A Brave New Job: Finding Comfort Outside My Comfort Zone
One by one they filed into the small meeting room in the offices of the non-profit land trust organization. It was a diverse mix of neighborhood residents, business owners, professionals and representatives from the Minneapolis Police Department and my office. We were called together to discuss concerns about two properties in the neighborhood that had become hotspots for criminal behavior. This particular neighborhood has a crime rate of 168% of the national average, according to one website.
Here is an excerpt from the minutes of that meeting:
Concerns voiced- Bullets in houses, gun shots throughout day and night consistently, people being shot at, drug dealing, vandalism of property and vehicles, including repeated broken windows, broken screens, fences damaged, fighting, intimidation and retaliation. Frustration and fear very real. Length of time has been last two years with the last 10 months showing large increases in these concerns. No police presence. Lack of police response to calls and resident needs.
But I need to further elaborate, because until this evening, I would only read about such things in police reports, the newspaper, or online media.
I listened as one resident described a group of African American males of unknown age “take over” spots on a sidewalk, areas outside a grocery store, or even the middle of the street. I listened when people described these individuals showing guns and shooting at each other. I listened as someone described an individual setting a chair down on a sidewalk and conducting drug deals. They have taken over the corner store for drug dealing and the store owner and employees refused to come to the meeting, for fear of retaliation.
The people that came to this meeting want their neighborhood back. They are homeowners who are paying a mortgage. They have jobs. One resident, a younger African American woman, described how she opened her window to yell at those out on the street to “take it somewhere else, don’t y’all know I have to be up at six in the morning???” Another resident, also African American, commended her on her bravery and responded that she would never have that kind of courage to confront these people. There were a couple of older white women who also expressed concern at the delay in response from the police.
I pressed for details on the individuals involved in these activities. Do you know them? How old are they? Apparently many of them may be juveniles. One of them told one of the residents he could not go home until he made some money. She estimated his age at around 12 years old. My investigator noted on one arrest report that the person arrested for drug possession lives right up the street.
So why aren’t the cops out there talking to these hoodlums? In Minneapolis, it is against the law to walk in the street when a sidewalk is available. It has never been clear to me why people walk in the street, but after hearing some of the people at this meeting, it seems to be something that is done as an expression of power or intimidation.
And here is where the seeds of controversy are sown.
I recall a time last year, when I sat in my ivory tower of criminal prosecution and declined to charge a case because it was based on officers stopping a couple of African American males for walking in the middle of the street at 2:00 a.m. Once the officers stopped and identified the males, they discovered that one was an unregistered predatory offender. I was greatly offended at this highly pretextual stop and opined to the submitting investigator that this would have never have happened to me walking in the street in my neighborhood.
And, in doing so, I spectacularly missed the point.
Is it really wrong for police officers to approach these individuals to ask for ID? Is it wrong only if they are a minority? What about if it is 2:00 in the morning? What if it is in a “bad” neighborhood? What if it is in a “good” neighborhood?
I had to wonder if the lack of response in this particular neighborhood was intentional on the part of the police department. They have recently been put over a barrel. If they respond to a domestic assault and someone interfering with the process gets killed, the immediate presentation of the incident is that this person was executed while handcuffed. Now days, police officers are accused of racism and overreaching for doing exactly what law abiding citizens in many of these tough neighborhoods are asking them to do. Nothing has made this more clear to me than that meeting last week. The prevailing message that gets the biggest headlines is that the police are intentionally harassing and looking to shoot minority individuals. So far this year, 10 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty; 8 by gunshot. That is a headline that is buried deep beneath all the calls for justice for those individuals who have been killed by police officers. Is one plea more important than the other?
A variety of suggestions for how to tackle this issue were presented. The vast majority of them involved police action. I struggle with predicting how this story will end. In the six weeks I have been in my new position, I have attended a significant number of meetings involving police representatives, from beat cops, to Inspectors in charge of entire precincts. I can state, unequivocally, the motto “to protect with courage, to serve with compassion” is alive and well. I can only hope it survives the relentless onslaught of negative perception that is gathering momentum with each passing day.
In the meantime, I find my perspective expanding….maybe even shifting. It’s one thing to view an issue in the abstract. It is another to live it.