Community Policing

We live in Portland, Oregon. As almost anyone in our town will tell you,  the question we are getting the most from those who do not live here these days is, “Are you okay?” 

That is what it is like to be the national Problem Child.  The next set of questions are some version of: “What’s wrong out there?” “Is your neighborhood trashed?” “Are there really Proud Boy patrols around town, heavily armed?” “Did you really almost elect an Antifa mayor?”

One of us is a long-time practitioner of nonviolent civil resistance and scholar in the field of conflict transformation.

One of us is a medical professional innovating new ways to help protect and heal brave activists from the trauma they have experienced both on the streets and in life.

We are sending two messages. 

The first is to the country at large: We will be all right. Though Portlanders are devastated about boarded-up downtown businesses and trashed public places, we also resent President Trump’s unwelcome destructive interference and bald-faced lies about our beautiful city. Most Portlanders do support Black Lives Matter.  Very few media have been reporting the complexity of our streets and what has happened to co-opt the protest narrative. We also vehemently disagree that most Portlanders support the local version of the Proud Boys. All of the street brawlers, the worst of which included Trump’s unmarked federal agents and the abominable behavior of some Portland police—have very low levels of support here.

The second message is to activists in Portland and elsewhere: Stop the violence. Push the reset button on our vigorous yet chaotic and violent protest movement.  We can all agree in our support of our First Amendment rights to peaceful assembly and further, that we all come to the streets with passion for change.  

But the community at large is hurting and so will any others who suffer these outbreaks of toxic masculinity.  

We are scarcely thinking about George Floyd, Kendra James, Breonna Taylor, James Jahar Perez, and all the other unarmed African Americans murdered by police when the nightly protest focus has become chant, graffiti and property damage.  The narrative is getting lost. The murdered ones deserve the message and the moral high ground as well as tactics that work to bring more numbers to the fight. 

Yes, Trump’s troops attacked peaceful protesters. Yes, the Portland Police have betrayed the public trust in their bursts of unprofessional conduct.

But responding in-kind with thrown soup cans, bear spray or Molotov cocktails only serves to slam shut any sympathy locals and others feel for activists—including the consistently peaceful people who never even engage in property destruction, let alone using violence to defend themselves against police violence.

Whether the violent self-defense is done by undercover agents meant to discredit a movement or done by authentic enraged activists, the effect is the same: loss of support. Politicians, police, and opinion leaders see this erosion of sympathy and become far less inclined to address the problem that activists claim to be demonstrating to solve.

The “point” becomes debating whether or not to wreck stuff and whether or not to act in violent “self-defense.”  (It’s worth noting that all violent parties purport to make that claim, like a preschool group of children all saying that “He started it!”). Whether the initial point was protesting police killing unarmed Black people or Trump attempting to steal an election, breaks in nonviolent discipline causes public opinion to shift toward the party that maintains the discipline. And just to compound the unfairness, if all parties are violent, the public will become increasingly grateful for the thin blue line “protecting” them from the chaos.

We understand deeply and painfully how profoundly unfair that is, as real harm has been done in Portland.  We bear witness to that.  But if things were fair, no one would need to protest in the first place. When movements win, they do so with strategy, not inchoate rage.

Do we suggest apathy? Absolutely not. Resistance to injustice or to threats to democracy should be robust. 

Here is what we advocate: 

• Commit publicly, repeatedly, and authentically to nonviolence for the duration of this campaign. More people will sympathize, support, and participate in a nonviolent campaign; thus it is also more likely to succeed in effecting change. 
• Develop unarmed, nonviolent peace teams who can help participants in such events maintain nonviolent discipline under all circumstances. 
• For the foreseeable future, we recommend only scheduling direct action events during daytime hours. Mischief is mostly done under cover of darkness and even peaceful demonstrations at night are nearly invisible.
• We call on our faith communities and labor unions to stand with nonviolent activists and help movements self-police against loss of nonviolent discipline. 

We need everyone united in the need for nonviolent change to defend historically marginalized peoples and to make our democracy more robust. In doing so we join the proud legacy of successful defending democracy campaigns from the Philippines (1986) to Chile (1988) to Serbia (2000) to Ukraine (2005) to the Gambia (2016) and counting. They all stopped election theft while maintaining nonviolent discipline. Many other struggles for racial justice, labor rights, and the rights of all historically marginalized peoples won using strict nonviolent discipline. Relatively few won by using violence.

It’s time for us to show the world that Portland is a town of peace warriors.  Let’s practice activism that everyone can participate in, including our children.  This world is theirs to inherit–let’s make our streets safe for them again.  

We ask this with profound humility and respect for each and every Portlander and all genuine justice activists everywhere.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs and certificates at Portland State University, PeaceVoice Director, and on occasion an expert witness for the defense of nonviolent civil resisters in court. 

Saskia Hostetler Lippy, MD, is a psychiatrist in practice in downtown Portland and has been volunteering to provide psychological first aid to those involved in the Portland protest movement. She is also a field monitor for the TRUST network. 

There is a crisis of policing in this country.   It’s not just the elephant in the living room—today it is the living room.  It’s in every American living room:  media stories, citizen iPhones, body cams.  In the wake of the death of George Floyd and so many countless others before him, the crisis of policing in this country has reached epidemic proportions.  And it’s not so much police tactics—although many would point to that and with good reason.  Other countries employ in practices much like the US for their police; just recall the images of Chinese officers tamping down protesters in Hong Kong over the last 12 months. The difference is that those countries have somehow solved the riddle of deadly police force far better than the US.  For example, according to the FBI, about 1,000 police officer-involved deaths of citizens occur every year, while in other developed countries the police may not be involved in even one police-involved death of a citizen in a year. 

Why is this we ask ourselves? Explanations range from the fact that Americans are largely armed, that our roots are in rugged individualism , the popularization of the spirit of adventure policing careers, the deployment of technology in the 1990s in the place of community policing and being on the street.  But those issues are not what this article is about.  Given where we are at this moment in time, how can we solve the crisis of policing?

I believe that the current crisis of policing in this country requires a quantum leap in our thinking—something that is so aspirational, that it is so radical that it will actually change police culture.   That disruptive idea is the notion of going back to our roots as PEACE OFFICERS.  It’s profound when you finally see it. 

If we go back to the fundamentals, what is the real name for cops?  They’re “peace officers”.   That’s what the law usually calls them.    PEACE OFFICER is the one unifying notion that all cops are tied together by.  So how do we actualize this as a nation?   One way is using the ethos of PEACE OFFICER for our police and sheriff’s deputies:  To prevent conflict; If there is conflict, help resolve it; diffuse situations; and aid the defenseless.   Police officers are in our communities to intervene and defend the defenseless.   That didn’t happen for George Floyd and that’s inexcusable.  And I feel, preventable.

Now that we’re no longer turning away from the problem we need to develop a solution for why police-involved deaths of citizens keep happening and develop a national strategy to address it.   I believe that a cultural shift in the policing paradigm from recruiting and hiring for the adventure of policing, to returning to our roots found in our penal codes that call cops PEACE OFFICERS is a good start.  It makes the responsibility of police enforcement the facilitation of peace in the community. Further, what is needed is for departments to have organizational alignment around peace officer, which includes messaging, training, and reward systems because we have to have consistency in actions with the symbolism of peace officer.   If the only tools we give cops are nightsticks and guns, then we shouldn’t be surprised that they are going to use force and end up killing people.  We have to give them other tools:  resilience training, de-escalation training, community outreach programs, and technology.   We can re-shape policing in this country into transparent, rightful and non-fatal using the notion of PEACE OFFICER. 

Congratulations to the march organizers, the Frederick Community, and the Frederick Police Department (FPD) for their outstanding managing of events last week.

As people across the country rightly expressed their outrage over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police, unfortunately at some of these events a small minority of participants engaged in crime and disorder. For chiefs and departments tasked with managing protests and related unrest, this is one of the more challenging aspects of urban policing. Almost no choice made by the police in those instances is fully embraced by the community or ends up being one hundred percent right; the police are criticized for being either too lenient or too overbearing in their response.

In Frederick the results were different. Community organizers and the FPD did an excellent job. To my knowledge there were no injuries and there were no arrests. This is a credit to both the community and the police, and the bond of trust built in our city. Why these events were so peaceful is a valuable question upon which we should reflect.

Good policing is predicated on respect, trust, legitimacy, accessibility, accountability, empathy, transparency, communication, and collaboration. It centers on a foundation of dignity, respect, and “seeing” the people we serve. It includes hiring the right people, providing them outstanding training and leadership, and adherence to best practices. And that is just the baseline.

It requires relentless engagement with the community — literally becoming part of the community of those we swore an oath to serve. It is based on making continued deposits of goodwill, so that when a withdrawal is needed, the community faith and trust in the police are strong. These are not trite or empty words. The police literally derive their power from the people. We must never betray that trust or authority, and recognize that our existence is to serve the public.

In 1829, Sir Robert Peel, accepted by many as the father of policing, established nine principles of policing. They remain as relevant today as they were then. Given the multi-disciplinary responsibilities now asked of the police (more about that later) and the astounding increase in weaponry among the police and citizens, it is arguable that these principles are more profound and relevant than ever. Key points from these principles follow.

Peel’s Principals intersect with current best practices, including the 2015 Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st century policing, which provides a blueprint for reform. Likewise, the National Police Foundation, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the Police Executive Research Forum, the Commission on Accreditation in Law Enforcement, and the International Association for Chiefs of Police all provide roadmaps to excellence.

But Peel’s principles also inform today’s relevant discussions about “defunding” the police, which does not mean doing away with the police, but does mean imagining and realizing what many police leaders have been asking for decades-what does society want/expect from the police? Are police, “a sworn officer with a gun and a badge,” best suited to address issues in society such as drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, hunger, joblessness, homelessness, truancy, etc., or are experts trained in appropriate disciplines better suited to focus on these challenges?

And we must acknowledge that reforming the police is not enough — we must reform the system which criminalizes homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. Defunding the police approaches the logical concept of appropriate allocation or reallocation of funding so that the best services may be provided by those that have expertise to more effectively address these social needs. We must have the imagination and the will to see and do things differently. While we won’t do away with the police, what we must eradicate is the basis for the general fact that historically, those who have needed us the most have trusted us the least.

Peel’s Principals intersect with current best practices, including the 2015 Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st century policing, which provides a blueprint for reform. Likewise, the National Police Foundation, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the Police Executive Research Forum, the Commission on Accreditation in Law Enforcement, and the International Association for Chiefs of Police all provide roadmaps to excellence.

But Peel’s principles also inform today’s relevant discussions about “defunding” the police, which does not mean doing away with the police, but does mean imagining and realizing what many police leaders have been asking for decades-what does society want/expect from the police? Are police, “a sworn officer with a gun and a badge,” best suited to address issues in society such as drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, hunger, joblessness, homelessness, truancy, etc., or are experts trained in appropriate disciplines better suited to focus on these challenges?

And we must acknowledge that reforming the police is not enough — we must reform the system which criminalizes homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. Defunding the police approaches the logical concept of appropriate allocation or reallocation of funding so that the best services may be provided by those that have expertise to more effectively address these social needs. We must have the imagination and the will to see and do things differently. While we won’t do away with the police, what we must eradicate is the basis for the general fact that historically, those who have needed us the most have trusted us the least.

Kim Dine is a 41-year veteran of law enforcement, having served with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC., the Frederick Police Department, and the United States Capitol Police. Dine was Chief of the Frederick Police Department for 10 years.