On June 16th (7 pm, Senior Center) Wellfleet will hold a forum on “community policing.”
It’s a well-intentioned effort to address current concerns about our town’s policing, “worrisome incidents” as one citizens put it. But the very concept is a problem.
According to Wikipedia, “Community policing, or community-oriented policing, is a strategy of policing that focuses on police building ties and working closely with members of the communities.” Sounds good—how can you knock cooperation?– but it is misleading in seeming to set the police up as a separate-but-equal fiefdom, albeit encouraged to cooperate with the community, like neighboring nations over a border.
So the forum concept is based on the very problem it should be addressing.
It might be helpful at the forum to spend time developing a model. If not friendly relations between sovereign states, what is a useful model to keep in mind? Pros vs. amateurs? That covers part of it. Cops as parents making sure we obey the laws? To some extent. But ultimately, any sound understanding, especially where there is conflict, must be based on a relationship of public servants to the public they are hired to serve; of employees to those who hire them. In business parlance they report to us, not the other way around.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FYI: My book with the long title, LIFE AS A HOUSE; AN ENGLISH PROFESSOR BECOMES THE FIRST IN THE KNOWN HISTORY OF HIS FAMILY TO BUILD A HOUSE AND CHANGES THE MEANING OF HIS LIFE, is being serialized by SUSTENANCE, the new (and classy looking) online magazine put out by Provincetown Public Press. Check it out at: http://readsustenance.com/features/
No Comments