Healing the divide between the people and police

These are unprecedented times when visceral videos of controversial uses of force by police are putting officers at greater risk of harm — witness the shocking assassinations of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, policecommunity relations are in a critical stalemate that can only be transcended by diversifying beyond win-lose confrontations and adversarial oversight processes.

Decades ago I worried about tensions in my east San Jose neighborhood when some youth threatened to acquire guns because of what they said was abusive police harassment. I urgently contacted a police field commander and invited him to a meeting in my home.

The police commander heard stories from the street that evening and sensed something in what these tough-looking youth were saying. Our young people experienced being respectfully listened to by this police com- mander, and were astounded when he offered each one his business card with an invitation to call him directly with any concerns.

I gratefully wrote a letter published by the Mercury News, thanking our police department for their responsiveness at a time when the police were facing intense criticism from our community.

I learned then that privately talking with a police commander could be amazingly effective, especially when combined with publicly acknowledging our police for their positive community actions. Thankfully, tensions in our neighborhood subsided with notable new occurrences.

Years later I was appointed ombudsman for the city of San Jose. I rode police patrols, investigated complaints against the police, communicated with police internal affairs (the office that investigates police misconduct allegations), met with the police chief, and taught at the police academy. I became immersed in the world of po- lice- community relations and gained valuable insights.

I learned that our adversarial, legal, and quasi-legal approaches need to be complemented by informally connecting wise neighborhood elders with wise police elders who are police commanders.

I envision wise grassroots elders becoming communicators of credible anecdotal information received from aggrieved community members, not to adjudicate individual cases, but to begin discerning patterns of street behavior based on a flow of anecdotal information from reliable sources.

Credible anecdotal information would then be informally shared with police commanders who are best positioned to modify police behaviors based on their ongoing relationships and their ability to take the measure of each officer with professionalism, wisdom and fairness.

Let’s create a process for wise community elders to informally share credible community grievances with local police commanders, grievances that are mostly human relations- oriented versus being about illegalities or criminal matters requiring formal, adversarial processes.

As community leaders, let’s publicly support our police and continually acknowledge them for their positive actions, to begin countering societal forces that have created isolated and insular police communities.

Equally important, public safety strategies must go beyond simplistic notions of aggressive policing to emphasize greater investments in mental health and drug addiction treatment, housing availability, jobs, and school and youth programs. Police officers should not continue being the backstop and frontline for society’s failure to address core human needs.

As community leaders, let’s promote an already- existing street-smart compliance with police directives to uphold everyone’s safety, because black lives matter and blue lives matter, and we must find our way to peace where all lives mat- ter. Comply with police directives, then register complaints as warranted.

By partnering with police leadership through privately sharing credible anecdotal information, officers that are consistent provocateurs can be more clearly indicated and appropriately addressed by police leadership. Civic leaders, too, can be confidentially educated by wise community elders.

We can stand up for the people and the police, and do so from the heart of the community. J. Manuel Herrera is president of the East Side Union High School District Board of Trustees. He will host a public forum and deliver a discourse about police- community relations to explore new ways of anchoring police- community relations on wise elders from among the people and the police at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 17 at Evergreen Valley High School’s Cougar Hall. Reservations are required. RSVP at jmanuelherrera@aol.com.