Political Gumbo: What About Preventative Measures?

I managed to fight my way through the pain of the kidney stone with the aid of a couple of bottles of pure cranberry juice. 

The pain went away and didn’t come back.

And I’m not solving for Y to figure out the why and how.  

Just glad to be pain free. 

Seriously, that was ass whooping pain.

That’s the only way to describe it. 

Even at death’s proverbial door, and yes it felt like it, the cry for Gumbo was loud. 

So we’re back.

The Council got around to the OIR report last week and called on the police department to accept all of the recommendations in the report.

That’s all good, but keep in mind the majority of these recommendations are things the department should do after an officer involved shooting occurs.

In other words, the public won’t see the impact of the recommendations until after another tragedy occurs.

Truth to tell, the public probably won’t recognize any change, since the recommendations involve policy and procedure in an investigation.

That’s not because the department won’t implement the recommendations, but the public won’t recognize the accepted changes because they will occur behind the scenes — like an officer being sequestered during the investigation.

That said, what’s needed is a conversation on the preventative steps that can be taken before we have another officer involved shooting. 

And no, just yelling at the police chief is not that conversation.

This one requires police, elected officials, business owners, the PUSD, Day One, concerned citizens and local parents to sit down at a meeting where each stakeholder has to be just as committed to listening as they are to speaking.

Yes we can start with pretext stops, and before this even came up I did a Gumbo on those.

I’m down with eliminating the stops to a degree, if a vehicle violation could cause a public safety hazard — that’s different.

I’m down for eliminating stops over front license plates, but if your brake lights don’t work — that’s dangerous. 

Actually, I’d like to see something like the Black Male Forum come back.

A group of Black men meeting to find solutions. 

The group was not a City commission bound by City rules. In other words, they could meet when they wanted and if the conversation went in a different direction, they weren’t bound by the Brown Act.

Mad respect to local elected officials, but everyday people can get together to do the work.

Whatever the answer is, it’s going to take more than one OIR report and screaming voices to find solutions.

Simply put, it’s time to get to work.