As America’s big city police departments come under fire following the death of Minnesotan George Floyd, protest marchers nationwide call for “defunding the police.”
But one mayor who previously spent his adult life in law enforcement cautioned critics of the police “don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”
By that, Waterbury, Connecticut’s Mayor Neil O’Leary, who joined his city’s police force at 22 in 1980 and rose to become chief of police from 2004-09, means not to tamper with the emphasis on community relations and community policing that his and other cities have embraced in the last few decades.
“There’s always room for improvement in policing,” O’Leary told Newsmax, “But to take the action of a very small percentage of officers and taint the brush that pertains to all officers, could not be further from the perspective of accuracy.”
“I’m not going to tell you everything is perfect in Waterbury,” the mayor told us, “But it’s much healthier in terms of police relations with minorities than it is in most other cities in Connecticut or for that matter in the country.”
Democrat O’Leary, who also served as police chief of neighboring Wolcott from 2009-11, is in his ninth year as mayor of the 5th largest city "and one of the most diverse communities in New England,” he said.
With a population of 110,366, the industrial “Brass City” is 58.8 per cent white, 31.2 percent Hispanic and Latino, and 20.1 per cent black. Waterbury’s ethnic heritages include Italian (21.46 percent), Irish, Albanian, and Lithuanian.
O’Leary recalled how when he joined the police force after graduation from the University of New Haven in 1980, then-Police Chief Fred Sullivan “created a community relations division. It was a very diverse division. There were Hispanic officers assigned to it, black officers assigned to it, and obviously white officers.”
O’Leary said the police department’s 40-year emphasis on patrolmen getting to know their communities “works and it works well. Someone who is vested in his neighborhood is one of the most popular guys in his neighborhood. They do their job the way it should be done.”
Citing Waterbury’s unique diversity, the mayor emphasized that police officers today need to understand that what is critical “is not guns and bullets but community work. This is recognizing and understanding when you represent Waterbury, and that means you need to recognize the culture of the Haitian people is different than the culture for the other Latin American countries, which is different from the black or Jewish demographic.”
When he joined the force in 1980, O’Leary noted “you had ten weeks of training. Now you have 38 weeks of training.”
“You have to understand the challenges in 2020 are much more complex than in 1980,” the mayor told us, “The opioid epidemic has had an impact on populations with no social or ethnic boundaries across the land. …Mental health and drug addiction are key to what a police officer needs to do.” Things are just not the same as in 1980 or ’90 or 2000.”
While some on the force are cut out to be community police officers, O’Leary volunteered “there are some who aren’t. There are other officers, particularly of the older generation, who look at policing and say ‘I’m a policeman not a social worker. My job is to protect and serve, but my job is more of a law and order fashion of policing.’”
This attitude, he insisted, “is dissipating.”
Asked about the recent demonstrations in his city following Floyd’s death two weeks ago, O’Leary said “two Sundays ago [May 31], there was a demonstration with about 1,000 people in front of the police station. The original organizers [of the demonstration] finished up at 11:30 AM, and then a group of other individuals took over the group.
“When the original organizers left, 800 of the 1000 dispersed and went home. The 200 that remained walked from the police station to Route 84 and blocked traffic flow eastbound and westbound. What was very peaceful and very organized went to very anti-police.”
The demonstration finally ended at 6:00 PM. By then, O’Leary told us, a police car was vandalized, water was thrown at police, and they finally arrested 20 more who refused to leave the road way.”
What especially bothered the mayor about the demonstration “was to see the African-American demonstrators turn their frustration toward the African-American police officers who were working — telling them to take off the badge, you’re black underneath, you forgot where you came from. It was hurtful to see them talked to that way.”
The mayor later told the officers “there’s a lot of hurt and there’s a lot of outrage. As more and more comes out about police mistreatment of blacks, it’s going to continue that way until we all sit down and figure out what we’re going to do individually, as towns and states, to recognize and understand, this is real. People across the country need to understand that as well.”
“To call for defunding of the police departments — I do understand it,” O’Leary told us, “The reality is we desperately need police. The smallest part of a policeman’s day is making an arrest. The largest part of a policeman’s day is helping others in many different ways — not just motor vehicle accidents, not just lost or missing children. Each day brings a greater amount of challenges and a greater reward when you help people through difficult times.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here
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