I think it is important to be a part of the community, not apart from the community. Obviously in big diverse cities things can be dangerous, but at its core, cops have two jobs: Protect, and serve. They fall afoul of the D&D Paladin admonishment of "please be a little less Lawful, and a little more Good" as it stands in many communities. A full half their job should be HELPING the public. Not saving them or distributing tickets or supervising the law, that's "protect". A police force should be like a Rotary Club or an Optimists Club or Shriners, whatever you have in your local area, those groups that have community events for all ages, get the community interacting with them and each-other, build communal bonds.
Have a public BBQ. Sponsor a travelling petting zoo. Charity concert. Set up a fun fair. Volunteering at homeless shelters and food banks. Self-defense classes in community centers. Maybe a sports league with local businesses, I dunno. I don't expect a cop to know every single person in their community, but every single person in the community should be on positive speaking terms with at least one cop outside of their "protect" role, and all the cops should know in turn that at least one of their coworkers has interacted with anyone they're dealing with, and should be able to get that person to deal with the problem.
In my community as a youth, I was in a very poor neighborhood. People fought, and emergency services would not be called, because they feared the concept of "cops" that had to show up along with the ambulances. Instead, they'd just call a taxi if they HAD to get someone to emerg. But one time, someone got hit in the throat. A neighbor deemed it risky enough to call for help, and asked on the phone, "can you send [name]? He should be on the clock right now.", then explained to me that [name] was "chill enough, for a cop". Maybe the injured guy would have been fine taxiing there instead, maybe, either way his recovery situation was probably greatly improved due to that neighbor trusting just one police officer, in an anti-cop environment. That's all that was needed to help someone, the bare minimum of safe interactions to be labelled "chill enough". On the cop-side, too, I'm sure it helps their job when the citizens know and at least tolerably respect them. But in big dense urban environments, even that level of bare minimum interaction just doesn't happen much anymore. If the cops are on the clock, they're on the beat or doing paperwork, not building community relations.
And of course knowing everyone will make you much less likely to enforce unethical or illegal edicts against those you know and interact with.
You know, funny story about how that sort of community policing can be helpful. Remember how I said Wichita avoided the big riots that characterized many other big cities? Well, that is because the Wichita BLM is independent of the rest of the movement.
Why you ask? Well, a few years ago, their local organizer decided that the screaming matches and general hostility they were witnessing in other locations was not working. So they sat down with the police and organized a community BBQ. They invited the entire police force (save a few on call), and they invited community leaders as well as the general public. They played football (including mixing teams instead of "BLM vs. WPD"), they shared stories, they shared food made by local business owners, the whole 9 yards.
Then the National BLM caught wind of this and went ham. They said this was not the way and told them they needed to immediately cease negotiations with WPD. Luckily, Wichita BLM told them "fuck off" and kept doing it as an independent organization. Which meant that when people tried to riot over the summer and WPD crushed it, both them and WBLM went into action mode, sat down, and diffused the situation with only minor damage inflicted on the community.
As far as I know, the National BLM and a lot of their people on Twitter still consider WBLM traitors.
I think it is important to be a part of the community, not apart from the community. Obviously in big diverse cities things can be dangerous, but at its core, cops have two jobs: Protect, and serve. They fall afoul of the D&D Paladin admonishment of "please be a little less Lawful, and a little more Good" as it stands in many communities. A full half their job should be HELPING the public. Not saving them or distributing tickets or supervising the law, that's "protect". A police force should be like a Rotary Club or an Optimists Club or Shriners, whatever you have in your local area, those groups that have community events for all ages, get the community interacting with them and each-other, build communal bonds.
Have a public BBQ. Sponsor a travelling petting zoo. Charity concert. Set up a fun fair. Volunteering at homeless shelters and food banks. Self-defense classes in community centers. Maybe a sports league with local businesses, I dunno. I don't expect a cop to know every single person in their community, but every single person in the community should be on positive speaking terms with at least one cop outside of their "protect" role, and all the cops should know in turn that at least one of their coworkers has interacted with anyone they're dealing with, and should be able to get that person to deal with the problem.
In my community as a youth, I was in a very poor neighborhood. People fought, and emergency services would not be called, because they feared the concept of "cops" that had to show up along with the ambulances. Instead, they'd just call a taxi if they HAD to get someone to emerg. But one time, someone got hit in the throat. A neighbor deemed it risky enough to call for help, and asked on the phone, "can you send [name]? He should be on the clock right now.", then explained to me that [name] was "chill enough, for a cop". Maybe the injured guy would have been fine taxiing there instead, maybe, either way his recovery situation was probably greatly improved due to that neighbor trusting just one police officer, in an anti-cop environment. That's all that was needed to help someone, the bare minimum of safe interactions to be labelled "chill enough". On the cop-side, too, I'm sure it helps their job when the citizens know and at least tolerably respect them. But in big dense urban environments, even that level of bare minimum interaction just doesn't happen much anymore. If the cops are on the clock, they're on the beat or doing paperwork, not building community relations.
And of course knowing everyone will make you much less likely to enforce unethical or illegal edicts against those you know and interact with.
You know, funny story about how that sort of community policing can be helpful. Remember how I said Wichita avoided the big riots that characterized many other big cities? Well, that is because the Wichita BLM is independent of the rest of the movement.
Why you ask? Well, a few years ago, their local organizer decided that the screaming matches and general hostility they were witnessing in other locations was not working. So they sat down with the police and organized a community BBQ. They invited the entire police force (save a few on call), and they invited community leaders as well as the general public. They played football (including mixing teams instead of "BLM vs. WPD"), they shared stories, they shared food made by local business owners, the whole 9 yards.
Then the National BLM caught wind of this and went ham. They said this was not the way and told them they needed to immediately cease negotiations with WPD. Luckily, Wichita BLM told them "fuck off" and kept doing it as an independent organization. Which meant that when people tried to riot over the summer and WPD crushed it, both them and WBLM went into action mode, sat down, and diffused the situation with only minor damage inflicted on the community.
As far as I know, the National BLM and a lot of their people on Twitter still consider WBLM traitors.