of Darren Wilson, Eric Garner, Rafael Ramos, Wenjian Liu, and a 4-year-old in Greene County, Virginia

On my first night as a uniformed cop in The Bronx's 47th Precinct I worked as "Four-Seven-Adam" in a "Radio Car" with long-time veteran Jerry Murphy, a guy who'd survived Vietnam and the 41st Precinct at the height of its "Fort Apache" Apocalypse.

Jerry told me a lot of things that night - the classic old cop passing wisdom to the young - and much of what he told me stays with me still.

"Don't pick fights," he said, "most of the people in this place, in any place, are just trying to get by, they need us to be their friends." The Four-Seven was a dark crazy place in the 1980s, a drug supermarket for rich kids from Westchester and Connecticut, a place whose population included a majority that were illegal immigrants. A place whose police needs overwhelmed the number of officers available, but that was still true.

"Don't try to push anybody else's idea of what a neighborhood should be," he told me. "Fuck Ed Koch, these people can't live in pretty little Greenwich Village [Mayor Koch's home] and they probably don't want to. This is their home, not a place The Mayor needs to be comfortable."

47th Precinct Station House, 1980s

"If you ever work with someone who is afraid of these folks because they don't look like he does, get out of the car and tell the boss you're sick."

And finally, "Never give a ticket to anyone who's got their kids in the car. You've totally embarrassed them by stopping them, if you give them a ticket they'll drive away cursing you and you've made two generations of enemies. If you're nice and tell them you're just worried about their kids they'll drive away saying nice things about you, and you've made two generations of friends - and kid, we need friends."

Jerry Murphy, working with a bullet fragment jammed against a nerve in his leg from an interrupted robbery 12 years before, was a wise man. I thought about him for the rest of my police career. I still think about him. I've thought a lot about him this season of nightmare in police-community relations.

Heartbreaking in every way.

As Jerry often told all of us, "remember kids, you work for these people, not for City Hall," and, "Kids, you want to make damn sure someone looking out their window will call 911 when you need help."

I mourn many this season. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rafael Ramos, Wenjian Liu, and too many others. I mourn the Las Vegas cops shot by right-wing wackos, and African-American kids too numerous to even begin to list. I am one of - I might suggest - the few who never visit Washington, DC without stopping by, and being brought to tears by, the Law Enforcement Memorial. I fully understand the risks taken by police officers every day - by men and women who are never thanked daily "for their service," by men and women who don't get priority boarding at airports when they are active or free doughnuts and dinners when retired, by men and women whose families worry about them every minute. And yet I also fully understand that whether you are grocery cashier or Barack Obama or Bill DeBlasio, if you have African-American sons or nephews, or grandchildren, you will worry about them any time they might be approached by police officers.

National Law Enforcement Memorial. The lions.

 Both things are horrifically true.

At Grand Valley State University I used to discuss police ethics with future officers, and I would ask the students, "If you were a black male, why wouldn't you run from a cop even if totally innocent?" It was a serious question a dozen years ago... and it remains a serious question.

Michael Brown died because Darren Wilson was too afraid of black males to be a police officer. "A demon"? You must be kidding. Former Officer Wilson,  I fought for my life a number of times but never imagined that I was fighting anyone but a human, and never hoping for anything more than that we'd all come out OK. It is hard to do sometimes, but if you can't do it, you cannot be a cop.

Eric Garner died because of two things - first, former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly was a disaster who thought enforcing economic rules was more important than human life - and second, because a cop ignored both his training and his humanity. Yikes, in the Police Academy a lifetime ago we were taught about chokeholds - I can still recall the scene - that "we have rules in New York, we're not Philadelphia or Los Angeles - so just don't do it."

Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died because media inflames everything, and when media inflames everything it especially inflames the insane, and because everyone in America, anyone in America, can go get a gun anytime they want.

May 2, 1992

Cops die because people are assholes, and people are sometimes dangerous criminals, and people are sometimes dangerously mentally ill in a nation where treatment is expensive and beyond reach, and because people do not appreciate cops - I can't think of another way to say it. And black kids die at the hands of cops because, yes, many cops are racists, and yes, many cops are too afraid to have this job, and sorry, yes, our community leaders want black males to be afraid of cops - something I wrote about in The New York Times back in the Rodney King days.

Nightmare of the 1980s - revisited - and it hit me very hard yesterday

But there is something else. There is a fundamental disrespect on one level, and a fundamental lack of understanding - all too often - on another.

And maybe there is a place to begin, despite everything...

We need to stop the fear. And we need to insist that our leaders, all of our leaders, stop encouraging the fear.

One of the reasons my partner and I rarely ate lunch out in a restaurant while in uniform was that, at some point, some mother with a misbehaving child would say to the kid, "if you don't sit down I'll have those cops arrest you." Really!? We'd often get up and walk over and explain, clearly, that "no we won't."

Why would anyone want to make their children that afraid of police?

Police: Stop letting Politicos portray you as scary

On the other hand, police need to stop making themselves scary. This begins with the "rules" Jerry Murphy shared so long ago, and it goes all the way to hoping that New York City's cops will quickly fire their union president, Patrick Lynch, who last night, in a moment of irresponsibility qualifying him to lead North Korea, said, "That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor. When these funerals are over, those responsible will be called on the carpet and held accountable." He added that the blame also goes to "those who incited violence on the street under the guise of protest that tried to tear down what NYC police officers did every day."

When I was in the New York City Police Academy I took 12 university credit hours of constitutional law, so I know that Americans have a right to protest, but I'm guessing Lynch was absent during that part of his training. Oh well.

Dressing this way doesn't help you talk to the community

And cops need to stop letting elected officials making them look scary too. From stupid threatening billboards to using police to suppress political discontent. From being too quick to put on riot gear to being too happy to carry heavy weapons. Police need to demand better from their superiors. Not by being disrespectful to someone like Mayor DeBlasio who is trying to bring them together with their community, but by engaging in open conversation about who police need to truly work for.

Cops also need to stop alienating the middle class with traffic citations for stuff a warning would almost always suffice.

And police need better training, everywhere, to work better with everyone. Its not easy. Especially as police hirings continue to grow further and further away from the kind of people who live in policed neighborhoods. Back in my day we said that suburban kids who became inner city cops suffered from "Starsky and Hutch Syndrome." Today, pushes for requiring college before police work might actually make this worse, not better.

On the other side, people need to give cops a bit of credit, even a bit of love. This is a dangerous job, a tough job. A job which wrecks marriages. A job which leaves PTSD scars. It has awful hours and bad pay. Might one tenth of at least the language and tiny perks offered to active duty military and military veterans - even non-combat veterans - be offered to cops and retired cops? Maybe? Appreciation always needs a two way street.

Finally, well, my last police-community nightmare rolled out last week in the rural community of Greene County, Virginia. It illustrates everything that can go wrong - even in the hands of only "responsible adults."

Alrighty, then...

"...a [4-year-old] child at Nathanael Greene Primary School allegedly threw blocks, climbed over desks, hit, scratched, and kicked the principal and the director of special education. A sheriff’s deputy assigned to the schools was summoned, and his boss -- County Sheriff Steven Smith – says the student was handcuffed.
'"The boy was out of control, basically, throwing his arms around and kicking-- trying to kick the deputy, trying to run away, and the deputy felt that putting the handcuffs on him was for his safety as well as everybody else's.
"The child's mother, Tracy Wood, was notified, arriving at school soon after she got the call.
"When you call a parent to get their child, when they get to the school, you expect the child to be there-- especially when you arrive in a timely manner." Instead, she was met by the principal who said the boy had been transported to the sheriff’s office.  Wood went right over and found her son’s legs in shackles."

Well, here's a school and a police department conspiring to make just about everyone hate and fear police, in a sleepy little place where cops should be everyone's best friend... and doing it in a way which builds fears of cops everywhere.

I won't even get into the question of the shock at a four-year-old throwing a really bad tantrum. Wow, we're all surprised. Or the stunning inability of a school knowing what to do in this case. But my problem here is, (a) the school's willingness to expect the police to solve a 4-year-old's behavior issue, and (b) the willingness of the police to play along, damaging their reputation permanently and hurting every cop's relationship with their communities.

Having held completely out of control high school and middle school students while calming them, I know that this is, sadly, part of the job of an educator (or parent). It is what we have to do because we care for children. Having done it as a cop as well... I know things I would never have done... including anything involving handcuffs or shackles.  Again, we just have to better than this - everyone of us.

I guess it is our misfortune that we need police in our communities. That we aren't just all good and skilled neighbors all of the time. But if we need police, we need the police to be fully part of us, with us, and we need police who feel that they are part of us, and with us.

Long ago...

Can we work on that?

- Ira Socol

The Stories of 11 September 2001

In the posts below I, really we, suggest ways in which you can get your students thinking and writing about September 11th, and history, in ways which help them understand how their world is constructed.

History Remembered, History Forgotten     Knowing History    Iconic Absence   
Teaching 9/11: Why? How?

9/11 in photographs, a Guardian multimedia piece

There are so many stories, and so many sources. Two newspapers stand out in collections your students can use. The Guardian's 9/11 Decade Archive is remarkable in its global and emotional breadth. The New York Times Learning Network has assembled many fabulous resources and ideas. Of particular interest for older students is the Guardian's short fiction project.

The Man Who Walked Between The Towers

I believe in storytelling. I believe in helping students to become storytellers and story hearers. I believe in helping students understand why people tell stories, and how people tell stories. Because I believe that there are two things which truly make us human, our use of tools, and our ability to tell, understand, and appreciate stories.

So, with that in mind, here are links to the stories I have written about 9/11 and the World Trade Center. They are stories which struggle to say what I want say - and that struggle to find your words through multiple attempts is something I would hope you will let your students experience with their writing, their storytelling.

Morning Arrivals (a World Trade Center very new and still quite empty, with artists lofts filling some of the space)
The Beach (in adolescence we experience spaces differently, and that is a good thing)
A River Runs Through It (trying to map lost places)
March Seventeenth (terrorism comes to New York, but life is a personal thing)
September 11, 2001: In Moments (trying to capture chaos in words)
Finding Ends (11/19/2001) (what is left after everything has happened)

But there is one more story. I had a friend. When we met I was a New York City cop and he was a busboy at Windows on the World on the 107th floor of One World Trade Center. He was a quiet guy who loved New York in every way. We were just about the same age, and yet, our histories were so incredibly different. And sometimes, late, late at night, we'd climb the stairs from that restaurant's kitchen up to the roof. Two World Trade Center had the observation deck, but this was just a roof anchoring a massive broadcast antenna which still made this the World's Tallest Building. And we'd lie there on the roof, suspended between the city and the stars, and we'd tell stories.

Later, I moved away but he stayed. Became a waiter. And was at work that morning.

- Ira Socol

John Lindsay and the Audacity of Hope

New York Mayor John V. Lindsay might be best remembered for columnist Jack Newfield's quote about him: "He gives good intentions a bad name."

As Lindsay is remembered this season, with a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York and with a documentary from New York public television station WNET-13, I would like to offer a counter assessment. I do this not just in a continuing attempt to set the historical record straight against what I consider the "historical fictions" of America's right ("Lindsay proved that big government doesn't work, he bankrupted the city." "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War." "The Great Society was a total failure."), but because the Lindsay Administration in New York City can tell us a lot about how we, as a society, perceive and build change. And that is very important for those of us seeking to re-imagine education.

For in the Lindsay Administration all hopes were welcomed, all changes were considered possible, all things which might promise an improved life were worth experimenting with, aesthetics mattered as much as spreadsheet numbers, feelings and empathy were more important than control and efficiency, and the general public was actually asked to "Give a damn."

This wasn't job lip service. Cars were kicked out of parks and the public was welcomed in. Museums went from stodgy palaces of the elites to welcoming institutions for everyone. College access was promised to all high school graduates - an idea almost 4 decades ahead of its time. Cleaning the air was considered important, long before the Feds began to enforce this idea. Cops were asked to influence crime through presence and community policing rather than through force. Schools were built. Subways were air conditioned so everyone might have quieter more comfortable commutes. Zoning was re-crafted to encourage public spaces. Cheap theater tickets were distributed - a system which remains a boon to tourists, the Broadway industry, and middle-class New Yorkers to this day. Historic buildings were protected. Racial integration was expected.

Did it all work? Hell no. We know that. The parks didn't have enough money to keep up with maintenance once user traffic tripled. The early air conditioners in the subway broke down and the newer-style windows didn't open much. The City University System (CUNY) lacked both the money and the faculty will to make "Open Admissions" work. Everything from clean air requirements to non-discriminatory hiring expectations to historic preservation scared businesses, which often moved away from regulations to New Jersey.

But, let me state the obvious, perhaps because of all these attempts, or - at least "obviously" - in spite of them, New York City survived 1965-1975, something many cities in the US really did not (see Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Newark, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Oakland, et al). Sure New York lost population (almost 10%), lost jobs and industries, and found itself bankrupt financially (primarily though, to be clear, because taxes levied in New York City supported the entire state and a large part of the nation - not because New York City lacked the requisite wealth). Those losses, however, were minimal compared to almost any other American city, and in 1976 that "bankrupt" New York could easily welcome the world to the completely successful American Bicentennial celebration. New York could hardly be said to have "collapsed" under Lindsay's "big government socialism."

The Urban Coalition's Give a damn campaign.

Give a damn

The heart of the Lindsay Administration was in the dual notions of equality and true opportunity. The belief system was that it was better to try and fail than to not try. The ethos was framed in the simple slogan of the Urban Coalition: "Give a damn." And so even if the immediate impact was not obvious, even if the failures mounted up, the results transformed New York City and created the possibility of future success.

For the first time the City University undergraduate population began to reflect the emerging diversity of the city, and today, CUNY's wonderfully diverse system is one of the best in the world.

For the first time since the advent of the automobile the parks system became dedicated to quiet and clean air, and the parks system was celebrated as a jewel. Without that cultural shift the volunteer efforts which have restored the parks could not have begun.

After years of "post war" neglect in favor of highways, the Subway system was again viewed as vital and essential. Giuliani's "restoration" would not have happened if Lindsay hadn't preserved what was there, and focused attention on it.

Cultural institutions became central to the life of the middle class in New York City. Museums flourished as the city embraced, first, The Museum Mile, and then other centers of culture. The TKTS booth on Times Square democratized theater audiences. Shakespeare appeared in The Park, the New York Philharmonic quickly followed.

And despite the many disasters (Ocean Hill/Brownsville and Frank Serpico being the top two), New Yorkers, for the first time, felt they had real input into their policing and education systems.

This was powerful stuff, and it remains powerful stuff.

45 years later

This matters 45 years later because we now live in an age when leaders spend more time telling us what is not possible than in trying to make our dreams into realities. We're told that Americans can't have a health care system as good as those in most similar nations. We're told that the best we can do is having a few good schools in a few states. We're told poverty is unsolvable - almost impossible to even make a dent in. We're told we can't have a real rail transport system. We have US Senators and Congressmembers who even tell us that we can not even put those who've killed Americans on trial.

On Twitter I listen daily as "educational reformers" prattle on about all we cannot do, we can only save a few kids, they say, so we'll segregate those few into Charter Life Boats while we watch the rest drown.

Everywhere in education I see people afraid to try, afraid even to run with great ideas which great teachers are proving in their classrooms. Brits can boycott dumb high stakes tests, but Americans are afraid. Few are willing to risk fighting the anti-child, anti-teacher tide flowing from Washington (and now from Westminster).  

The New York Times correctly titled their exhibition review "You Can Fight City Hall." Because that is what the Lindsay Administration meant. It was a time and a mindset that said we need to aim for the best we can be, and if that doesn't work, we'll pick ourselves up and try again.

1965 Campaign

1969 Campaign or watch the full video

Watch these campaign ads, visit the virtual exhibits (or the real ones if in or around New York), and remind yourself of what risk in the name of good looks like for a society.

Maybe we can recapture just a bit of that.

- Ira Socol

Accommodating Possibility

That New York State now has a legally blind Governor offers an opportunity for a level of public education about accommodations that should not be missed.

Because when even people completely uninterested in disability are faced with a newspaper story such as "A Blind Governor Adjusts, and So Does Albany" from Monday's New York Times, we all need to jump in and share this with our students, with our colleagues, with our administrators. And we probably have to share it with explicit explanations of what's important - in order to ensure that it is not simply read as a "charity case."

"Usually at night, in the Executive Mansion or at his family’s home in Harlem, the governor listens to the recordings on the designated phone line. They run up to five minutes each and can pile up quickly, taking hours to absorb.

“Last night I had 43 messages, all of them five minutes in length,” Mr. Paterson said in an interview. “That would be 215 minutes worth of material — over three hours.”

He stayed up that night from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. listening to the recordings, which covered everything from his prepared remarks for a press conference on energy to articles on economic growth in The Economist. But that was only enough time to get through half of them."

First message - please stop wondering if you are offering people with a difference (in this case blindness or a print disability) some kind of "unfair advantage." The Governor of New York nightly exceeds the 'extra-time on tests' situation and still only gets half of it done.

Accommodations do not give an advantage, they don't even make things equal, they only make things possible.

Yesterday, I pointed out to some faculty members that I had learned to be much more efficient in reading then when I had begun graduate school. "There is no way to skim using text-readers," I explained, "and before you know what research articles are like you really end up 'reading' every word." That, the way I use text-readers, probably meant I was spending 4 to 6 times as many hours reading as many of my classmates. "But now, I know what to read, what to skip, what to go back to based on what I need." Now, I perhaps spend only 2 to 3 times as many hours reading as other students in the same place in the program.

They had never thought of that. So, it was important that I told them.

"Given the volume of material he must take in, he tries to find ways to do things faster. He listens to very long articles or books on a special tape recorder for the blind that plays at speeds so fast, it is difficult for others to comprehend. “You get used to listening to that Alvin and the Chipmunks voice,” he said."

Second Message - Technology enables independence but technology must be learned. AT Specialist (and blogger) Karen Janowski wrote to me recently, "I realized back in the 90's that so many of my students were engaged by technology and it supported and built upon their strengths. How come I was the only one who noticed this? The typical response (even today) is to assign a paraprofessional to students which encourages dependence and learned helplessness. Other students are so beaten down by their challenges and the obvious solutions include providing text-to-speech so that their reading struggles do not hold them back from accessing the curriculum. It seems that we want students to do poorly, we want to deny them opportunities to succeed, we want to withhold technologies that will promote success and independence. We want to continue to use methods that focus on remediation at the expense of accommodation for the deficit today. It is maddening. The solutions are there - we need to empower students."

The Governor of New York does not want to depend on others to read to him. Surely he could create staff for this job, but he does not want to. He wants to read independently and when he wants to. Only technology can allow that. But unless that technology is offered, is evaluated, is trained. Only if time is available to really learn the effective use of that technology, will it be effective.

Much has been made of the fact that David Patterson was lucky to have informed, wealthy, committed parents, who managed to get him out of the schools in the City of New York (which would not support him this way) to another school which would. And in that parental ability to force change may lie a big component of his success. Now, just as President George W. Bush was forgiven for all sorts of adolescent/young adult 'indiscretions' (and apparent student laziness) and was still able to attend an Ivy League university, and I believe that those 'redemptive' options should be open to all students. I believe that all students, even those without wealthy and politically powerful parents, have the right an education which supports them in their quest for independence.

"Since he cannot read from a prompter, the governor tries to commit his speeches to memory, by listening several times to an aide’s recording of the speech. Delivering an address just from memory can be nerve-racking. “It’s like a high wire,” he said. “You trip, there’s no net."'

Third Message - It will never be easy. The things 'you' take for granted will always be much harder for 'me,' and success will be much rarer among similar students. Consider this, could the current US President have been elected if he had no choice but to fully memorize all of his speeches? If he could not have quickly checked his notes during debates? Or this, could your school's principal or superintendent or your college's dean have gotten where they are if "two hours of homework reading" every night really meant six or eight hours every night?

"He also uses humor to poke fun at his disability, offering anecdotes about how he once showed up at a press conference wearing two different-colored shoes, or how as a young man he would occasionally miscount the number of subway stops on his way home and get off at 145th Street instead of 135th Street. “Back in the ’80s, you didn’t want to go there at night,” he said, laughing."

Fourth Message - Stop treating us as victims and start supplying services. We're people just like everyone else, stuck with certain issues which make some things difficult. We don't want your sympathy. We want you to be fair, to understand just a tiny bit, and to allow us to find and use the solutions we need. The Governor of New York does not suggest that he needed a person guiding him through the subway back in the 1980's, but he may be pointing out that today's trains, with understandable announcements of stops, would have made his life just a touch easier. Of course those clear announcements (along with visual maps that light up the upcoming stop) make subway travel easier for everyone (especially tourists). And, you know, no one needs to bring a note from their doctor to make use of those assistive technologies. Isn't that an amazing idea?

- Ira Socol

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