Police should not cede the moral high ground; our playbook includes dignity and respect for all, procedural justice

I HAVE WRITTEN thousands of words in the past few weeks, almost none of them for public consumption. I am so frustrated with the masses of self-righteous critics who find it convenient to blame the police for all of society’s racial divisions.

It’s a distant memory already that cops were re-emerging as heroes during the COVID-19 panic. Google changed its home-page artwork on April 8 in praise of first responders, surely signifying worldwide admiration for officers exposing themselves to the virus. Two months later, it seems to be of no concern how many officers died from COVID-19 and how many tested positive during the most serious social disruption of our lifetimes.

The country has quickly pivoted from Black Lives Matter being a fringe group post-Ferguson to “black lives matter” gaining mainstream acceptance and acclaim. More white people, black people, celebrities, athletes, businesses, and organizations are getting behind BLACK LIVES MATTER. Amazon, Microsoft, the National Football League, Procter and Gamble, the Gannett newspaper chain, Google, and Sephora were among many giving money and support to black employees, businesses, and organizations. I have no major objections to these marketing and political decisions; they are doing what they feel is best, I guess.

WHAT IS WRONG is to pile on with an “us vs. them” condemnation – the “them” being law enforcement. We regularly hear outrage directed at “police brutality, racism, and injustice,” accompanied by the explicit suggestion that “reforming the police” will adequately target all of those problems. Sadly, racism, discrimination, prejudice, injustice, and bad practices – which are not the same thing -- infect too many tentacles of our civic, economic, political, religious, and academic infrastructure – including many places from which the criticism of police loudly emanates.

As a law enforcement leader, I refuse to cede the moral high ground to the growing coalition that sees police reform as the best and penultimate response to racism in America. It’s so much easier – and it takes less energy -- to focus blame on the police than it is reflect on indicators of racism and unequal opportunity in their own social circles, churches, schools, civic organizations, neighborhoods, and places of work.

Every police executive I know is one hundred percent against police brutality, racism, and injustice. Our passionate desire to build trust with communities of color is precisely why all seven ILACP presidents since Ferguson in 2014 – Chiefs Fred Hayes, Frank Kaminski, Steven Casstevens, James Kruger, Brian Fengel, Steven Stelter, and now James Black – have been active in our statewide collaboration with the NAACP Illinois State Conference and, since 2018, pushing our Ten Shared Principles. On top of that, we have posted or shared dozens of Facebook stories from northeastern Illinois to the Quad-Cities to Pekin to Springfield and Edwardsville to Carbondale and points in between of our chiefs and their officers building strong relationships with National Night Out and daily community policing.

So what’s next?

THIS DUST WILL SETTLE, as it always does, and when it does, we need to keep influencing what happens next. We can lead. The Illinois Chiefs are in the process right now of generating a list of proactive active ideas for our association and individual police departments. We are engaged in the discussions with federal and Illinois officials. We are prepared to continue delivering the transparency and accountability that our communities rightfully expect. We are in strong agreement with those who say that bad cops need to be removed and prevented from working for other departments.

The Illinois Chiefs have a progressive, forward-looking playbook. It’s our Ten Shared Principles – the preservation of life, treating everyone with dignity and respect, procedural justice, building trust, de-escalation and much more. We are committed to doing everything we can to keep our communities as safe as possible. We publicly profess these shared principles with our partners in the NAACP. Since 2018, more than 200 police departments in Illinois have adopted these principles as their own. The Illinois Municipal League and its 1,298 members agree that the principles are worth promoting.

Meanwhile, your officers, collectively, did 99,999 things right today. They made your community safer by showing up for their shifts. You see their work as noble, and you are right. Spread the word.

Ed Wojcicki has been executive director of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police since 2014. Below, ILACP President James R. Black, chief of police in Crystal Lake, participates in the World Cafe Summit in 2019 in Peoria.