What community policing could look like

If America wants to “defund” police and replace them with something more aligned with a broader community investment strategy, maybe we should model it on people like Chicago Police Detective Vivian Williams.

Black, female and affectionately known as “Ma” by the local street crowd, she was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. She has spent her entire 26-year career working in the 5^th Police District, which includes the Roseland-Pullman community, where she also lives.

As a beat cop, Williams did some school security work on the side and eventually was assigned to work with youth in the school as part of the city’s community policing program. As a detective, she is still working on youth crime.

But her real work is building relationships. It started about 15 years ago when responding to a robbery in progress. By the time she arrived, two teenage girls were being questioned and were mouthing off to the male police officers. She pulled the girls aside.

They told her their home life was very hard. Williams drove them home and met with their parents. She learned that many of their friends were also struggling so she went to their elementary school and asked the principle for, “Ten of the most challenging young ladies.”

She started meeting with them in a church once a week and then twice a week. They adopted the slogan “Chasing Dreams by Any Means.” She helped them get through eighth grade and finish high school. Today, she is still in touch with all of them.

Word got around and pretty soon the guys were also reaching out to her. One day, her doorbell rang, and she opened it to see Sherman Scullark, a local guy involved in gangs who she had encountered a few times over the years.

He told her he was, “Tired — tired of people shooting at me and tired of shooting at people,” and asked for her help to negotiate a gang truce. She connected him with a program called CRED, which provides counseling and a job for young men trying to leave gang life.

The truce between the two “factions” she helped broker has now lasted for two years. In the broader Roseland-Pullman community, shootings have declined somewhat though it’s still an issue as a new generation of teens ages into the gangs. Sherman is now a job coach with CRED while many of his former gang mates and rivals work for CRED doing outreach.

Although Detective Williams has worked in one of the most violent neighborhoods in one of the most violent cities in America, she has only pulled her gun a few times. She was fired at once by a young woman but could not get a clear shot to fire back. The only time she fired her gun was to kill a dog that was attacking her. Afterward, she went home and cried, “like it was a person.”

She says that police are not trained to do the kind of things she does to help bring peace to Roseland-Pullman. She believes that older officers must teach the younger ones how to de-escalate or, as she calls it, “verbal judo.”

She shared a story of a young Black cop berating a much older Black man whose car had been towed and was trying to find out how to retrieve it. The next day, she confronted him and lectured him about his humiliating tone. Later, he thanked her.

She shared another story of being called to a home by a mother whose two teenage sons were fighting. The mother had a disability and could not keep her house clean or discipline her two sons.

Williams showed up with her partner, a probationary officer fresh out of the academy. Williams told the two young men they had a choice: she could arrest them, or they could go get a broom and mop and start cleaning the house. For the next hour she supervised the clean-up while her bewildered junior partner pitched in. Today, he runs a community policing program in another police district.

In a city with a long history of police abuse, Detective Williams’ approach could go a long way toward rebuilding trust among police and people of color. Maybe if she ran the police academy, more officers would better understand the “service” side of the job.

As she put it, “You have to know the difference between someone who needs help and someone who needs to be arrested.” She added, “It’s not how many arrests you make. It’s how many lives you have changed.”

Peter Cunningham is a communications consultant in Chicago