Following recent police shootings of black men who were unarmed, pinned down, or apparently above suspicion, “Black Lives Matter” gained more credibility than any such movement had in the past.
Its tactics and demeanor had not suddenly become endearing — it conspicuously hadn’t — but a wider swath of the public came to see that it identified a real problem and not all the cases it cited were as baseless as that of the thug, Michael Brown, whose death sparked the movement in the first place.
The public came to understand that police misconduct, whether produced by prejudice or merely by bad training, is a threat to the rule of law and to police officers themselves. There is now broader agreement that the status quo is unacceptable. This is a cause of hope that will not be dashed by either Thursday night’s fatal ambush of Dallas police officers or two recent fatal shootings by police of citizens in Minnesota and Louisiana.
There is a reason those sympathetic to the BLM movement object to such ripostes as “All lives matter” or “Blue lives matter.” It’s not that those lives don’t matter but that no other group is being shot and killed without good reason in such numbers as black people are by agents of their own government. Still, to react with frustration and violence is a great error. A legitimate cause should not be turned into a racial power struggle, because broad agreement on reform has never been so close.
Smartphone, bodycams and dashcams have helped far more people appreciate the tough realities faced by black men when dealing with the police. The videotaped killings of Eric Garner and Walter Scott demonstrated a problem far greater than most white people realized. These and more recent horrors show that not all police are either good people or competent officers. In saying this, it must be understood, however, that it is just as bad and wrong to assume incompetence, prejudice or malice is widespread within the forces of the law.
Still, even if many police shootings are justified, and even though most officers want to do the right thing, the police are in the wrong more often than is acceptable. It is essential that departments reform so that the death toll of innocent people is greatly reduced.
The sad irony of Thursday’s murderous assault on Dallas police is that the city’s force is very forward-thinking and had been implementing better methods and training long before the BLM gathered momentum. Washington Post journalist Radley Balko documented in early 2015 the way Chief David Brown, who is black, had adopted an approach to policing that has resulted in a 64 percent cut in civilian complaints in just five years. At the same time, Dallas enjoyed a declining crime rate and the lowest murder rate since 1930.
As Balko put it, a strategy that emphasizes de-escalation and conflict resolution, and which involves the use of police body cameras to protect all sides, showed that “[y]ou can embrace policing policies that are community-friendly, open and transparent, and dedicated to minimizing the use of force and violence … and still enjoy the same or greater drops in crime we’re seeing elsewhere.”
The Dallas police deserved national attention before Thursday as a model of reform. Unfortunately it has received national attention for the wrong reasons.
Both black and blue lives deserve police reform. People in every state and town should demand it, as should every police union. Every bad cop besmirches the reputation of good cops. And the great majority of officers, fine and brave people, are put in greater danger when police become the bad guys in the minds of a large minority group.
“We don’t feel much support most days,” Chief Brown said after Thursday’s outrage, which cost the lives of five of his men. “Let’s not make today most days. Please, we need your support to be be able to protect you from men like these, who carried out this tragic, tragic event.”
Rank-and-file police deserve all Americans’ support. They also deserve leaders like Brown, who help build the reputation of police departments by minimizing the number of confrontations in which officers use deadly force.
