Opinion: We’ve all seen Memphis police at work. What’s policing like around here?
“I hope they stomp his ass!” said a Memphis police officer getting out of his car. He helped drag Tyre Nichols out of his vehicle and commenced to do just that. They held his arms outstretched while they kicked him in the face. Having him defenseless, they punched him and beat him to death while he cried out for his mother, who lived less than 100 yards away. We all saw it happen.
So, I went down to the Barnstable Police Department to meet with Police Chief Matthew Sonnabend, Lt. Michael Riley, Lt. Michael Clark, Lt. Mark Mellyn and Deputy Chief Jean Challies. We've seen policing in other places turn predatory all too often. What should we expect here on Cape Cod?
'I watched the videos and was disgusted.'
We had 136 years of total police experience in the room. The atmosphere was cordial; the conversation was honest. I knew they'd all seen the same footage and wanted to know what they thought of it.
“Crushing,” Mellyn said.
“It pisses me off,” Sonnabend said.
“This isn't us,” somebody else said. “We work hard to maintain our relationships. You lose individuality; it happens anywhere and it's perceived personally.”
“I've watched the videos and was disgusted,” added a fourth. “People shouldn't fear the police.”
Sonnabend pointed out that these atrocities are not happening in New England.
"The higher the level of education police officers have … the more critical thinking they're trained to do … good training leads to good policing."
Training reduces fear. Calm heads get you better policing.
After the 9/11 attacks, one officer pointed out, the public appreciated police officers. People would volunteer to buy them lunch. After George Floyd, people were seeing the police differently.
We talked together for almost two hours and I learned a lot. Maybe we should start with training and qualifications.
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Barnstable police officers are tested, including through psychological exams.
Barnstable has a civil service police department. That means incoming officers must go through an intensive process of testing, evaluation, psychological exams, Police Academy and departmental training. Just their application runs to 48 pages.
Candidates must be at least 21 years of age. Advanced education is a plus. Members of the department travel to candidates’ schools and colleges and talk to employers and family members to get a real sense, not only of capacity but of character to find suitable police officers.
“We want people who have made moral decisions in their lives,” Sonnabend said. “We can train the rest, but we're looking for good people. You can't teach somebody how to use a moral compass.”
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I asked if the department had any “elite” units. Challies immediately started to describe their Community Impact Unit that works with area homeless. Yes, the department has a SWAT team trained to handle particularly dangerous situations, but I was impressed that the Deputy Chief’s immediate instinct was to go to their community service operations.
Since 2015, five Cape officers have been shot in the line of duty and one, Yarmouth police Sgt. Sean Gannon was killed, Sonnabend said.
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Massachusetts police are legally responsible for their fellow officers' actions.
Officers started talking about the psychological and emotional stresses of police work. The chief pointed out that in the last year across the United States, more police officers have died by suicide than in the line of duty.
“Let's face it,” one of the group said, “we see things that most people in civilian life never have to see personally … suicides, violent and accidental deaths, fires.”
Each officer, sometimes with help, has to find a way to download all that stress. It can be very difficult and someone laughingly pointed out that often retired officers look younger than they did when they were still in service.
Typically, a police officer’s heart beats 13 times a minute faster on duty than off. Multiply that out times 8-hour days, 40-hour weeks over a 25-year career.
In Memphis, we saw what happens when not a single officer tries to pull his fellows back from the brink. In Massachusetts, it's state law that every officer present has legal responsibility for the excesses of their teammates. I was reminded that in Barnstable, that's been the policy for years.
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'It's a calling. And it should be.'
There's no way in a single column that I can share with you everything I’ve learned so far, nor have I gotten accounts yet from minority groups and others on the Cape. But here's a small detail that seemed significant to me at the time.
In partnership with the Duffy Health Center, Barnstable police have a program called “In from the Cold.” The weather forecast on the day we spoke called for nighttime wind-chill temperatures up to 15 below zero … lethal cold. While we were speaking, one of the officers handed me his phone, and on it was an alert for all officers on patrol that day to pay particular attention to our population of people experiencing homelessness, and to offer them overnight housing in local motels if they could be persuaded to go — or needed to.
Officers sit with patrons at the Faith Family Kitchen to get to know clients personally and informally. Our police receive training for working with people experiencing mental illness and have mental health professionals on call when needed.
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All across the country, schools are losing teachers, hospitals are losing nurses, police departments are having trouble recruiting replacements. It's particularly difficult for the Barnstable department because its standards and requirements are more strenuous than they often are elsewhere. Neither are any of these professions particularly lucrative.
“It’s a calling," one of the group said, “and it should be.”
I know I have much more to learn, but I came away impressed. The Cape isn’t an inner-city environment, but we know policing can be better than we’ve seen in much of the country. Maybe it could be more like this.
Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at omamerica1@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: After Memphis, what should we expect from Cape police?
