By Jesús Nava

Let me set the stage for the proposal I offer at the end of this commentary.

Some people who resided in my childhood neighborhood were afflicted with unusual physical ailments, or least I thought so when I was young. The strangest for me was Pobre Pepito.

Pepito was deaf and afflicted with palsy. He communicated with flailing arms, rolling eyes, grunts, and moans.

As a young boy, I remember my first encounter with him in 1968. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in Westside San Antonio, and my father, after having finished his “mandados” or chores for the day, stopped at a local business. I stayed in the back of our station wagon to lay down and get relief from the sun.

Soon I heard a commotion and raised my curious head only to be confronted by Pepito standing directly in front of me outside the car window. He was highly emotional, almost hysterical, and I was scared stiff.

But as I sat there frozen staring into his eyes, I saw pain and anguish reflected in them. He was not a threat. He was in need of help. My father, having heard Pepito, came outside, calmed him, and gave him some money. I was never afraid of Pepito again.

That Scenario Today

Now I wonder how a police encounter with Pepito would go today? What would be the response when the 911 call is received about a man acting crazy and violent and scaring everyone?

Add to the mixture that the police would be responding to the “deep Westside” as I recently saw it labeled in a caricature of a San Antonio map. Would the arriving officers know that Pepito was incapable of verbal communication? Would they know that his wild behavior was due to his medical condition and a lifetime of suffering and alienation?

How would the police subdue him? Taser? Nonlethal shotgun? Baton and cuffs?

I ask these questions because our management jobs require us to think and make decisions about how law enforcement interacts with residents.

Questioning Conventional Tactics

As a local government manager of 30 years, I know police forces are full of good people dedicated to serving the public. I even lost a city manager job defending a police chief.

I do, however, question the paramilitary tactics and deployment strategies that are seen as conventional in today’s law enforcement.

First, they scare people and do not make them feel safer. Seeing military vehicles on the streets and local police dressed in SWAT and riot gear signals to the world that we are on the verge of anarchy.

Second, the show of overt military force is meant to coerce the citizenry into submission. Fear is used to subdue dissent and opposition to the prevailing political authority, which has a legal monopoly on the use of law enforcement. Cities and counties manage the local police forces, and residents rely on managers to make sure someone polices the police.

It is also important to ask what created the conflict in the first place—the crime or the police response. There was sufficient evidence that Michael Brown and Eric Garner had committed crimes. Both men were known in their communities. The arrests could have simply occurred later. In the case of Eric Garner, a citation for selling loose cigarettes given by a code or parking enforcement officer may have sufficed. Community-oriented policing was the established norm in local law enforcement before September 11, 2001. I can’t recall how many neighborhood policing meetings I attended before the attack on the World Trade Center.

It was at these meetings in the Texas communities of San Antonio, Santa Barbara, Denton, Laredo, Las Cruces, and San José where trust and confidence was established and built between law enforcement and the community. Each new neighborhood policing substation was a kept promise to work directly with residents.

The Manager’s Role?

What role do we as local government managers have to ensure effective police interaction with our communities? Not just with the prominent, well-known members of our society, but also with the more obscure fringe residents who include communities of color; the poor and homeless; the undocumented; the political, religious, and economic refugees; and the mentally ill.

I venture to say that we have an important role to play and a responsibility to ensure that all residents feel safe and calm during troubled times. But that work is done up-front with the community, not after the damage has been inflicted and trust has been eroded.

I propose that we restart the discussion on community policing as a means to counteract the current views on police, and in the process, save not only our communities but also individuals like Pepito—may he rest in peace.

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