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April 14, 1966
POLICE COMMUNITY RELATIONS PROPOSALS
of the
HUMAN RELATIONS COORDINATING COUNCIL

The Human Relations Coordinating Council represents 16 organizations in the Greater Milwaukee area concerned with human relations and with human rights. We are happy with the opportunity to meet with Chief Breier and the members of the Fire and Police Commission to present our views regarding a police community relations program for the city of Milwaukee. We are here as citizens interested in the kind of effective law enforcement which keeps pace with our increasingly complex and changing community. We are also here as representatives of organizations with a combined total of many years of professional and lay experience in the field of human relations in Milwaukee.

We are deeply aware of the vital and difficult role of the police in providing for the public safety. The police of our city are the first line of defense of the human rights of all of our citizens. Police officers are engaged every day in the very often thankless and dangerous tasks of protecting persons and property. They guarantee that citizens can engage in their right to peacefully and lawfully express protest and counter protest. They work in the midst of social conflict and community tension. The decisions which the individual police office must make, often in the matter of minutes, can expose him and the police department to unjust criticism, very often based on a lack of understanding by the public of the difficulties which are involved.

The evidence is very clear that there is a great reservoir of hostility and misunderstanding about police in all segments of our community. While there has been considerable focus on the distrust of the police by minority groups, based on historic and sociological factors, there is ample evidence that such hostility and misunderstanding also exists in the general community. Surveys show that a gap of misunderstanding exists between our young people--teenagers in particular and the police. This should be a matter of deep concern. Many citizens who come into frequent contact with the police view them in somewhat the same manner as minority groups are viewed-faceless-unhuman and as scapegoats for many of the community's problems.

The professional police officer of the sixties must have a more sophisticated understanding of the community in which he operates, of the various racial and ethnic groups and of the sources of tension surrounding them. He must understand attitudes and the problems of youth in every part of our city and on all social and economic levels. To ignore such problems or to treat them with the techniques of a bygone period, is to ignore the lessons of violence and bitterness experienced by other cities across the United States.