'Cool cop' skates through community police work

One police officer in Washington proves he is one 'cool cop' by skateboarding on the job, highlighting a model for community policing that is showing results.

|
Mike Segar/Reuters
Handler Jorge Garcia-Bengochea holds Honor, a miniature therapy horse from Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses, while he walks with Patrolman Savvas Roumeliotis from the Middletown New Jersey Police Department in New York City, March 16. In New York and elsewhere, police departments are working to develop more effective community police methods.

Shredding with skateboarders at the local skatepark isn't part of a typical police officer's job description, but for Craig Hanaumi, an officer in a suburb of Seattle, the skateboarding gig has become an important tool in community police work.

Officer Hanaumi became the skateboarding face of Bellevue's community policing effort in 2010, after a routine request to stop trespassing became a demonstration of the officer's skills with wheels, Jillian Raftery reported for KIRO Radio. He eventually told the skaters, who were filming tricks in a back parking lot, they needed to leave, but the encounter, captured on video, gave Hanuami the nickname "cool cop." The encounter convinced him such interactions could become a way to foster better relationships between local teens and police.

The need for community policing programs have reached a new level of urgency in recent months, as rifts between minority communities and the officers who police them have exploded on the national stage. High-profile shootings of young, minority residents by police officers in cities across the country have fractured public trust in law enforcement. Police departments across the country are increasingly looking to this kind of positive engagement between officers and young people in the communities they serve as a means to boost trust on both sides of the equation.

The key to effective community policing, in Washington and elsewhere, is empathy, Lenora Fulani, the director of the New York City-based “Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids,” told The Christian Science Monitor's Harry Bruinius last summer. Her program helps inner-city police rebuild trust lost after a rough year for police relations.

She sponsors public talks between veteran officers and local teens, guiding them through conversations designed to increase understanding and build trust. The damaged trust between communities and the police charged with protecting them takes a toll on both sides.

Officer Joe Fratto, a three-year veteran of the high-crime beat in New York City, described during one talk the mental strain for officers working in a low-trust environment. “They’ve been in so many situations where they didn’t get the respect back that they expected, or somebody cursed them out for no reason, or they were filmed for no reason, for doing something that was legitimate and right," Mr. Fratto said. "So, their personality changes, where, ‘OK, now it’s 'us versus them.' "

Skateboarding is not the solution for every department or city, but the Bellevue officer's idea of demonstrating understanding while he policed highlights a strategy for developing trust. "I believe there is no way out of the trap of police-community hostility without the development of both sides,” Ms. Fulani told the Monitor.

Bellevue has invested heavily in that kind of development. The department devotes two full-time officers to community policing, but also maintains a culture of encouraging officers to spend time between calls with community members. The department offers annual "community academies," free workshops that invite the public to learn about the officers and how they work and officers regularly share pizza with youth from the Boys and Girls Club regularly.

Many of the impacts of such community police work are intangible, but others have helped directly in crime-fighting. Hanaumi spent some time working with a teen who was at-risk for gang involvement, and the teenager later came to him with a tip that helped resolve a drive-by shooting case.

“The reason why that happened was because of all the time that was spent before that trying to build a positive relationship,” Hanaumi told KIRO Radio.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Cool cop' skates through community police work
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0325/Cool-cop-skates-through-community-police-work
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe