After listening to this TED Talk while at the Y today, I felt like maybe there is hope for the future because of people like Melvin Russell, District Commander of the Baltimore Police Department. Instead of retiring, he decided to make a difference. I took the liberty to take excerpts from his talk here....
"I love being a police officer because it's always been a calling for me - and never a job. But law enforcement is in a crisis. And I concluded we can't arrest our way out of this, so my wife and targeted a date that we would retire. But there was a higher power than I. There was a love for the city that I grew up in, that I was educated in -- a city that pulled my heart back into the system.
So we didn't retire.
I had this passion to implement some radical policing. And so I transcended from being a drug sergeant -- ready to retire - to a district commander of the worst district in Baltimore city. We called it the Eastern District, the most violent district, the most impoverished district - with 46 percent unemployment.
So I said we gotta do something different. We gotta think outside the box. In order to bring change that I desperately wanted and felt in my heart, I had to start listening to that man on the inside that went against everything that I had been trained to do.
For example, we have the audacity and the nerve to get upset with law enforcement. But there is no way in the world that we, as a community, should be calling the police for kids playing ball in the street - or calling the police because my neighbor's music is up too loud, or because his dog came over to my yard and did a number two.
When I was a little boy in Baltimore we played rough in the street and I ain't never see the police come and break us up. You know who came? It was the elders. It was the parental figures in the community. It was the guardians, it was that village mentality who said, "Stop that!" and "Do this." and "Stop that." We had mentors throughout all of the community.
So I began to listen.
See, police have a problem. Off the top, we want to come up with these extravagant strategies and deployments, but we never talk to the community about them. We shove them into the community and say, "Take that." But we decided to pull up a chair and say "we want to hear from you. What's going to work in your community?"
And then some great things started to happen.
05:07See, here's the thing: I had to figure out a way to shift 130 cops from being occupiers of communities to being partners. I had to figure out how to do that. Because here's the crazy thing: in law enforcement, we have evolved into something incredible.
Listen, we have become great protectors. We know how to protect you. But we have exercised that arm so much, so very much. If I represented a police department, you would see this incredible, beautiful, 23-inch arm. It's pretty, ain't it? No fat on it. It just looks good! That's a great arm -- protection! That's who we are, but we've exercised it so much and sometimes it has led to abuse. It's led to coldness and callousness, and has dehumanized us. But the mantra across this nation is to protect and serve.
So you look at the other arm, (serve) and you know, it's kinda weak. It looks sickly. It's withering and it's dying because we've invested so much in our protective arm. We have forgotten to treat our communities like they're our customers; like they're our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers. And so somehow, along the way, we've gotten out of balance.
Listen, because I'm also a preacher I'm very hard on the churches, because I believe the churches too often have been missing in action. I believe they have shifted over the last 10, 20 years from being community churches, where you walk outside your door, round the corner and you're in church. They shifted from that and became commuter churches. So you now have churches who have become disconnected by default from the very community where they're planted. And they don't take care of that community.
But I say this: it's not too late for all of us to build our cities and nation to make it great again.
It is never too late. You see, after three years of my four-and-a-half-year commandership in that district, after putting pastors in the car with my police because I knew this: it was hard to stay a nasty police officer while you're riding around with a clergy, we came up with some incredible initiatives, engagements for our community to build trust back.
We began to deal with our youth and with those who we consider are on the wrong side of the fence. We knew we had an economic problem, so we began to create jobs. We knew there was sickness in our community and they didn't have access to proper medical care, so we'd partner up. We partnered up with anybody that wanted to partner with us, never thinking about the crime. Because at the end of the day, if we took care of the needs of the people, if we got to the root cause, the crime would take care of itself.
And so, after three years of a four-and-a-half-year stint, we looked back and we looked over and found out that we were at a 40-year historical low: our crime numbers, our homicides -- everything had dropped down, back to the 1970s. Forty-year crime low, so much so I had other commanders call me, "Hey Mel, whatcha doin', man? Whatcha doin'? We gotta get some of that!"
But I gotta tell you this: these last few years have disappointed me. They have broken my heart. The uprisings hurt. It hurts my heart, because truly I believe that it should've never happened, and it wouldn't have happened if we were allowed to continue along the vein that we were in, serving our community, treating them like human beings, treating them with respect, loving on them first. If we continued in that vein, it would've never happened.
Listen, we have become great protectors. We know how to protect you. But we have exercised that arm so much, so very much. If I represented a police department, you would see this incredible, beautiful, 23-inch arm. It's pretty, ain't it? No fat on it. It just looks good! That's a great arm -- protection! That's who we are, but we've exercised it so much and sometimes it has led to abuse. It's led to coldness and callousness, and has dehumanized us. But the mantra across this nation is to protect and serve.
So you look at the other arm, (serve) and you know, it's kinda weak. It looks sickly. It's withering and it's dying because we've invested so much in our protective arm. We have forgotten to treat our communities like they're our customers; like they're our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers. And so somehow, along the way, we've gotten out of balance.
Listen, because I'm also a preacher I'm very hard on the churches, because I believe the churches too often have been missing in action. I believe they have shifted over the last 10, 20 years from being community churches, where you walk outside your door, round the corner and you're in church. They shifted from that and became commuter churches. So you now have churches who have become disconnected by default from the very community where they're planted. And they don't take care of that community.
But I say this: it's not too late for all of us to build our cities and nation to make it great again.
It is never too late. You see, after three years of my four-and-a-half-year commandership in that district, after putting pastors in the car with my police because I knew this: it was hard to stay a nasty police officer while you're riding around with a clergy, we came up with some incredible initiatives, engagements for our community to build trust back.
We began to deal with our youth and with those who we consider are on the wrong side of the fence. We knew we had an economic problem, so we began to create jobs. We knew there was sickness in our community and they didn't have access to proper medical care, so we'd partner up. We partnered up with anybody that wanted to partner with us, never thinking about the crime. Because at the end of the day, if we took care of the needs of the people, if we got to the root cause, the crime would take care of itself.
And so, after three years of a four-and-a-half-year stint, we looked back and we looked over and found out that we were at a 40-year historical low: our crime numbers, our homicides -- everything had dropped down, back to the 1970s. Forty-year crime low, so much so I had other commanders call me, "Hey Mel, whatcha doin', man? Whatcha doin'? We gotta get some of that!"
But I gotta tell you this: these last few years have disappointed me. They have broken my heart. The uprisings hurt. It hurts my heart, because truly I believe that it should've never happened, and it wouldn't have happened if we were allowed to continue along the vein that we were in, serving our community, treating them like human beings, treating them with respect, loving on them first. If we continued in that vein, it would've never happened.
But I'm excited again, because now we have a police commissioner who absolutely understands and embraces the community. Listen, I'm excited about Baltimore today, because we, as many cities, I believe shall rise from the ashes. I believe -- I truly believe, that we will be great again. I believe, as we continue to wrap arms and continue to say, "We're in this together, we have the same goal, we all want peace, we all want respect for one another, we all want love" ..... and I believe, we are back on that road."
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