Community policing discussion aims to build relationships

Views and experiences related to community policing were shared Thursday morning with U.S. Senate’s law enforcement caucus by panelists from Missouri and East Coast cities.

Hosted by the caucus’ cochairs, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, panel members appearing virtually were: Poplar Bluff Police Chief Danny Whiteley; Bishop Mark Tolbert of Kansas City, Missouri; Rev. Dr. Donald Morton of Wilmington, Delaware; and Greg Mullen of Clemson, South Carolina.

Based on his interactions with law enforcement agencies across the country, Whiteley said, there is a “similar understanding of what the term community policing means to them.”

But, since communities are different, he said, the way community policing is applied “varies from city to city, state to state and very often can be drastically different.”

Whiteley believes every department he has worked with does “their best to engage in community policing within the scope of their abilities, respective to their own communities and the community norms.”

In Poplar Bluff, Whiteley said, he and his officers cannot help, but engage in community policing.

“Our officers go to church with our citizens from all different backgrounds and demographics,” Whiteley said. “Our kids play sports at the same parks as do all the community. They go to school with them.

“We grocery shop with them, go to the movie theater with them, and this interaction goes on every hour of every day.”

In a town the size of Poplar Bluff, “we consistently encounter many citizens from every segment of our community,” he said.

Convinced “we are in the most challenging times in our nation’s history,” Whiteley said, he prays “we will and can have the courage to engage in unity through dialogue and mutual respect and come up with some workable solutions throughout community.”

According to Tolbert, what policing is and “what policing, I think, is supposed to be are very different than what we are seeing.”

Growing up in Kansas City, Tolbert said, he remembers many of the police officers.

“We had an interaction with (the officers), Black, white and Hispanic,” Tolbert said. “As Chief Whiteley said, we do go to church with these people who do policing.

“Our kids are involved in sports together. When you see each other at the grocery store, it brings a sense of fairness.”

Now, Tolbert said, there isn’t the same sense of fairness because officers are recruited from around nation.

“They come in, and they don’t know the people,” he said. “They don’t go to church with us. They don’t grocery shop with us.”

As a result, Tolbert said, there is no “real relationship. That’s why we get the attitude of I’m here to make sure you do the right thing rather than I’m here to protect and serve,” which creates difficulties.

Tolbert, an African-American, said it has come to the point it seems it’s “us against them. Until we get rid of that attitude, until we come back to … where we commune together as brothers and sisters, we will never see the reality of what community policing is supposed to look like.”

Progress, according to Morton, is going to require some impolite conversations.

“Oftentimes, the conversations we are having are not impolite; they are too polite,” said Morton, an African-American. “… If we are going to make advancements … it is required for us to begin to have conversations that are incredibly difficult around concepts, around upbringing, around mentality and around racism.”

When the conversations begin in a “more impolite way, I think we begin to get to the heart and core of the things that we really need to talk about,” he said.

Much of what is happening as it relates to community relationships, Morton said, is happening “because no one is taking the time to sit in the space (of others) … We have to sit in the space and wear the shoes of another” in order to make progress.

Community policing, Morton said, intersects at “our shared humanity.”

Community policing, Mullen said, is more important today than ever given the challenges regarding police brutality in the Black communities and talk of defunding the police.

“All of the things, I think, are the worse than they’ve ever been and really require us, as law enforcement, to take serious evaluation of not only what we’ve been doing, but what we can do in the future,” Mullen said.

Hard questions, he said, have to be asked about “how can we create those relationships, so we can have those conversations, uncomfortable conversations, and how we can work together to break through” what is happening between the police and communities.

Each individual, Mullen said, has a piece to the answer “we are searching for.”

Having previously served with the Charleston, South Carolina, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, police departments, Mullen spoke of being proactive about building the relationships and creating opportunities for understanding in communities.

“I am convinced we are way better off being proactive ahead of time, in establishing friends and lines of communication … instead of being reactive … after a tragic situation (when) tensions are way too high for normal conversations,” Whiteley said.

Changes, Mullen said, are needed, including changes in mind set.

“We do that by learning about others and respecting (them),” Mullen said. “We do that by looking at both sides of the equation and coming up with things we can all agree on” to create a “better community for all in these very trying times that we are facing.”

Mullen said law enforcement needs to “go where they are … you go to their communities, learn their fears and concerns. All of that builds trust.”

Morton said neither communities nor law enforcement should be lumped together.

If there are “bad actors in our community, we want them locked up, but we also don’t want the police department to protect bad actors in their departments,” said Morton, who also spoke of empathy.

Whiteley agreed, citing what he called a “broad-brush effect” and the need to recognize there are “good cops and bad cops. … Let’s find some good in the departments too.”