March 2012 Subscriber Letter
March 2012
Dear Reconciler Family,
On February 4, I spoke in Glendora, California, about ORM’s participation at the Reconciliation and Police Legitimacy Summit, hosted by the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. In many American cities the community and the police are simply at odds, and that especially includes members of ethnic groups who seem to be on the receiving end of most of the police abuses. Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow, claims that there are more blacks in the prison/parole/probation system today than there were slaves in pre-Civil War America.
Some in law enforcement are now aware of what has slowly become a national scandal – the scandal of incarceration. There has been a movement from overt Jim Crow laws (separate drinking fountains, etc.) to constant harassment, according to David Kennedy, author of “Don’t Shoot.” He cites the case of one young black man named Timothy who was assigned 21 traffic charges in less than 1½ years. Timothy was eventually shot and killed for bolting from his car after yet another police stop. Kennedy mentions “new tools of intimidation” such as draconian drug laws with 15-year “mandatory minimums,” unrealistic penalties and the slow privatizing of the prison system which Atlantic magazine exposed as “the prison-industrial complex.” This is the shocking reality for the last 20 years where it has become financially profitable for communities to keep people locked up – two million jobs now depend on it!
Bernard Melekian, Director of Community Oriented Policing Services, bluntly told the assembled delegates in Washington that this crisis has become a matter of “restoring public trust” between the police and the community. Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy commented that this rift between ethnic groups and the law “is rooted in the history of this country. The most visible form of government in most places is the police force.”
Such leaders as Police Chief Dean Esserman of New Haven, C.T., Captain Josh Ederheimer of the Metropolitan Washington Narcotics Investigative Unit, and the inevitable David Kennedy are part of a “new breed” of law enforcement determined to turn things around. They see all sides of this tragic conflict. “No officer leaves for duty in the morning and wants to be involved in an incident that will scar his reputation and cost his city millions of dollars in legal fees,” Bernard Melekian has stated. As Reconcile newsletter has opined for years, that attitude of empathy for all involved is the first necessary step in transforming inner city police work and thus keep justice rolling on like a river. Jesus did not say, “I was in prison and you said it was all my fault,” but “I was in prison and you visited me.”
I thought I would share this message with you to help keep you informed on what your prayers and donations are doing. They are helping transform lives in many different venues.
Thank you and God bless you,
Curtis May