Conversation Starters

 Written April 15, 2021 Community Safety Belongs to All of Us As I write, the trial of Derek Chauvin unfolds.  This Minnesota police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man whose only crime was paying for some items at a convenience store with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.  For this nonviolent offense, Mr. Floyd was pinned to the ground with Officer Chauvin’s knee on his neck.  Video footage of the nine minutes and thirty seconds that proved to be Mr. Floyd’s final moments captured him struggling for air and gasping the words, “I can’t breathe.”  Even so, this officer of the law remained unmoved and Mr. Floyd died (Chappell, 2021).  The video itself became a tragic viral phenomenon capturing the cruel final moments of Mr. Floyd’s life.   The harsh and heartbreaking reality is that stories like this are only too common in the United States.  As “Policing in America,” a recent episode of the NPR podcast Throughline , thoroughly expl...

Policy Overview Policing in the United States has a long, often troubling, history (Anderson, 2016).  With law enforcement being tasked with the bulk of what is broadly defined as “public safety,” officers are said to “protect and serve” the public-at-large.  The harsh reality, though, is that Black and Brown people are targeted more often by the police, resulting in generations of community trauma and escalating violence between the two “sides” (Sakala and La Vigne, 2019). What’s true, too, is that these public safety trustees are called to serve functions that go outside of typical police officer training or common expectation of their duties (Vermeer et al, 2020).  This combination of implicit (or explicit) racial biases/tensions and the undue stress of calling the police for matters that they are not equipped or needed to handle has resulted in unnecessary violence and death, both of residents and sworn officers (Kahn, 2018).  In 2020, the murder-by-police of Geo...

  “Not being violent enough could cost me my body.  Being too violent could cost me my body.  We could not get out.”  ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me 2pm, Saturday, May 30th As I sit down to write this, a peaceful protest is happening in Downtown Cleveland. Chants of “Black Lives Matter!” echo from the live feed on social media. The crowd looks massive and calm but resolute. They chant for George Floyd. They chant for Ahmaud Abrey. They chant for Breonna Taylor. They chant for so many names, so many lives. My social media is  overwhelmed  with posts about riots and protests and actions happening all across the country in response to this slew of tragedies — this continued march of the straight up murder of Black people by police officers. People are discussing their feelings about these injustices, they are showing up by sharing out. Many of the white people I know who are often quiet on their social media have been especially vocal these past ...