Our View: Respect for police and community is key to dealing with anger
A black power structure, a post-Ferguson policy mindset, a public demand for peace from the black victim’s family – in theory, Baltimore should have been amply prepared for the latest death-in-custody outrage.
Yet after a day and a night of violence, the city is smoldering, at least 20 police officers are injured and National Guard troops are patrolling the streets.
As casualties mount and datelines blur – Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island, North Charleston, Tulsa – it’s become clear that Americans have for too long ignored the relationship between the police and those they encounter most frequently. The breakdown in trust between communities and law enforcement officers is, as President Barack Obama described it Tuesday, absolutely “a slow-rolling crisis.”
But the Baltimore riots raise dispiriting questions about what cities can do in the short term. We should be clear-eyed about those questions, and about the time it’s going to take to solve this problem. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Baltimore is notorious for its dysfunctions as amply chronicled in fictional HBO series “The Wire.” According to The Baltimore Sun, well before Freddie Gray emerged from a police van with a nearly severed spinal cord on April 12, excessive force was an ongoing problem. The newspaper reported that the city shelled out some $5.7 million in jury awards and settlements for more than 100 police brutality and civil rights violations between 2010 and 2014. Victims included a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating and an 87-year-old woman aiding her grandson.
But Baltimore isn’t some aberration, either. These outbreaks have occured in communities large and small.
Merced is not too small to encounter the same problems if we are not committed to dealing with any problems quickly and fairly. .
A frequent short-term suggestion is that police forces and those who direct them should look more like the communities they cover. Another is that law enforcement should be less militarized. Both are good suggestions. But it doesn’t always mean the outcomes will be different.
Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, is black and so is its police commissioner, Anthony Batts. Their decision on Monday to initially hang back after violence broke out was in line not only with modern law enforcement thinking in the wake of the Ferguson, Mo., police unrest, but also with Batts’ experience in California law enforcement, where he dealt with civil disobedience in Oakland. That decision backfired.
As Baltimore begins mopping up after these latest riots and getting back to business, other solutions will no doubt come up – the potential usefulness of body cameras, for instance, and the need for hard, coherent data on incidents of officer-involved shootings or violence.
Some ideas will pan out. Some will be too idealistic. Some will be, like this crisis, “slow-rolling.”
The key in Baltimore or Merced is police professionalism and dedication to public service, attributes not exclusive to any race. That, and a commitment to facing any problems as they arise.
This story was originally published April 28, 2015 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Our View: Respect for police and community is key to dealing with anger."