Commentary : Policeman Calls Community Pride, Respect a Two-Way Street

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Voice & Viewpoint, a weekly newspaper serving San Diego’s black community.

Please allow me to preface this article with a couple of short statements. First, any opinions expressed here are my own, they do not necessarily reflect those of the City of San Diego or the Police Department. Second, I am a cop. I am a white cop. Please don’t let that keep you from reading what I have to say, because if you dismiss me without even hearing what I have to say, then you are no better than any other racist.

I have been a police officer for five years, four of those years have been spent in the neighborhoods of Southeast San Diego and Logan Heights. Having grown up in a white, middle-class suburb of Chicago, the first months in the minority communities were an eye-opener. I had never known about the problems of a community such as Southeast, and, quite honestly, I never cared.

But suddenly, I found myself working and existing in that community, and every change in that community, no matter how minor, directly affected me. I found that I spent much more time on the streets of Southeast San Diego than I did at home with my family. I became more familiar with the streets and residents of Southeast than I did with my own neighbors. I found that to survive in that environment, I had to adapt to it.

Working as a police officer means being able to wear many hats: that of family counselor, social worker, paramedic, investigator, taxi driver and a host of other jobs. Working in Southeast San Diego magnifies the job, giving an officer years of experience in just months. Working in Southeast, but not having grown up there, in fact having grown up under very different conditions, also gave me the ability to see the problems faced by the community and the desire to look for causes and solutions.

Contrary to what some people will say, the police are not the problem in Southeast. At any one time, there are no more than 25 to 30 officers in the field there, not many when you consider the thousands who live in the area. In actuality, the police, although a visible symbol, have very little impact on the lives of Southeast San Diego residents. If it were the police who were the problem, then simple transfers and terminations would provide a quick solution.

But the problems of Southeast, the problems that terrorize the residents, are much more difficult to be rid of. Unfortunately, there are a few persons who would have you, the citizen of Southeast, believe that it is the police alone who are responsible for the problems in the community. Those people will lay the blame for every slight, real or imagined, on the police.

They will portray police officers as the enemy of all, and to prove their point, they will twist facts and stories, exaggerate errors, and even stoop to the same racist name calling of which they accuse the police.

But will this help the community? Hardly. The only thing these people accomplish is to drive a wedge even deeper between the officers and the people they are sworn to serve.

In the minds of many officers, a majority of citizens dislike, distrust or even hate the police. In actuality, the number of persons who have those negative attitudes about the police are quite small. But because those people are the most vocal, and because those people receive the attention of the press, it is those attitudes that the officers hear about.

As a result, the officers come to develop negative attitudes about the place they work and the people they serve. Unfortunately, those negative attitudes sometimes carry over onto the street and as a consequence everyone suffers. So the vicious cycle continues, another citizen has a negative contact with police and more problems are created.

Police misconduct does exist. It will until officers are replaced with the machines that they are so often accused of being. But the San Diego Police Department is at the same time one of the least complained against, yet most heavily disciplined police departments in the state. The department--regardless of what its critics claim--takes complaints very seriously and investigates them thoroughly. But police misconduct, even if it were at gross levels, would still not be the worst problem faced by Southeast San Diego.

Every day, every week, there are more violent incidents in Southeast San Diego than anywhere else in the city, probably more than anywhere else in the county. Most of those incidents can be tied directly to drugs and the people who distribute them, sell them and use them. Those people steal from their friends and neighbors, rob stores in their own neighborhoods and occasionally kill one another. Sometimes, they kill an innocent person.

Gang members, many of whom are involved with drugs, deface property with paint and markers, steal cars and stab or shoot one another with alarming frequency. Simple alcoholics and drug abusers alike loiter on corners near liquor stores, begging for money, not for food but for the next bottle of wine. They steal checks from mailboxes, snatch purses and harass children. These are the most visible problems faced by Southeast San Diego, none of which are caused by the police and can only be eradicated with the wholehearted support of the community.

The officers who serve Southeast do a very difficult job, and they do it well. All they ask from the community is support for the job they do. All they want is to be treated with the same respect and dignity that the community demands from them.

The officers don’t go out looking for just blacks or Hispanics to arrest or cite. After all, how many whites do you see at 45th and Logan on a Saturday night? The officers look for people who are violating the law regardless of race. That may be difficult for some to believe, but it is the truth, and I leave it up to you to decide.

What I ask of every resident of Southeast San Diego is to take pride in your community. Do not tolerate the dope dealers and crooks. Only by banding together and working as a unified community will you rid yourselves of those problems. Only by doing this will you make Southeast San Diego a productive community in which it is a pleasure to both live and work. Thank you.