As an old white guy who lives in the neighborhood, I’ll be happy when I can drive down 38th St again. As someone who remembers Charley Stenvigs response to the “race riots”, I don’t see any significant change in tactics through the years: throw enough money at a problem and it will go away. We continue to ignore the elephant in the room that isn’t going away: TRUST. White people can trust the Mpls. Police to keep troubles out of their neighborhoods and only seem to care about that. There are many law abiding people who know who is doing the carjacking and shooting and are afraid to speak up. How can minorities trust police who?
1. Look different from them.
2. Feel that the neighborhoods they work in are too horrible to live in themselves.
3. Approach them with their hands on their guns.
4. Stop them on pretenses to find out how they can harass them.
5. Have officers who have beaten them and insulted them or their acquaintances retained on the force with no consequences.
6. Are paid so little that they have to moonlight to live the financial life they desire.
7. Are not held to higher standards of behavior than the average citizen.
I would suggest that we don’t need more police, we need better Peace officers. We now have about 10 officers per neighborhood. I believe we could get by with 5 Peace officers per neighborhood if they lived in the neighborhood. We also need Peace officers walking a beat in several business districts. You can’t develop trust without getting to know someone. It’s extremely hard to get to know a cop who comes in from the suburbs every day, heavily armed, only leaves their car when other officers are around only to go back at the end of the day. Let’s get rid of our occupying military force and replace it with caring Peace officers that are paid a professional wage.
