Police abuses caught on camera that result in the death of unarmed citizens of color should rightly shock the conscience of any rational citizen residing in a constitutional republic. Similar to how filmed images from Selma prompted a civil rights legislative reckoning, so too have these harrowing images of death caused citizens to protest aggressive and racialized policing while demanding accountability. What we rarely hear about are those instances when police agencies are proactive in their efforts to engage the communities they police.
In California, the Modesto Police Department is setting the bar for what stakeholder and law enforcement engagements should look like.
The Healing and Accountability program delivered via the Cultural Relations & Community Engagement Coaching Series is an effort that brings Modesto police officers into Valley State Prison (VSP) for trauma-informed engagements facilitated by trained team members of MBS Consultants, a community action nonprofit organization founded by Michael Baldwin Sr., a formerly incarcerated VSP resident who has devoted his life’s work to public safety. As residents of the carceral state, we can tell you first hand that the encounters MBS is normalizing here are not just novel and interesting – they are groundbreaking and meaningful.
For many guys doing time, these are the first conversations they’ve ever had with street cops, who arrive out of uniform, unarmed, and extending their hands in friendship. Seated within integrated circles of conversation, participants relate their worst experiences, share their vulnerabilities, confess their fears, and discuss the traumas they carry. When these exchanges are most honest, folks become relatable and empathy has a fighting chance.
Mike, a Merced cop who lost his leg after having been shot while serving an arrest warrant, entered the gymnasium and shared how coming into VSP was cathartic for him. Darell, a youth offender serving time for robbery who heard Mike’s story, said “Mike could’ve been carrying around a heavy bag of vengeance toward everybody and taking that out on the folks he encounters, but instead he’s self-aware, fair-minded, and at peace. That made him relatable – he was just doing his job, and he lost his leg. I had empathy for that dude.”
For many participants it was the first time they’d ever heard a cop talk about the very real fear and danger that exists for officers who aren’t racist or aggressive, but just try to do their jobs by the book.
“There are takeaways here that serve each stakeholder group and set us all up for safer outcomes,” Baldwin told us. “Though incarcerated folks who live under lock and key are impacted by their minders while in custody, they will eventually return to the community, where police officers will invariably encounter them. If we want those engagements to be peaceful and equitable, we need to try to plug these groups into one another early so we can dispel the myths, scripts, and biases we all carry around that infect the humanity we all need to show one another.”
Baldwin’s organization has brought Merced’s officers to VSP multiple times and after each encounter, residents like Jay have raved about the experience, describing how “down to earth” and “normal” the officers seemed to be. In addition to the Legacy Alliance self-help programming and transitional housing services he coordinates, Baldwin hopes to expand the Healing and Accountability program to include more California police departments, particularly those with a high returning citizen parolee volume, so that more returning citizens might be able to make a human connection with an officer working in the community they are returning to.
Of course, the cops we think might most benefit from these sorts of encounters are the ones who won’t partake in these exercises on their own. While these types of outside-in engagements might not reach the worst actors in uniform, police chiefs and city councils could be persuaded to direct their new-hires and supervisory staff to participate in these programs in order to normalize these encounters and forge humane interactions filled with meaningful dialogue.
The high-stress volatility of police encounters writ large can be made modestly less so, if the parties can engage safely without duress.
There are schools of thought that demonize all police and call for the dismantling of the nonprofit industrial complex that monitors parolees post-confinement. However, to the extent returning citizen stakeholders become members of the public the police are charged with serving, we think familiarizing these parties with one another before incarcerated folks parole just makes sense. It certainly can’t hurt.
Working with the human action tools we have in hand, prisons like VSP that house low-level offenders on the verge of parole should amount to workplace field-trip destination centers for police departments, sheriff offices, and social service agencies to travel to and build rapport with future parolees – particularly when they’ve denounced their street gang, beaten their addiction, and become academically and vocationally improved in preparation for reentry.
If a radically reimagined construct of possibility is required in order for us to build a new reentry architecture shaped with empathy and equity, then we need our police officers to be as invested in returning citizens as they are in their own neighbors. For that to happen, they should be invited into prisons more often and encouraged to engage our population.
Mentors come in all forms.
In light of how deadly a police encounter can be, particularly for persons of color, returning citizens need not be compelled into more traumatic police contacts. However, if there is to be a serious reset in the manner cops police urban populations and use force against unarmed citizens, there has to be a focused effort to familiarize cops and returning citizens with one another. We need safe space engagements that interrogate the perceptions, fears, and biases that rule the emotional volatility of those very situations that too often lead to police violence and result in the death of vulnerable citizens.
The status quo us versus them standoff isn’t helping anybody – communication has to happen.
There is also a rehabilitative argument to be made that harnesses the very teaching tools most California prisons use to prepare residents for reentry. If mindfulness, self-control, a relapse prevention plan, and mentors form the important hallmarks of a successful post-carceral reentry to society, it shouldn’t be taboo to incorporate cops into this network of services.
Shouldn’t a former gang member being paroled to his county of commitment be able to engage the department’s gang task force to evaluate the safety of his parole plans? Should he necessarily have to report to the same parole office that all the active gang members report to?
The safest, cheapest, and most meaningful way to foster positive police engagements is to invite departments into places like VSP in order to engage the very returning citizens who are set to parole to their jurisdictions, six months before they do. Instead of being just a name, booking photo, and criminal history to these agencies, somebody at that department will have met this person, heard his story, and had a chance to direct him to resources that might save a life.
Law enforcement agencies interested in participating in the MBS Healing and Accountability program can contact Michael Baldwin at www.mabsenior.com.
