In a press conference in October, Mayor Oliver Ellis introduced the city’s new police chief, Victor Zordon, who instantly put criminals on notice that the police department would become proactive in pursuing crime.
Hopefully, the MPD won’t trample the rights of the rest of the community in pursuit of the lawless.
In that press conference, the chief said in his first few weeks, there would be an increase in the number of arrests that would serve to put criminals on notice. He said he would be “looking” for them in a tone that challenged criminals to “bring it on.”
On October 22rd and 23rd we saw a sampling of his new aggressive approach when the law enforcement agencies of several jurisdictions staged a sweep that arrested six violent criminals, but also 75 others for petty crimes in the process. He was praised in the white media for this action, which resulted in mostly black arrests.
What’s troubling is that the military-style sweep using helicopters and massive shows of force does little to build an attitude of trust that the police department needs to do its job, but fosters fear among the city’s law-abiding community that each time they are stopped by a police officer that he/she is looking for a reason to arrest them.
The Goodwill that has been gained by scores of officers over the years can instantly be lost if law-abiding citizens suddenly begin to consider the police as enemies rather than friends.
In the October 22-23rd sweep, fifty people were stopped and searched as they walked the streets. They were not committing crimes, just lawful pedestrians. However, the police were “looking” for crime. On some of those they stopped, they found marijuana cigarettes or OXI pills. On others they found nothing. They were stopped and searched without probable cause, civil rights be damned.
They entered 20 homes in “knock and talk” searches in which residents, acted on previously accumulated goodwill and allowed officers to enter their homes without warrants. Once inside the officers instantly started “looking” for something that could result in an arrest. Inside, they found some legal weapons, but they looked a little further and found a marijuana joint in an ashtray. Together, even a legal weapon in the presence of marijuana, an Oxi pill, or meth is a crime. They “looked” and found something.
The police didn’t get a 911 call to the residences, they knocked and talked, but betrayed public trust at the same time.
That was the case with 189 vehicles that were stopped. The police “looked” for something criminal and they often found marijuana, pills, and windows with dark tints. Even an open bottle of beer on the back seat is a crime.
Instead of improving relations, now there is growing sentiment that the public must protect itself from the police because any encounter, no matter how innocent could result in an arrest if officers are “looking” for criminals.
The cooperation that police need to identify and arrest violent criminals will be endangered if the MPD transfers its mostly white police department into a small version of the DEA that doesn’t need public trust. It succeeds with a network of snitches and undercover agents, a life our new chief knows all too well.
Monroe’s police officers are not undercover agents. They need public trust to gain information that will both prevent and prosecute crime. That trust evaporates if the public perception of officers changes from friend to enemy who is “looking” for a cause to arrest them.
It takes years to build up goodwill and trust, but in a few weeks it can all be destroyed by a militant department that goes “looking” for crimes so small that they only give “tickets.”
That motto: “Protect and Serve” is no longer on the city’s police cars.
We wonder why.
