LETTER TO THE EDITOR / A SOCIETY THAT’S SAFE FOR ALL

By Roger C. Kostmayer

The most important responsibility of government and elected leaders is public safety, and one aspect of that is the local police department that’s charged with serving and protecting everyone in their community.  But America’s history of brutality, murder and abuse of power by some police, is often driven by racism.  Today it is Tyre Nichols. Yesterday it was George Floyd. And the list of victims seems to grow every day.  Murder and abuse by public employees is unacceptable and must be stopped.

The solution is to rethink, redefine and reconstruct our society’s total safety solutions and then have federal standards  apply those solutions.  There are 18,000 traditional police departments in the US,  and unless America develops effective ways to stop the brutalities and hold the guilty accountable, nothing will change.

Federal standards should include organizational models that require specialist departments to respond to specific needs, instead of asking singularly focused police to handle everything.  Sending an armed cop to solve an incident with a psychotic person, a homeless person, a drug addict, a gang issue, or a medical incident is dangerous and unfair both to untrained police and to the public.

Specific issues that need to be addressed include, but aren’t limited to: more and better transparency with the public; better police cameras; no-knock arrests; absolutely no police immunity; a federal registry of police misconduct; use of force rules, mass incarceration; aggressive policing; and strict civilian oversight to continually monitor and improve results.  And any progress in these areas will require limiting or eliminating all police unions whose sole mission is to prevent reform.

The future local police departments must have real expertise in social work, medical and health, psychology, community relations, negotiations and communications.

Achieving an effective solution to this crisis won’t be easy, but the price our society is paying requires it.  Only by looking forward and applying creative solutions will we be able to provide real safety for all communities and their citizens.

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