One Way to Unite with Cops Today

By Nadra Enzi —— Bio and Archives August 7, 2016

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The following suggestion is offered to leverage existing relationships to drown out noisy discord and targeting of police. It is:

• 1. Talk-to-police.
• 1a. we'll get to in a moment.

There it is folks, talking requires no blue ribbon commissions (not knocking them) nor tax increases. I've built relationships simply by communicating and sharing that my advocacy isn't anti-police nor pro-crime.

Started in the 1990s, it gained new urgency in the 21st century Ferguson Effect era. Working beside off-duty and responding officers as security for an "incident rich" supermarket-and later as a bounty hunter-opened channels of communication pursued further as an advocate. As a badge-wearing minority with camera phones stuck in their faces, positive feedback from urban stakeholders is appreciated. A violent script is being written backstage to pit Black people against Blue professionals. I encourage neither side to play these destructive roles and ultimately recognize they're on the same side- contrary to division some hype up. To their credit, agencies are using Twitter and other social media to post positive stories. Police supporters are doing the same, which brings me to option 1A of this suggestion: speaking up for police.

Unlike officers, who can't openly discuss issues, use your platform to be a voice on their behalf. Write, post, tweet and do interviews where you champion their concerns- it makes a difference. Someone is scripting urban civil war. I suggest writing urban civil unity into existence. This is my one way to unite with cops today. What's yours?