Dallas Police Chief, David O. Brown, once said that “trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.” Since taking the reins of the police force in 2010, Brown has taken that principle to heart, transforming Dallas into a national symbol of community policing even as the department grapples with the tragic killing of five of its officers earlier this week.
“All I know is that this must stop—this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” Brown said at a mournful press conference on Friday. “We don’t feel much support most days. Let’s not make today most days.”
If the Dallas Police Department has now become a poster child for police reform due to Brown’s efforts to increase transparency and train officers to reduce the lethality of interactions between police and the community, that was not always the case. Dallas was once notorious for police violence. For years, the third largest city in Texas has had a higher per-capita rate of police-involved shootings than Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles.
This trend began to reverse around four years ago. On July 24, 2012, a Dallas police officer shot and killed James Harper, an unarmed black man. Residents took to the streets. A confrontation with police appeared imminent. But despite the potent and often combustible combination of angry citizens and riot police, a concerted effort by both sides kept the streets relatively peaceful.
[For more of this story, written by Chris Haugh, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...allas-police/490583/]
Comments (0)