What do police have to do with violence in our communities?

The Chronicle ran a huge report this year on police brutality in San Francisco, but do the “men in blue” have to hit Gavin Newsom over the head for change to happen? Instead of waiting around and doing nothing, Black community leaders and experts began strategizing several years back on how to bring the police, the mayor and the communities of color together to deal with the violence and poverty that is so prevalent in their neighborhoods.

This group is called the African American Community Police Relations Board (AACPRB), and progress was being made when the former Mayor Willie Brown and Chief Fred Lau signed an MOU to put this plan in effect. But there is always a “but” when something good is about to happen, and that “but” is the current mayor and Police Chief Heather Fong, who seem to think that the way the police handle business today is good enough for them.

I caught up with Daniel Landry, president of the Fillmore Branch of the AACPRB. Check out what he had to say about why he is organizing with hundreds of diverse people to change the way police operate in communities of color.

Majeid: Do you think the police have anything to do with the violence that is hurting the Black and Latino communities?

Daniel Landry: The San Francisco Police Department, as well as throughout the United States of America, didn’t start from how we appear to think the police department was started. Actually it started from slave catching.

Departments now, their most contacts is with the African American and Hispanic community …. We only make up (currently and historically) 5 to 15 percent of the population in San Francisco. We are not only the ones in most contact with the police department, but we are also the ones who’s sent to prison. We out-populate all ethnicity groups within the prison population.

It is obvious that not only is there a relations problem between the police and communities of color, it is clear that the guns that’s coming into our community, the drugs and all the other things that is putting us further into a position to be criminalized. Somebody is turning the other cheek, and I’m not talking about turning the other cheek because something good is passing away.

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