Date: 2005:01:09 02:38:00 Location: Unknown outdoor event location Today was an interesting day, filled with a mix of excitement and anticipation. In the morning, I woke up early and decided to head out to this outdoor event that I had been hearing about for weeks. The image I captured before the event started is quite striking – it features a man performing a flaming trick using a torch in the…

Finding Hope in Flint

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

  Finding Hope in the Flint Police Dept.

 [This article was printed last week in the New York Times. It is one of the best examples of the kind of policing I have promoted through the years. It is, in reality, what I call real “Community-Oriented Policing.” Unless our nation’s police are willing to work and serve like Officer Willingham, American policing…

Police: To Alter or Abolish?

  When people ask me, ‘Who will protect us,’ I want to say: Who protects you now? —

Mychal Denzel Smith

  Is It Time to Abolish Our Nation’s Police?

I first ran into the idea of police abolition when I was a beat cop in Minneapolis. At the time, I was attending graduate school in sociology and reading Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and others. It’s not a new idea. As I recall, it was first proposed by…

“Rolling Up on Dixon Circle”

“This summer, racial hate left holes in the heart of Dallas. Four summers ago, it could have burned the place down… Not much has been heard from the tiny neighborhood [of Dixon Circle] since then… We found nothing healed…”

An old policing colleague of mine, Chief Larry Hesser, alerted me to an interactive articlein the Dallas News which takes a deep look at a troubled neighborhood in Dallas —…

Community-Oriented Policing: Too Soft?

Think again!

Police Officer Deon Joseph works skid row in Los Angeles — truly one of the toughest neighborhoods in America. And the amazing thing is that he does it with what can certainly be called true “community-oriented policing.”

Officer Joseph has worked this district for 18 years and never has been stabbed or shot. Why? Because if he needed help, people in this troublesome and needy…