by Christopher, The Last of a Dying Breed“ Walton, Santa Rosa Correctional Institution, Milton, Florida
We extend our appreciation to all who have joined the community against the behavior of a bad cop, Derek Chauvin. Besides the continuation of adding to the litany of names of men and women who have been killed, maimed, and injured excessively by active and retired law enforcement officers in America, there is another sinister problem lurking among the ranks of law enforcement officers and their Blue Wall of Silence… domestic violence.
Both of them need to be excised from police departments in America. No, NFL players do not have a monopoly on domestic violence. In fact even though they are criticized for domestic violence because of greater media visibility, they actually have a lower domestic violence rate than do police officers (40 percent) and the community rate (10 percent). The link between law enforcement violence against Black men and women and law enforcement domestic violence is that they both are pervasive, swept under the run, and go unpunished.
So, instead of looting, destroying, and ruining the businesses and jobs of innocent business owners and employees (many of whom are Black and other minorities), we should be sitting at the table with good cops and negotiating solutions to this problem that we have been facing for four hundred years.
We should be negotiating full transparency by our law enforcement agencies. We should be asking why a police officer could have eighteen complaints, be involved in two shootings, and be disciplined twice, and still be on a police force interacting with the public. We should want to know why his partner with six complaints and one disciplinary action is still on the force. We should want to know why Chauvin felt comfortable killing someone for what would have been a misdemeanor at best (if found guilty), with the whole world watching.
Instead of wasting productive energy in looting, we should be negotiating policies that can stop at least one hundred Blacks from being killed by law enforcement officers each year. Among those requirements are:
• Body cameras and dash-cams for all law enforcement officers to be used whenever interacting with the public.
• Requiring periodic personality tests, anger management tests and training, aggression testing, and mental health evaluations for all new law enforcement recruits and veteran officers.
• Implicit bias association tests and training should be required of every officer before they are allowed to interact with the public.
• Diversity and implicit bias reduction training should become a continuous part of in-service training plans for all law enforcement officers throughout the officers’ tenure in their prospective agencies.
• Law enforcement agencies should form a diverse group of officers to serve as a quality control committee as a means of providing self-monitoring, suggestions, mentoring and ideas as to how departments can prevent and resolve bias behaviors and complaints.
• Law enforcement officers should weed out officers who are “ticking time bombs” and are more likely to engage in unprofessional and abusive behaviors to avoid loss of life and millions of dollars in damages because of their behavior.
A few bad cops ruin the lives and safety of good police officers who seldom, rarely, or never receive complaints and who work trying to build better police-community relations. Bad officers should no longer be allowed to hid behind their badges, uniforms, and a blue wall of silence. They should be called out, disciplined and/or terminated.
American can no longer afford “The Fire Next Time” again. It is too expensive and can ultimately destroy America and millions of lives.