Coffee with a Cop
By Albert B. Kelly
With everything that has happened in the last few years
involving police and communities and shootings across the country, you might
think that whatever we did in response, it would have to be something really big-
something dramatic- maybe even something earthshaking.
But what if the starting place was really very simple,
almost so simple most people would dismiss it as being worthless, or at best
naïve? That might well be how some people will view “Coffee with a Cop” taking
place at the Bridgeton MacDonald’s on March 28th at 4pm.
But to view “Coffee with a Cop” as not worth our time and
attention might be to miss the obvious; that a lot of important bridges get
built when people have an opportunity to sit down together to break bread…or to
simply share a cup of coffee together and talk as people do.
Let’s face it, sometimes the only interaction people have
with a police officer is when that person is in some type of need or distress.
If that’s the case, then it becomes easy to view “the uniform” and to see
police officers as interchangeable pieces in a larger system.
Yet these men and women in uniform are pretty much like
people everywhere- they have goals and aspirations, families, bills to pay,
kids to raise, spouses and homes and everything else that goes into making up a
life.
In the same way, sometimes the only interaction a police
officer has with the community they serve is when they are on a call responding
to some type of situation, all while encountering people who are fearful,
angry, or in some type of distress.
If that’s the case, then it is easy to become cynical or
hardened so that the problems become interchangeable in the same way people do,
so that everyone is potential “perp”- to be watched or a set of problems that
may or may not require paperwork.
Yet most of the folks out there on the street are just
trying to get by and they too have families and people who love them- hopes and
dreams and aspirations mixed in with the fears and worries they carry with them
each day.
If an officer lives somewhere outside the community they
serve in, then that community as always a click or two removed from the place
they call home. How that might impact things I’m not entirely sure, but with
home being somewhere else at the end of a shift, there are very few chances to
encounter the community other than through being dispatched.
On the other side of that coin residents can, on some level,
view police as an outside force unattached and disconnected from the struggles
of the community or a given neighborhood, because they only encounter them when
they’re on patrol or responding to a call- that’s different then at the
checkout line at the grocery store.
Coffee with a cop matters, because it’s a simple,
non-confrontational opportunity to sit down and talk and maybe listen. In the
point of the spear between the community and the police, there will be body
cameras, statutes, litigation, and everything else that calls for choosing
sides. What there won’t be are relatively quiet moments to talk and listen.
My hope is that many in our community will stop by the
Bridgeton MacDonald’s at 56 E. Broad St on March 28th to have coffee
with a cop. I also hope that parents and youth leaders will bring children
along as well so they can meet and speak with the officers rather than having
their views shaped only by television and news headlines.
I am grateful to Anna Ford-Keels and her husband Elmer, the
owners of the Bridgeton MacDonald’s because they are committed to the Bridgeton
community- they’ve put roots down here and they are doing their part to help us
succeed.
Whatever the state of community-police relations, it gets a
lot better when you can know a person’s name, shake hands, exchange some ideas
or maybe share a little about yourself and why you came. Sharing a cup of
coffee won’t solve anything, but establishing a connection is a place to start.
Coffee with a Cop is something we’ve done occasionally and
something I would be enthusiastic to see on a regular basis. Please consider
stopping by on Tuesday, March 28th between 4pm and 5pm to have a cup
of coffee with our officers…coffee with a cop.