Jul 23, 2016 5 min read

Former President George W. Bush’s statement at the memorial service for the officers slain in Dallas is an excellent description of the basis for many of our seemingly intractable debates.

“Argument turns too easily into animosity,” Bush said. “Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

In the context of the tragedy, police officers target young black men as criminals, and protesters see police as racist oppressors. While there are, of course, examples within each group to which those descriptions apply, they are the outliers. And most members of the group do not want to be associated with these fringe figures. So, instead of applying the characteristics of the worst members of a group to the entire group, we need to work with the majority of each group to discourage the inappropriate behaviors of its most extreme members.

In addition to the behavior of individual police officers or protesters, it is important to consider the social structures in which they operate. These structures can certainly impact behavior. When the job performance of police officers is measured by their productivity in terms of traffic stops, searches and arrests, they will be more aggressive, even if their actions do not necessarily reduce crime. When police departments like the one in Ferguson, Mo., are tapped as sources of municipal revenue, then tickets are routinely issued for minor offenses, which ends up angering citizens getting the tickets and reduces their respect for the police force.

Eric Gardner was confronted by police for selling cigarettes on Staten Island in 2014 before he was killed in a chokehold; Michael Brown was confronted initially for walking in the street instead of on the sidewalk in Ferguson; Alton Sterling was selling CDs when he was killed by police in Baton Rouge, La., earlier this month; and Philando Castile was pulled over for a broken taillight before being shot in Minnesota. None of these activities was inherently dangerous, yet all were confronted by the police and ended up dead.

The benign interpretation of this type of police work is that it is justified by James Q. Wilson’s “broken windows’ thesis, which argues that when people notice signs of neglect, such as broken windows that don’t get repaired, or minor offenses being ignored, like turnstile jumping, public space is ceded to criminals and law-breaking is encouraged. So, by rigorously enforcing laws for even minor infractions, a general atmosphere of law and order is created. The “stop and frisk” policy employed in New York City until it was declared unconstitutional is a good example of the policy at work. The cynical interpretation is that police are being used by the elite power structure to keep a lid on the behavior of society’s downtrodden, so that crime and other problems are confined to a few low-income neighborhoods and don’t spread. People who might challenge the current power structure, especially physically imposing black men, are dangerous and must be taught their place.

By avoiding classifying whole groups of people by the actions of their worst members, as former President Bush advocates, it is possible to create solutions. Most residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods are law-abiding citizens; most crimes are committed by a small group of people.

David Kennedy, from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, created a program that dramatically reduced the homicide rate in Boston. First, he worked with the local police to determine who the active criminals were (often gang members).

After getting a lot of information on their criminal activities, he met with them, along with their family members and community leaders, who were also interested in getting them to change their behavior, and informed them they had a choice – while the police had enough evidence to arrest them at the time for things such as drug activity, they were willing to forego that if they would give up their more serious criminal activities. But if they violated the agreement, then the police would put them behind bars for a long time. This broke the cycle of gang violence, where one murder would start a string of retaliations, by giving the gang members a graceful way out. It also broke down the stereotypes the community and the police had about each other. It demonstrated the police were interested in reducing crime, not putting black men in jail. And, the police realized many members of the community wanted them to succeed in their work.

Pittsburgh attempted to use Kennedy’s program a few years ago, but internal politics between the city and the police got in the way when the police refused to cooperate because they were resisting the mayor’s efforts to reform the police department. Without the cooperation of the police, Kennedy abandoned the program.

By attributing the characteristics of the worst members of a group to that entire group, we eliminate the possibility of progress. It is especially important now, during these tense times, not to let fear guide our policies and to build bridges so that we can find mutually beneficial solutions to our most intractable problems.

Kent James is a resident of East Washington.