“Matt Dillon,” I thought to myself. “She’s got to be kidding, right? What kind of person names their kid Matt Dylan?”
I’m not sure what I’d expected the new chief to look like. The last one was overweight, smoked, a lot, and wasn’t exactly known for his sense of fashion. I suppose I just thought this was going to be more of the same. I was a bit taken aback when I first saw him step out. It was immediately apparent that this was not going to be more of anything this city had already seen.
Chief Dylan—I still couldn’t believe his parents actually named him that—began by expressing his appreciation for being asked to speak. His voice was soft and deep, and it resonated with power and authority. “One of the more significant concerns of the American public today is the level and violent nature of crime across the country,” he said. The podium had been strategically positioned but was going to be nothing more than mere stage accoutrement for this guy. He rolled into motion, moving with a deliberate, stately gait, using his hands for emphasis as he spoke.
“Since the 1940s, incidents of crime in the United States have risen by more than 10,000 percent. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it makes the point. We’ve seen some encouraging decreases in the overall crime rate lately, particularly violent crime. However,” he continued, “these decreases will likely be short-lived and appear as nothing more than an insignificant blip on the histogram of escalating criminal activity. That is, unless we make some long overdue changes to current police practices and develop new and improved methodologies and processes for engaging in the activity we call policing.” He moved across the stage, drawing the attention of everyone in the auditorium with each step. He punctuated critical passages with dynamic voice inflections, tonal modulations, and animated hand and arm gestures.
“We’re witnessing an epidemic of juvenile violence of unparalleled proportions. Fear is becoming a debilitating anathema that is slowly and insidiously sucking the life out of a once-vibrant society. Many of us sit and watch these various manifestations of decay in disbelief, wondering when the police will get things under control. It seems as if we’re waiting for Glinda to wave a magic wand and create a solution that’ll eradicate all social disorder and criminality, or perhaps for a Messiah to lead us into a promising new era of peace, harmony and justice. But neither of these things is likely to happen… evvver!
“If you’re waiting for the police to take back the streets, here’s a little rain for your parade. The police can’t take back the streets. There’s not a single documented case in the history of policing of any police taking back any street, anywhere in America. There simply aren’t enough police anywhere in the world to do that.”
I was stunned, because the police are always talking about “taking back the streets.” It seems we’ve been fighting a war on crime for years and now he’s telling us we’re not going to get our streets back from the bad guys. This didn’t strike me as a good thing.
Dylan continued, “In 1981, President Reagan was shot while he was literally surrounded by people who had no other purpose in life but to protect him. Now, if the president of the United States can be shot while surrounded by people who are dedicated to protecting him, what makes any of you think that 900,000 police officers can protect a nation with a population of 308 million people from every incident of crime or disorder?”
Okay, that’s a good point, I thought.
“It’ll only be through cooperation and collaboration of the police as facilitators, and the public as interested, active participants, that our streets will be taken back. Police don’t take back the streets! People do! Only when you have had enough and combine your efforts with those of the police can any real progress be made in reclaiming our streets. Reclamation takes hard work. It requires dedication and commitment by all of us to improve the processes that will ultimately alter our social condition.”
The room hushed. It seemed as though everyone was a little shell-shocked. It wasn’t just me. I don’t believe anyone had an inkling of what to expect at this point.
“I used to believe, like many of you,” Chief Dylan continued, “that we were only responsible for ourselves. Remember the sixties? ‘Do your own thing.’ ‘If it feels good do it.’ I see some of you out there are nodding your heads. They weren’t just a bunch of feel-good slogans—they were the forces of a movement, and an entire generation became self-absorbed. Well, the sixties have come and gone, and I see things a little differently than I did back then. My rose-colored glasses have turned a smoky shade of gray and I realize there’s nothing I can do that won’t impact someone else. At the same time, there’s not a single action we, as a community, take collectively, regarding any one of us, that won’t also have an impact on the rest of us.
“We need to cultivate new levels of trust between the police and the public. As practitioners, we must admit to our shortcomings and commit to a higher set of ideals. As citizens, we must accept our responsibility as active participants in the effort to police our communities. Ultimately, we must all make a commitment to shoulder the burden for building our cities and bear the consequences for designing inappropriate initiatives.
“The police cannot address all social disorder issues independent of citizen involvement. We must instead accept the responsibility for our individual actions for the safety and security of our own persons and property, and for the collective welfare of our communities.
“We’ve been locked in a system of pure law enforcement for several decades now. Some of us have forgotten there’s a difference between policing and enforcing the law. Our emphasis is on catching the bad guys and putting them in jail. That’s a position regularly evidenced by the rallying and backslapping among officers when a cop makes a ‘good collar.’ Police officers readily recognize, as does the public, significant acts of heroism or the high profile criminal arrest. But officers who, in the absence of a fortuitous circumstance, dedicate themselves to solving community problems, helping a family in crisis, working with a misdirected young person or taking the time to attend a neighborhood meeting, rarely receive the same peer applause or community recognition. Action-and-adventure policing is glorified while officers demonstrating compassion, commitment, and altruism go largely unnoticed. Officers displaying such qualities are often ridiculed and accused of not doing ‘real’ police work.”
I found myself enjoying this immensely, but I had to keep shifting from leg to leg and repositioning myself against the wall to keep my extremities from falling asleep. I didn’t want to miss a word. The community was in turmoil because people held the perception that the police were insensitive and overly prone to violence. It looked as if that might be about to change.
I quickly scanned the room. It appeared that everyone was as into this as I was. People were generally nodding in affirmation and whispering their agreement to one another. The intensity in the room was palpable.
“Unfortunately, too few of us demonstrate any understanding of the complexity and connectivity of our social systems and our community relationships,” Chief Dylan went on, drawing the room in with every word. “It’s time to embrace our interdependence and recognize the significance each individual has in relationship to the whole. The more we acknowledge the complexity and interconnectedness of the events taking place around us, the greater will be our appreciation for the need to alter the nature and role of the police. Our willingness to work in concert with our criminal justice representatives to eliminate or mitigate circumstances conducive to crime and social disorder is our best hope to more effectively manage crime and to cultivate a more tranquil society.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop. Every eye in the place followed the chief’s every move. Heads continued nodding and people kept glancing toward one another with smiles of approval. It felt as if someone had turned up the heat in the auditorium. It was really warm and a bit uncomfortable. You know the feeling you get when you’ve been caught doing something you aren’t supposed to do? I felt as if the chief knew I was in the room and was directing everything he said right at me.
“Did