it would be a partnership.
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