Joseph McCormick

Morning Joe: I saw you discussion with Mayor De Blasio. As a Black Man and Minister in my community, I support the police and I know that all of our communities need our police. I will always take up for an officer who applies the law correctly, treats people with respect and dignity, but ends up having to use excessive force. But I will not support bad policing "just because" he or she is a police officer. I have been profiled by police too many times, thankfully nothing out of sort occurred. But, it could have easily. We all know the original mission of how police organizations came to be; to catch and punish slaves. So, white supremacy has been embedded in these law enforcement agencies from top to bottom from the beginning. Are all organizations bad ones, I do not think so, but they are all tainted and can improve? Are all cops bad, no--but we know these unions and the Blue Wall protect embedded racists that wear the blue. I know too many good officer and I see their good works in my community. I disagree with your soft-shoe approach to dealing with biased departments who have not changed year after, after year, after year, after year, but have continued to achieve the same results to the same communities. There are too many deaths from too many departments where Chiefs can't or won't change, and where police unions have supported the same. Moreover, you cannot convince me that every problem in every community requires a Badge and a Gun to solve it. Add a biased attitude toward minorities and you have an accident going somewhere to happen. You appear to support "police business as usual", whereas I support redirecting some funding to persons much more qualified to resolve issues within a community to prevent more serious issues before an officer has to be called in the first place. That is called Smart Engagement rather than "police business as usual" with instances of a zeal for killing us. We know de-escalation can be done because we see it done with white assailants routinely, especially with mass shooters. When any unarmed black, brown or poor citizen is abused or ends up dying at the hands of a police officer as we have been seeing all across this country, that is a problem. These departments will not change until they are made to change. They cannot police themselves. I am proud of what cities are doing across the US to reform policing. It is creative, effective and efficient to address the problem with the goal of solving the problem, "not by killing the perceived problem". Look at the work being done in Newark, NJ, such as the Newark Community Street Teams program.