Pastor: We must build bridges between police and local black communities

My heart was heavy when I saw and heard of the situation between the Craig family and Officer William A. Martin.

An African-American mother calls police because a neighbor put his hands on her 7-year-old son.

Upon arriving, the officer proceeds to, in an egregious fashion, exacerbate the situation through rude behavior.

But then I was increasingly frustrated with the way it was handled. The mother and her daughter were arrested and the 7-year-old son’s grievance was not addressed.

This situation has impacted the way a boy looks at the police. It’s bad enough for us to have our issues as adults but when our issues jade the vision of the next generation, everyone who cares about a brighter future should want to start building bridges.

Bridges are constructs that will connect two sides.

The need for bridges occurs because there has been a breakdown of trust, relational intelligence and cultural understanding.

This is where we are in our race relations in this country, and it is certainly where we are with our relationship with our police officers and the community.

We can never say that either one is less or more important than the other.

Police officers and other leaders are raised from the community. This means that we must be more intentional and relationally intelligent in connecting the divide that is happening in our communities right now.

We value our police officers and the sacrifices they make daily to ensure the safety of our city.

But we cannot ignore that there are some insidious thoughts and behaviors that have no business within our police department and our community.

The malfeasance of some is overshadowing the magnificence of the whole. This should not be.

We all should be working together to build bridges in an effort to restore trust in our police officers, just as police officers should be willing to do what is necessary to build bridges and heal a community’s perception.

I dream for the city to build bridges that future generations can use as pathways to further progress.

But you can’t build it with bad materials, nor can you restore relationships with injurious behavior that does not take into consideration the pains of the other.

We cannot build bridges if we bring our prejudice to the table of peace.

We cannot build bridges if police officers have implicit bias toward any underserved community.

And we certainly cannot build bridges if we ignore that some communities are served, while other communities, predominantly black and brown, are policed.

We as a church have a great long-standing relationship with our police officers, but in this case there is a concern. These types of messages send out a signal to underserved communities that their lives, our mothers and children are not valuable and are not respected.

We want to build a bridge of mutual respect. The decisions by Officer Martin and others have created a plank and not a bridge.

Most rational people will find a way to move forward. But what the tragedies of Dallas teach us is that no city is exempt from irrational people.

In fact it’s not easy to “move on” in these moments, even though we think of scriptures that say, “Come now let us reason together” (Isa. 1:18).

In fact, we cannot “move on” proceeding on the planks of mistrust, prejudice, lies and blatant bias.

And we certainly cannot “move on” when our voices are not heard and responded to by city and police officials.

Planks will lead to failed relationships, but bridges will lead to a fortified future. We need bridges, not planks!

This story was originally published February 8, 2017 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Pastor: We must build bridges between police and local black communities."