Defund the Police – Or Neighborhood People and Neighborhood Police Talking to Each Other?

Because of the pandemic, we were in River Forest last month for the Fourth of July.  We haven’t been here for the Fourth all that often, and what I noticed this year was the amount of fireworks.  By 9:00 pm on the Fourth, there was a steady drone of fireworks, like a low bass humming.  You heard lots of individual fireworks, but even when there weren’t fireworks going off nearby, there was a constant drone that went on all night and into the early morning. 

There may have been more of it this year because of the shelter-at-home and social distancing orders that were just ending.  Still, it got me to thinking.  If all the fireworks and the constant noise bothered me in River Forest, where there really weren’t that many fireworks (most of what I was hearing was coming from neighboring towns), what must it be like in parts of Chicago where it’s not just fireworks and it’s not just one or two nights a year.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Saturday that murders in Chicago in July were up 139% from July of last year and that shootings were up 75%.  There are, I am sure, lots of theories as of why this happened, though most of them are probably based on what people already thought before it happened. What I’m wondering is how the people who live in those neighborhoods feel.

With the shooting of George Floyd, and other things that have happened since, a call has arisen on the left to “Defund the Police.”  I understand the frustration people feel when police officers do things like this.  When it is the police, who are supposed to protect you, that are threatening you, it is beyond a problem.  But is defunding the police the way to address this surge of murders and shootings?  It’s easy for people who don’t live in the areas where the murders and shootings are taking place to talk about defunding the police.  They don’t need police.  But do the people actually living where the shootings are happening want fewer police?  It would seem to me, though I could be wrong, that what the people in those areas probably want is not less policing, but better policing.  The question is how to do it.

I’m not an expert, so I would just make a modest suggestion: Instead of listening to so-called leaders who live miles away from where the shootings occur or the top police in headquarters that are also miles away, maybe part of the solution is for the police who work in the areas where the shootings are happening to talk to the people who live the areas where the shootings are happening.

It seems to me the people who live in those neighborhoods and the police who work in those neighborhoods have a common interest: reducing the number of murders and shootings.  If they could talk to each other, maybe they could start to understand what and how the other thinks.  Maybe that would enable them to come up with ideas on how they could work together to reduce shootings.  Maybe they could see the other not as a problem, but as a partner who they could work with to make the neighborhoods they live in and work in safer.

This wouldn’t be easy.  There is a lot of mistrust in the neighborhoods.  But if the local people and the local police can talk and start to understand each other, maybe they can come up with some ideas to reduce the murders and shootings.  Maybe we need to try starting at the bottom and working up.  The other way doesn’t seem to be working.