Shooting from the lip

political candidates seeking some attention.”

To their partners in blue: “Every day, you risk your lives so that the rest of us don’t have to. You serve and protect to provide the security so many Americans take for granted.”

But Obama warned: “Good community policing has to be a two-way street. The communities that desperately need effective policing have to give police officers the benefit of the doubt.”

It was crucial citizens “make sure we’re not just sending you out there to do dirty work and then hanging you out to dry if it doesn’t work out well”.

This is the “community policing model” we all believe in.

Knowing our communities well enough to “distinguish between the drug dealer and the good kid, even if both of them were wearing a hoodie”. It’s at the heart of our strategies on “Sector Policing”, our Community Policing Forums (CPFs) and Neighbourhood Watches (NHWs), and the City of Cape Town’s Neighbourhood Safety Officer (NSO) programme.

There’s crucial research on how we can be safer together.

We all know the 20 explicit recommendations of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry.

And Obama’s groundbreaking “President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing” recommendations, from 2015.

The single most important word in his 116 page report? Trust.

The same word this column has celebrated, more than any other.

Like this line, describing the team in Stellenbosch: “This team of safety partners had been smart. “They’d nurtured their foundation. “If their meetings had been cut to just five minutes, they’d have reaffirmed just one thing, said to one another, again: ‘I trust you.’” Trust. There are many thin blue lines: Between safety and danger. Trust and suspicion. The rule of law and anarchy. Between clean cops and the corrupt.

But let’s be clear: Our men and women in blue, who honour the badge they wear, deserve our ultimate respect. And maximum solidarity.