Is Boston different, or just lucky?
Relations between police and communities have disintegrated in other cities. Violence has erupted following police shootings of black people. Police have been murdered in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La. Last week, the Justice Department painted a scathing portrait of casual bias and police brutality in Baltimore.
Boston has largely escaped the ugliness. Questions over three police shootings in recent years were quickly resolved after officials showed community leaders video footage of the incidents. Commissioner Bill Evans constantly evangelizes for stronger community relations. A July MassINC poll found crazy-high approval ratings for police in the city, with 73 percent of all respondents and 65 percent of African-Americans taking a positive view of police.
It’s a position every department in the country would love to be in — and which Boston should do nothing whatsoever to endanger.
Which is why recent developments — driven largely by unions representing the officers of whom Evans is so proud — are so jarring.
First was that over-the-top letter they wrote to Evans and the mayor demanding that officers be given more firepower in the wake of those police murders. Full of us vs. them rhetoric, the union leaders made the claim that President Obama “has basically fanned the flames of police hatred with political rhetoric.”
It’s a ludicrous libel. As if Obama’s recognition that some police shootings are unjustified cancels out his many words of praise and anger and sorrow for the officers gunned down by lunatics. As if empathy for communities who fear the police means you can’t also support police themselves. The choose-a-side invective weakens the bonds so vital to the department’s success.
The head of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association did not return a call. Evans told WGBH radio on Tuesday that union officials regret the harshness of that letter. Spokesman Lieutenant Detective Mike McCarthy said that, while their leaders might have written some incendiary things, “the membership is out there doing the work in the community, and I don’t think there’s any doubt as to where their priorities are.”
But the question remains: Is this how the union heads and their members really see the world, or is it just posturing ahead of contract negotiations?
Either way, it’s corrosive.
As is police officers’ resistance to other measures that would improve their performance and make them more accountable. This week, we got word that not a single officer has agreed to take part in a mediation program designed to resolve minor public grievances against them. It’s a constructive, progressive way to settle disputes, defusing the smaller conflicts that can lead to bigger ones — and apparently not one police officer is interested in trying it.
Then, on Tuesday, we learned the department will be assigning body cameras to 100 officers. They’ll be ordered to wear them because, after months of delays and union negotiations finally resulted in a voluntary pilot program, zero officers stepped up to wear the cameras.
“Community policing is about trust,” said Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which first approached the department about cameras two years ago. “There have got to be real, meaningful policies . . . in place that assure that accountability isn’t just something we talk about.”
Evans told WGBH he expects the union to challenge the camera directive. Fighting a measure that has been implemented across much of the country risks squandering some of the good faith police have built up in Boston. It also undermines the idea that Boston police are somehow different from others. And it feeds the silly notion that you can’t be both pro-accountability and pro-police.
More accountability means more trust, and that makes everybody safer, including police.
It seems that, even in one of the most progressive departments in the country, some holdouts still don’t get that.
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.