By Susan MacLaury

TV coverage of the demonstrations being waged across the US reveals that protestors as a group are very diverse, that most who come out do so with the intent to make their concerns known peacefully, and that there are law enforcement officers who sympathize with those demanding change. More than one police chief has been filmed taking a knee, embracing protestors, or walking arm in arm with them.

These moments are harbingers of hope as well as a reminder that the majority of police officers are well-intentioned and have taken their jobs to serve their communities. It can come as a shock to such persons that their efforts, while well-intentioned, don’t always achieve the goals they assume they will.

One case in point was this statement made last week by Alfred Durham, former police chief of Richmond, VA. Mr. Durham was one of three persons doing a Q and A after a screening of Shine Global’s most recent film, the short documentary Virtually Free, filmed in 2017 and 2018. He was Chief Durham then, the head of the Richmond police force. As such, he was one of several unlikely allies who came together to in support of a program called Performing Statistics, then housed by a local arts program, Art 180. Teens in detention were given the opportunity to work with artists in a variety of media making art that expressed who they were and what the experience of incarceration was truly like.

He did so after investigating how many arrests his department had made of kids and to his horror, learned that in a 6 month period between 2014-15, they’d arrested more than 150 kids for very minor offenses. He went on to discover that these arrests were made in schools with police stationed as school resource officers, at a rate 11 times higher than schools without them. He believed they had lost sight of their mission and shut down this practice.

Chief Durham was a strong proponent of community policing, of viewing his cops as “saviors, not warriors,” and he understood that community trust couldn’t be assumed – it had to be earned. Hear how he became involved with Performing Statistics in his own words

I want to take a moment to acknowledge officers like the Chief and the tens of thousands of other police officers who give their all for their communities. Leadership such as he provided is essential to compel police departments to find and give their very best – to all their citizens.