The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Work, optimism may foster needed peace
In a year often marked by violence where police and citizens or criminals intersect, there are signs that common ground may be at hand.
There may yet be hope for a peaceful resolution to the standoff that is police-community relations in today’s America.
The nascent groundwork that’s becoming visible deserves broad support. It may be the best chance at effecting change.
The only other alternative to profound reform is to continue a pattern that has sown discord and distrust — in addition to exacting a horrifically bloody toll in recent months among the ranks of both police and the policed.
America simply has to do better. The citizenry and those who take an oath to serve them — pledging a cost up to and including their own lives — each deserve no less than that.
So far this year, at least 619 people have been shot dead by law enforcement officers, according to a database by The Washington Post. In 2015, 990 were killed by police gunfire.
And it’s beyond a truth and moral certainty that many of those killed were either criminals or otherwise intent on, or at risk of, causing violent harm to someone, including police. That’s a fact of life — and death. And it’s sometimes an unavoidable outcome for police and society.
That said, an increasing number of people — and we’ll stretch just a bit and call it perhaps the beginnings of a coalition — are rightly disturbed by fatal confrontations between police and civilians that have occurred across the country.
African-Americans are often those injured or killed by police under suspect circumstances. The names are familiar to millions by now. In truth, such incidents — not infrequently — also cross lines of color and even gender. This was shown in the “Over the Line” reporting project by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Such cases keep happening. Concern has arisen over this month’s fatal shooting of a deaf white man by an African-American North Carolina state trooper after a traffic stop. And a white DeKalb County couple is still seeking answers — let alone an apology — after DeKalb police shot the unarmed husband, Chris McKinley, inside his own home in 2015. Police were reportedly answering a call with vague details about a suspicious person — described as a black man — in an East Atlanta neighborhood. During the confrontation, police also shot dead the family’s dog.
To be fair, law enforcement has also paid a terrible price for the current anger and intermittent lawlessness coursing through society. The multiple murders of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge this year are an unacceptable affront to a civilized society and cannot be condemned too strongly. Such tragedies reminded many that policing has always been a dangerous line of work. Even though more officers were killed in traffic mishaps (52) than by gunfire in 2015, a total of 42 law enforcement personnel died from shootings last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Beginning to ratchet down such statistics on both sides of the badge won’t be easy, but it must be done.
That’s the sentiment behind efforts such as a new U.S. House Joint Working Group on Policing Strategies. In a statement last month announcing its formation, the bipartisan group wrote: “It’s clear that more must be done to end excessive use of force, strengthen police accountability, prevent violent attacks on law enforcement and improve the relationship between police officers and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.”
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, serves on the new entity. In a visit last week with reporters and editors at the AJC, Collins said that, “It seems every few weeks we have an issue flare up. My hope with this is that we can engage communities and try to get to the root cause of these things. Hopefully ... we can get the type of dialogue where we’re talking to each other — and not at each other.”
That would be a good start. But it will take more than that. Collins and others, conservative and liberal alike, seem to be coalescing around the need for more officer training, better pay for first responders and more accountability when official wrongdoing is ferreted out.
Such efforts should be paired with better communication with the public. Providing insights into how police often have to make near-instantaneous decisions about using force can only help, we believe. It also can’t hurt to emphatically reinforce advice about how lawful civilians should behave when detained by officers. More civility on both sides will go a long way, we think.
Collins mentioned the old notion that perception is reality. That applies to both cops and civilians, we believe.
The question for American society is how to improve both our perceptions and the resulting reality. The efforts just now beginning hold promise in helping us get there.