While many young blacks — along with many others representing a wide variety of ethnicities — across the country have been very active and vocal in demonstrating against police brutality, they still need to do even more. Many of them need to become cops themselves. Perhaps not as a lifetime career choice, but, say, a five-year commitment to change how policing is done in America.
As more and more community voices are heard in regards to the issue of police brutality, it’s becoming increasingly clear that a growing majority of folks now believe that attempts to retrain and sensitize white cops … to make them friendlier towards the residents of the inner-city neighborhoods they patrol … might prove difficult at best. The real solution, according to many activists, is for more minorities and women that are already sensitive to minorities to become police officers.
Granted, not many minorities are raised in a police culture; few have fathers, uncles or other relatives (male or female) that are or were cops. Rarely is there a generational connection to law enforcement as a career choice or path. However, those circumstances should not be a barrier to minorities and women serving their communities.
A brief history of policing in America might be helpful. Prior to the 1830s there were no police departments in America. A constable served as the local enforcer of laws, and everyday citizens took turns patrolling their streets as night watchmen. Boston established the first police force in America in 1838, followed by New York in 1845. By the 1880s all major cities in the country had municipal police forces in place, many of them dominated by Irishmen.
Here’s why: Beginning in 1847, close to one million Irish migrated to the U.S. to escape the potato famine, which was decimating their homeland. As Catholics coming to a predominately Anglo-Saxon country the discrimination they suffered was second only to how blacks were treated in America. However, within one generation they were able to organize politically, and by joining Democratic organizations like Tammany Hall, virtually all New York service workers — including police and firemen — were of Irish extraction.
Somewhat similar scenarios played out in many other east coast cities (including Cleveland) resulting in the development of a cultural imperative whereby many Irish view such jobs as their birthright, to be handed down from one generation to the next. Indeed, the exclusion of “outsiders” was so pervasive that it took a federal lawsuit to increase the number of minorities in the Cleveland Division of Police.
And ever after the courts ruled that the number of minorities on safety forces had to be increased, the racism that led to their exclusion still exists. In Cleveland, to this very day, there still are “white firehouses” where only white firefighters are assigned, and “black firehouses” where only blacks are assigned. Similarly, it’s indeed rare to see a two-person patrol car with a white and black officer. Segregation is alive and well on Cleveland’s safety forces.
But it must be stated unequivocally that black skin alone will not make for a good cop. Some minorities join police forces and engage in the exact same negative and illegal behaviors as a small percentage of white officers, so candidates have to be of high morals and character. However, statistics clearly indicate black officers are not as prone to using lethal force as white officers.
So, in order to facilitate a lasting change in how America is policed there has to be a degree of change in who is doing the policing. More minorities, women, and fair-minded whites have to put their careers on hold for five years and dedicate themselves to changing the patterns and practices of brutality all too often found on big-city police departments.
To accomplish this, major national organizations such as the NAACP, the Urban League, the Industrial Areas Foundation, black fraternities and sororities, and other organizations concerned with the direction in which our country is heading, need to partner with police departments across the country and immediately begin serious recruiting efforts on university campuses, with a particular focus on historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). At the same instant, high school programs need to be developed across the country to identify, nurture, and prepare young people of color and women to enter into law enforcement careers.
As stated previously in this article, this need not be a lifetime commitment … five years of service is all I’m asking. Think of it this way: These young people are going to mature and have children; do they want to have to tell their sons “the story” … to have to caution them to be on guard against a potentially racist cop? The only way to decisively bring about change in how America is policed is for another demographic to step up and say, “Being a cop is my birthright too.”
[Photo: kris krüg (Flickr)]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.