Letter to the Editor / WE MUST DO BETTER

By Roger C. Kostmayer

In April  2015 when systemic racism and killings of black citizens were in the news again I wrote a piece about that vicious cycle.  It follows.  Sadly, the piece entitled “We Can Do Better”, is just as relevant today.

“Communities need police; and police need the support and cooperation of the community they’ve sworn to serve and protect.  Even though there’s no national data base of police initiated killings in the US, which is itself incredible, it’s clear the existing criminal justice system isn’t working and needs fundamental reform.

Killings of mostly black males by mostly white police involving alleged misdemeanors (such as driving, selling cigarettes, having a broken tail light, walking in the street, possession of marijuana, running away, carrying a pen knife) never stop, while evidence that police use minority arrests as a significant revenue source in many communities is irrefutable.

Every part of a community can do better to break this vicious cycle, but what has to change is the police, police culture and the system.  Police Captains say the few “bad apples” are the problem, which means police leadership must be held accountable for raising the standards for selection, training, supervision, evaluation and termination.  It’s critical that the culture, especially the “blue wall of silence”, be changed to a community friendly professional code that requires each officer to follow the law and the regulations without cover-ups, as well as seeing that peers do as well. And the police unions must stop being the problem by protecting the bad apples, and start being part of the solution.”

Today, five years later, it’s obvious that nothing will change as long as police are controlled by police unions instead of the community that hires and pays them.  Then and only then can the police force have a symbiotic relationship of which both they and their community can be proud.

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