Grand Rapids has a sizeable black population, as I've seen while visiting here in the last two days. There've been tensions with police, especially after the shooting of an officer last December, and what some felt was harrassment of blacks during the investigation. But after black-on-black violence made headlines in May, black community leaders stood with police in calling for a greater focus on parenting, and promoting self-responsibility. Today, as Jam Sardar of WOOD-TV reports in this news video, there was a major forum held by and for the black community of Grand Rapids, in the Wealthy Theater.

Topics ranged from poverty and parenting, to generational differences (civil rights vs. hip-hop), but the focus was police and blacks. Watch the whole video and judge for yourself. It's good they're covering this stuff, and not totally cowering under a politically-correct shadow. But the sound bites from the forum, while scrupulously balanced, are also a way of hiding behind balance, as "straight news" reports on radio, TV, and in the papers so often do.

And so you get the inevitable (black) guy who says the cops are biased against blacks, the (black) guy who says blacks better step up to the problems in their community, the white police chief who says the same thing, essentially, and the (black) guy who says it's neither, and both.

I'll go with Door Number Two, the fella who said: "Our problem is....we do need to be the police officers of our community." There are probably are some cops in Grand Rapids who could stand to brush up on their interpersonal skills, including the way they relate to minorities. That applies in most places. But so does this: criminals who perpetrate violent crimes must be caught, and, if they are young men or teens, their parents and families are rightly held responsible in the court of public opinion and in the community.

The values of The Conservative Brotherhood are values for all, for the ages.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at July 14, 2005 04:29 PM