POLICING THE BLACK COMMUNITY

According to liberals, there are two ways to police America, one for the white middle class and one for the black underclass

As I mentioned last week, NYPD’s ‘Broken Windows’ approach to crime, also known as ‘Quality-of-Life Maintenance Policing,’ has been criticized by liberals as imposing a white, middle-class morality on urban populations. In other words, according to those liberal critics, there should be two standards of morality in America, one for the white middle class and one for the black underclass.

The term ‘Broken Windows’ arose out of the concept that those who commit minor crimes, like breaking windows in low-income housing projects, should be arrested because sooner or later they are bound to commit serious crimes. Those who commit minor crimes disrupt the lives of the community residents just as those who commit serious crimes. Broken Windows holds that by enforcing all laws, the quality of life for residents is improved and crime is reduced.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton had been and continues to be a strong advocate and supporter of Broken Windows even though liberals accuse the program of being responsible for the death of Eric Garner, a 350-pound asthmatic with a history of heart disease. Garner, who had a rap sheet of 30 arrests since 1980, had been arrested multiple times for selling single cigarettes, known as "loosies," from cigarette packs which had not been taxed. On July 17, 2014, NY cops responded to a complaint from Staten Island merchants that Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes again. When they attempted to arrest him, the 350-pound giant resisted. When it was all over, he was dead.

Liberals claim Garner should never have been arrested for such a ‘minor’ offense because selling untaxed cigarettes was an accepted way, among other unlawful activities, of earning a living in New York’s black neighborhoods.

Whenever and wherever a white cop shoots a black man it becomes a flashpoint resulting in demonstrations against the police. It seems as though the ‘community’ believes that no shooting of an African-American man by a white cop is justified. It used to be that if a cop believed he faced an imminent threat to his life, he would be justified in resorting to deadly force. Them days are history. Now, unless the officer can prove the threat was for real, as opposed to in his mind, he will find himself in deep trouble, especially if it’s a white cop shooting a black man.

This begs the question: Should America’s minority neighborhoods be policed differently from white middle class neighborhoods? I say yes, but not in the way liberals want to do it.

Liberals want us to stop “imposing a white, middle-class morality on urban populations.“ Now that is absolutely absurd. We cannot have a set of rules for one group of our population and a different set of rules for another. For laws to be justified, they must apply to and be enforced on all citizens. People should not have the right to choose which laws they want to obey and which laws they want to defy.

Here is what Riverside, California experienced in applying a double standard to policing divergent neighborhoods. Back in the ‘70s, Riverside had a very progressive police chief. He had some innovative ideas such as having his officers spend a penniless day and night on L.A.’s skid row and having his officers locked up in a jail overnight. He believed it was important for his officers to know first-hand what it was like to be homeless and to be locked up in jail. He also decided to take a radically different approach to policing Casablanca, a crime infested Mexican-American neighborhood, plagued by the Chagolla (sp.?) gang.

It seems as though the Chagollas convinced the Casablanca residents, probably through intimidation, that they would do a better job of protecting the community than the cops. When the liberal police chief met with some of the residents he agreed that his cops would no longer patrol Casablanca. How did that nonsense work out? No too well. The gang extorted money from the residents in return for their protection. If a cop happened to venture into Casablanca, he was met with gunfire.

Finally, after the residents had had their fill of Chagolla law and order, they asked the cops to return. But it wasn’t all that easy. The cops literally had to fight their way back into the neighborhood. In order to avoid being targeted by the Chagollas, they even changed their uniforms by eliminating badges, shoulder patches and sergeant stripes, collar insignia and other items that could reflect street lights in the darkness, adopting non-reflective cloth materials instead.

How should the black community be policed when its members have a deep mistrust of the cops? Certainly not by letting the Bloods and Crips take over maintaining order like the Chagollas did in Casablanca. And not by ignoring low-level crimes that may be acceptable to the community.

I have previously advocated that only black cops should be assigned to maintain order in black urban neighborhoods. For that I was severely criticized and accused of practicing segregation. My answer to that is: Despite court orders to the contrary we still have all black schools and all black housing. Besides that, I did not suggest that only white cops police white neighborhoods. Furthermore, let me also point out that the tribal lands of American Indians have their own police forces.

So criticize me if you like, but I still believe that only black cops should police our black communities. With black cops policing black neighborhoods, the community will become more trustful of the police and will eventually embrace the Broken Windows concept of enforcing all laws. And if a black cop shoots a black man, no one can say that racism lurked behind the shooting.

If it’s not all black cops in all black neighborhoods, does anyone have a better suggestion?