An essay written by: William Berry Jr., Shawn I. Butler and Brian Schenck Special to The Citizen Newspaper, published on Sunday, June 20, 2021

Policing is a complex task.

Policing is a profession grounded in a complicated variety of legally mandated and professional practices guided by personal ethics and integrity instilled from each officer’s upbringing, as well as the police academy, and then in-service training and real-work experiences.

Policing is a rewarding career, however fraught with dangerous possibilities; making split-second life-or-death decisions and facing the ire of some members of society who only see the uniform as a testament that reinforces calls for re-imagining, defunding or a major revamping of law enforcement departments. This last mindset places officers in an emotionally draining matrix that suggest the overall profession is mired in and devoid of sharing valued community aspirations, especially when the badge is inexplicitly tarnished by a very small minority in the profession who operate outside of the law and consciously, purposely or mistakenly reject the tenets of their sworn oath.

Understandably, for some, the history of policing in this country can be seen as strictly enforcement and protecting the privileged, as evidenced by the progression from slave patrols to red shirts to the start of organized police departments. And within this paradigm, like any other profession, there has been profound innovation, as well as detrimental policies and practices that may be directly affecting certain segments of society based on the racial and social economic proclivities of the citizenry at any given moment. The dilemma for law enforcement is all too often centered on finding the tenuous balance between public safety and the public’s expectations for police to effectively balance civil rights and public safety against the perceptions — and, in some cases, factual examples — of systemic racism and discriminatory bias that exist in different degrees and strata of society. This balance must also be considerate of what the individual community desires and expects from its local police department.

Those expectations can be an even more perilous tightrope for police leadership, activists, officers and allies. That line of demarcation can be due to a community’s overwhelming desire to vigorously maintain the status quo, or the surging, strongly held “minority” viewpoint that focuses on generational discrimination, or it can be fermented via challenges to the majority’s belief in not being held accountable for the historical sins of their elders. Of course, contemporary partisan political beliefs, inequities in attaining family wealth and social success, as well as decades-old residential segregation, make the task of resolution that much more difficult. And society expects law enforcement to find the strategic remedy.

Over time, society has relegated many social ills to policing responsibility and the unfair task of finding workable solutions, if any really exist, to such problems that oftentimes are not within the wheelhouse of expertise for the police to solve. It is clear that there is now a quagmire of expectations that has transitioned traditional policing toward a complex social service model that departments may be ill-equipped to satisfactorily resolve. Homelessness, opioid addiction, mental health issues, socioeconomic inequities and domestic conflicts have tasked policing with a multiplicity of human issues while the national conversation tackles use of force, qualified immunity, policing practices and protocols, and implicit biases.

In President Biden’s 2021 Peace Officer Memorial Day and Police Week proclamation, he accurately stated, “We must also stop tasking law enforcement with problems that are far beyond their jurisdictions. From providing emergency health care to resolving school discipline issues, our communities rely on the police to perform services that often should be the duty of other institutions. We then accuse the police of failure when responsibility lies with public policy choices they did not make. Supporting our law enforcement officers requires that we invest in underfunded public systems that provide health care, counseling, housing, education, and other social services.”

Unfortunately, these topics are riddled with entrenched positions, usually based on race or class or personal politics, where meaningful and respectful dialogue is the exception and not the norm. In Auburn and Cayuga County, law enforcement and social justice advocates continue to tackle the implications of national issues. However, folks involved in these group discussions and pre-COVID-19 community meetings remain driven and assertively centered on creating a community public safety mindset where there is fair and unbiased law enforcement at the local level to ameliorate and alleviate negative national issues from infesting our community.

All duly sworn and licensed officers understand that they are held to a higher standard and level of scrutiny regarding how they function and carry out their job responsibilities as contrasted with other professions. Society should be more sensitive to the emotional and physical implications officers are subject to and understand the clear majority of law enforcement officers are hard-working, community-focused, responsible and dedicated adherents to the mission and standards of their departments and oath they have sworn to uphold. It is indicative of a polarized society that all too often, the unflattering and inappropriate behavior of the few police miscreants are able to cast the entire profession in a negative modality. While there are intrinsic differences of opinion on interpreting statistics that may indicate unfair policing based on race, there may be the need to separate sanctioned policy and practices from the individual behavior of some officers. And there needs to be a recognition of race-based policing practices that are historically well-documented and tend to influence the thinking of those groups who have carried the brunt of such inappropriate policing behavior.

William (bill) E. Berry Jr. chairs the board of the Harriet Tubman Center for Justice & Peace, serves as a board member of the United Way of Cayuga County, and publishes aaduna, an online literary and visual arts journal based in Auburn. Shawn I. Butler serves as chief of police for the Auburn Police Department, is president of the Central New York Association of Chiefs of Police, and is the Northeast regional chair of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Midsize Agencies Division. Brian Schenck serves as the Cayuga County Sheriff.

Click to Read Essay Part II