Black Lives Matter – Actually, All Lives Matter – Our Police and Race Relations Challenges

One of the leaders of Black Lives Matter commented that to solve this problem of racism and racial discrimination that leads to the unfair treatment of blacks by police officers, we need more community policing. Sure, that makes sense, but could that really solve the problem? In the past it has cleaned up crime, but it has also led to the capture of more criminals and thus a larger prison and prison population. Still, there has been quite a bit of research on this topic and I would like to point out a very smart book to read on this topic, the book is:

“From the war on poverty to the war on crime” by Elizabeth Hinton, Harvard University Press, Boston MA, 464 pages, May 2016, 978-0674737235. By the way, there is a great YouTube video with the author made by CSPAN TV Book Review Program, I definitely recommend it and then read the book after watching it.

In the book, Elizabeth Hinton reminds us of the romantic notion of having the police live in the district, the community they are policing. We all think this is smart policy, but it is rarely used in our modern American society, why? If it works, why don’t we do it? The truth is; in many cities in the United States we already are. In fact, the city of Baltimore does, and yet they still had a big problem there with the shooting of a black man while on the run from the police. This book and the recommended community policing philosophy also refer directly to the Dallas shootings and the boiling pot on race relations, police robotics, gun control, the Black Lives Matter protests.

The question remains; If community policing is the key, then why have a top-down set of Federal Government guidelines and Federal Government intervention every time someone claims a shooting was racially motivated and for no reason? If we have community-based policing, shouldn’t it be the community that decides, not the media or the federal government?

Yes, it is true, I offer more questions than solutions, but these are the difficult questions we must ask ourselves before allowing the Administration, or the media, to exaggerate events causing more protests, leading to more riots, more vandalism, more shootings and more racial tensions in this great nation. I ask that you please consider all of this and think about it.