CINCINNATI POLICING
May 21, 2015
It has been my experience that
just when I am looking for particular examples of peacemaking, they come to
me. That was the case recently with the
story of policing in Richmond, CA, that I blogged about. I have further found that what I notice away
from home comes close to home if I’m looking for it. This morning, the locally broadcast BBC “Newshour”
contained a segment on the style of policing introduced by a chief who had
retired from the force in my home city, Columbus, Ohio. It turns out that the BBC has a series of
three video reports on how police in Cincinnati work, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=cincinnati%20police
. Here, too, is a report from Cincinnati
on the visit two days ago by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to celebrate
policing there as an exemplary police response to their own “broken window”
policing: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/05/19/loretta-lynch-visit/27606525/
.
It is not that Cincinnati
policing is utopian. It is acknowledged
to be a work in progress. While the
initiative (rather than cooperation) that reorients policing toward public
safety and welfare surely also comes from community groups and organizations.
Once again, it is an irony that
I have had to go abroad to find out what has been going on right around me all
along. It reflects an underlying
truth: The heat of violence and demands
for punishment is so much louder than the fruits of peacemaking. At root, peacemaking means amplifying the
voices and stories less heard in the games of attaining power over other we
play in all our relations, especially in the minds of those of us who hold the
greater power, in the process of building trust in our shared humanity. It turns out that if you make a point of
looking for peacemaking, it might just find you.
My thanks to the BBC for showing
that peacemaking policing is real, with real effects, especially so close to
home. I encourage readers to check out
the BBC trilogy, colleagues to share with students. Love and peace, hal
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