My Perspective

The events of the last eleven days have rocked the law enforcement community and the nation. For the first time that I can recall in my forty years as a law enforcement officer have I seen such universal condemnation from law enforcement executives across the country. I cannot begin to understand the feelings of fear and resentment that communities of color or even my African American colleagues endure. However, I can express my sincere sadness of what this senseless eight minutes and forty-six seconds has done to what I believed was incremental progress over the last five years since the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

There is both a professional side and a human side to this tragedy. Certainly, we can see from a professional perspective that the hard work and relationship building we have done the last several years could now be evaporated. But even more tragic, is the human cost of the last week and a half. The first of course is the tragic loss of Mr. Floyd’s life and the contribution he may have made to society, the tragic loss of several police officer’s lives as a result of the demonstrations that were co-opted by groups intent on destruction and violence at the police, but as tremendous as these losses are, the loss of trust between the police and the community and even neighbor to neighbor maybe even more horrendous in the months and years to come.

I have been very open about my naiveté about some of the issues that the black community has faced. I never heard of “the talk” until several years ago and decades as a police officer. I did work for a time, right out of high school, as a police officer in the deep south over forty years ago, and saw firsthand systemic discrimination. Basically still an idealistic teenager I knew it was time to go back home to Chicago, where I thought things were much better because I was never exposed to any other way of life in the near west suburbs and twelve years of parochial school.  I saw it as an economic divide, but not a racial one.

Over the last forty years, I was extremely fortunate to try to live up to two guiding principles. The first and most important is my Christian values and the Golden Rule and secondly is my steadfast belief in the Constitution to treat everyone equally and fairly. I did have an experience very early as a young sergeant in the mid-’90s with an African American family at our public housing project. We would be called to their apartment for domestic disturbances at least twice a week for over a month. When I arrived as the supervisor I made the tremendous error of using the phrase “you people”. Now, I meant the phrase referring to that particular family and the repeated calls to their home, not race, but of course, it was not taken that way. I spent the next hour sitting in their apartment living room talking about police-community relationships, shared Christian values, and praying together. Needless to say, I learned a very valuable lesson very early in my career and never used that phrase again. But more importantly, I started to see an awakening of the thoughts and perspective of those that have a very different life story.

Fast forward thirty years and the work we have done between the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police and the Illinois NAACP. Due to a lot of work by my predecessors, I was honored to be the president when we finalized the Ten Shared Principles. Even while we were at the signing ceremony at the old state capital in Springfield, the NAACP state president turned to me and asked point-blank, now what? And she was right. The shared principles cannot just be a nice ceremony and a fancy poster. They must be a commitment to the community and to our profession, but more so they must be a jumping-off point for positive change.

It is sometimes frustrating that the police seem to be on the tail end of a very large sociology experiment. While we have no control over social policy decisions or the laws we enforce, we no less become the fall guys and the outward symbol to the community of government. There must be a concerted effort to allow us to be peace officers, with an emphasis on peace. The rhetoric of the war on crime, the war on drugs is not helpful. We cannot police our way out of these issues. Police legitimacy has taught us that we must rely on the community’s will to want to be policed and the belief that it will be done in a manner consistent with our moral values. Our success counts on the innate goodness of the majority of individual people to want to do the right thing and live according to a certain set of values.

I pray that we can be part of a real transformation in society. This generation of law enforcement executives know what we have to do, but we need the community and the elected official’s help to do it. We’re not afraid of the change that is necessary or lack the will. I still believe this is the most honorable profession in the world and while we cannot control the actions of everyone that works for us, or truly know what’s in their heart, we can hold people accountable and create cultures that make doing the right thing and treating everyone with dignity and respect the rule, not the exception. All I ask is for fair-minded people to be our partner and know that it’s not business as usual. We truly are a work in progress but we are also a reflection of the communities we serve. And in that sentiment, it isn’t just a time to point the finger, but look into the mirror.