It was an accident, I didn't mean to press Publish

                Trust is the most important thing that comes from any relationship, from any encounter. It drives behavior on any and all encounters. It pre-determines how our interactions with someone will go. I do hope that people realize this, that it can predict all kinds of behavior. It can change all kinds of views, like how you view your garbage collector, or your postal worker. Someone who frequents your neighborhood falls under certain scrutiny, and you develop opinions of them. Good, bad, or otherwise. They become pillars of your neighborhood, you smile and nod. Maybe even wave, you feel different views about their presence depending on the perceived level of service.

                Is it not reasonable to say the same about the police who serve your community? There are those that go above and beyond, there are those that you can tell are collecting a paycheck, and there are those that seem pissed off to responding to your call. To be fair they are expected to be ready for far more than their training will ever get them ready for. I can’t hold them responsible for those things.

                What gets me is the trust. I grew up in a very White neighborhood and had the privilege of working for my township. I heard of a lot of people asking for an extra drive by because they felt that the neighborhood was insecure. Apparently, an extra drive by was going to prevent crime. They demanded the police drive around a little more. This may work for the affluent. My town was White, I don’t know who they were afraid of, it could have been anyone, but I was unaware of crime. I didn’t know of anything other than teenage pranks.
                I don’t mean to say that I know everything that was going on, because honestly as an introvert I avoided anything going on. What I am trying to say is that your perception of someone is based on their first impression. That first impression can certainly be inspired by how you look, or the uniform that you wear.

                Unfortunately too many Americans feel threatened by a police uniform. Maybe justified, maybe not. Point is they still feel threatened. Their behavior changes because of how they look. Its easy to say “obey the law and you won’t have problems”, but recently the problem hasn’t been so much obeying the law. Its been unfortunate circumstances which ultimately involve the police, which invokes fear and mistrust. Things go sideways, horrible things happen. Then too many people justify the horrible actions by saying “if they’d only obeyed the law”. Which is just such utter bullshit, I’m aware that some form or other of the law was broken to summon the police in the first place, but we wind up with a situation with a cop on someone’s neck with their hands in their pocket claiming, “he was a threat”. Or we see a situation where the cop accidentally pulled their gun instead of their tazor to which we are supposed to feel better about.

                Sure, we’re told that we are supposed to feel better about the fact that a police officer pulled out their gun instead of their tazor. It’s supposed to be a political win that the officer was so incompetent that they accidentally pulled out a deadly weapon, and not knowing the difference between a passive weapon, pulled the trigger and killed someone. Just a simple accident, right? Anyone of us could make that mistake right? I as an average citizen forget which of the things attached to my belt are deadly and which are meant to leave people thinking about their choices.

                To be clear I do not think that the police in general are bad, they have my support because they have been given an impossible task, without the training they need. They are expected to be EMTs, Psychiatrists, and peacekeepers amongst many more. I’m not part of the “defund the police” movement. I am however part of re-imagining how they are deployed, and to include more social workers to calls.

                In the end though, the problem is trust. If people do not trust their local law enforcement, they will run, they will do things that ultimately encourage force by law enforcement. It might be a chicken before the egg scenario, but its something that needs to be considered. Can law enforcement change the community trust while the community doesn’t trust law enforcement. What can we do here? We are in a cycle, Police don’t like the community because of “crime”. The community doesn’t like the police because of the perception of “crime”.

                I was going to say that there needs to be a conversation between the “community” and the “police” but that has likely actually happened. However, it was the well off people speaking on behalf of the less fortunate, and it was the police reaffirming their fears.  What we need is communities that have felt oppressed speaking up and for their bravery to be heard. Nothing will be achieved if we hide behind politics and don’t listen to what is being said.