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by Dr. Carl Mumpower
Op-Ed
Asheville Citizen-Times
October 2, 2007
In
the back of most cars, you’ll find a rubber donut called a spare tire. It’s a neglected nuisance that takes up space
and adds weight to the vehicle. It’s not
something the average driver thinks about or appreciates until he or she is
stranded on a rainy night. Then that
spare tire becomes everything – a response not unlike that which we have for
our police.
Asheville
has had a fair share of recent police controversies. There
have been high profile arrests of protestors, several unsolved witnessed
shootings, and a “report no one wants to own” questioning police department race
relations. I personally added to the mix
with an early year challenge to a pattern of city and police administrative
complacency in enforcing our drug laws in public housing and other facilities. There have been a host of opportunities for criticism
for those with that kind of itch.
People
who wear dark uniforms and shinny badges make great targets – for all sorts of shooters. At the top of the list are those who traffic
in hard drugs. The inevitable
desperation of addicts and dealers insures dangers that put our officers on a
persisting path of frustration, strain, and risk. We should all be ashamed of our community
supported open air drug markets that continue to place our police, children and
the rest of us in the way of all sorts of harms including those coming from a
gun.
“I’ve
got your back” is not a phrase used by a progressive city council majority that
stepped away from its earlier commitment to “eliminate our open air drug
market”. It’s not any better in a
Raleigh that dodges responsibility for deconstructing our mental health system
and neglecting our court system with similar enthusiasm. Ask any police officer about the impact of an
underfunded and overwhelmed judicial system that sends the bad guys back to the
street with impunity and you are likely to hear that the biggest bad guys wear
suits.
Other
bullets come in the form of criticism and neglect. Most of us pass “attaboys” to our police with
about the same frequency and enthusiasm that we check the pressure in those
spare tires. Too many of our community’s
visible black leaders embrace all opportunities to shoot with anti-police
rhetoric that overlooks the reality of black Ashevillians as the most frequent
victims of crime. We have ministers who
actively advocate “don’t snitch” policies that insure their own communities remain
breeding grounds for new generations of criminals versus young men and women
propelled to a future of hope. The
results stimulate a climate of distrust for the police that, combined with real
race relation failures, insures that black young men and women from our
community actively avoid the challenges and opportunities of service in a place
they are needed most.
Then
there are the voices of the community who persistently call for citizen
oversight committees and passive police response to illegal protest activities,
vagrant misbehaviors, and the drug culture’s public indulgences. George Orwell once observed that, “To abjure
violence, it is necessary to have no experience of it.” His reflection offers a glimpse into the
absence of realism in those who seek to paralyze our police department when the
real goal should be an honest and effective police department.
A
community gets the crime it is willing to accept and the enforcement it is
willing to support and we all have a part to play in that equation. The next time you walk or drive by a police officer,
consider a smile, wave, or thank you.
That uniform holds a badge covering a heart that makes invisible daily
sacrifice to your safety. That uniform identifies
a man or woman who, far more often than not, is a prince of the city…
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