Something you won't see happening in Boise, Idaho.
Police around the country could learn an awful lot about responsible community policing from an unlikely place: Boise, Idaho. Police chief Mike Masterson
talked about responsible policing recently to local media. When asked if he thought race was an issue in Ferguson and in police violence, he said he thinks it is. That exchange opens the video in which Masterson goes on to explains the responsibility of police forces to the communities they serve.
"Everything that I have watched about Ferguson is the anomaly of what I know about contemporary community policing," Masterson said. […]
"I think any time you have a police-involved death, whether it's an in-custody death, it's a use of force death, we need to question those," he said. "There is an appropriate dialogue going on this country now, that when somebody loses their life at the hand of a police officer, it should be looked at and it should be questioned."
He says it's also about hiring the right people to protect and serve.
"Sometimes we only have a class of six when we needed a class of 15, but I absolutely want to make sure that those right people are joining us for the right reasons so that we don't have the problems down the road we often see with other police departments," said Masterson.
Masterson knows what he's talking about. Citizen complaints to the police ombudsman have been reduced from a high of 150 to just five this year. But he's also a
nationally recognized authority on community policing. That starts, he wrote in a 2012 article for the
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, by establishing to a community that "officers act with justice and legitimacy." And that means "safeguarding the fundamental rights of people to gather and speak out legally."
Law enforcement agencies facilitate and protect the public’s right to free speech and assembly. When officers realize they are at a protest to ensure these rights, they direct their responses accordingly, from planning to implementing the plan.
Masterson is
retiring as of January 2015. Which makes him perfectly available for President Obama's National Police Task Force. Seems like his appointment to it would be a no-brainer.