Every other week, law enforcement gives us another reason to distrust them. Whether it’s campus, local or state police, they are becoming more undependable, and people of every race should fear that.
As Americans, we should be able to find comfort when we see a police car or feel protected knowing that “911” is only three taps away. The key word here is “should.” Many Americans have felt safe at one point, but in recent years, “fear” is now the stigma associated with police officers.
During LSU’s spring break, LSUPD failed to send out an emergency email alert about an attempted armed robbery that took place in front of Pleasant Hall, leaving students to find out from Twitter and other social media.
That is probably not enough to completely lose trust in police, but it is enough to doubt their dependency and worry for your safety.
But the combination of that incident and 911 operators in New Orleans failing to answer emergency calls is enough to start raising serious questions about police dependency.
On April 22, after a shooting in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans, many witnesses were outraged after some of their 911 calls went unanswered. Other witnesses whose calls were answered believed they weren’t addressed with urgency.
Not only is that frightening and dangerous, but it is completely unacceptable.
Ironically, a recent poll by Huffington Post showed many Americans still have faith in the police. And not surprisingly, according to the same poll, 67 percent of white people have faith in their local police, but only 36 percent of African Americans feel the same.
The question now is, “Why is there such a racial divide in the amount of faith entrusted in law enforcement?”
Probably because there isn’t a white male being killed every other week as a result of police brutality.
Because white people’s main worry has never been whether their brother or father will end up in a body bag if he’s pulled over for a simple traffic stop, they don’t have significant reason to distrust police.
On Tuesday, President Obama addressed the death of Freddie Gray, saying, “Since Ferguson and the task force that we put together, we have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals — primarily African-American, often poor — in ways that raise troubling questions. And it comes up, it seems like, once a week now.”
It is hard to argue that it is just a coincidence that black people have nearly half the faith in their local police than white people do. This is clearly a race issue.
From here, we need to find a middle ground. We know we can’t always depend on police, and taking matters into our own hands can become instantly catastrophic, as we are seeing in Baltimore.
More African Americans need to vote so we can have some say in whom the judges, police department officials, and district attorneys are — all important figures in cases such as Ferguson. Police officers should be properly trained so they’ll stop using deadly force on every individual who “threatens” them. The court system needs to be altered so that officers who are accused of using inappropriate force are indicted.
America as a whole needs to recognize that police officers in general are beginning to fail and misjudge us. This shouldn’t be black communities versus police. Every race needs to understand that what’s going on right now is unjust.
History is repeating itself. A black man is wrongfully killed, black communities protest, and then law enforcement comes out in full armor and shields. A stranger to our country would believe we were about to go to war with the police.
And this isn’t how it is suppose to be. We should be able to count on and put all of our trust into police. But this traces back to people feeling like they can’t depend on police to do their jobs.
Police officers need to give us no choice but to trust them by doing what they are paid to do — protect and serve their communities.
Clarke Perkins is a 19-year-old political science freshman from New Orleans. You can reach her on Twitter@ClarkePerkins.