PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JULY 15, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Those who disagree are not enemies
The murder of fi ve po-
lice offi cers in downtown
Dallas, Texas by a frustrated
and radical former Army
Reserve private is tragic.
The offi cers were patrol-
ling a peaceful Black Lives
Matter protest after police
shootings in Louisiana and
Minnesota.
Though every police offi cer takes
their lives into their hands each time
they don the uniform and badge there
should not be a target on their back.
The shooter allegedly said he wanted
to kill as many white people—and
white cops—as possible in retaliation
for black deaths by law enforcement.
More cops were killed than at any
time since September 11.
The killer’s rage was sparked by the
shooting deaths of two men, one in
Louisiana, the other in Minnesota. His
rage was most likely stoked further by
the deaths of other African-Americans
at the hands of police offi cers.
At the memorial service for the fi ve
offi cers in Dallas this week President
Barack Obama and former President
George W. Bush offered words of com-
fort and condolence. Bush eloquently
said: “Too often we judge other groups
by their worst examples while judg-
ing ourselves by our best intentions.”
Those words ring true, especially in
our climate of political and ideological
divisiness.
There are calls for people to come
together, to communicate, to under-
stand one another. Police are not the
enemy, nor or African-Americans.
Liberals are not the enemy, nor are
conservatives. Supporters of Donald
Trump are not the enemy, nor are the
supporters of Hillary Clinton. Yet, the
American people have been given
permission by some pundits, orators
and politicans to view their counter-
parts as enemies that need to be van-
quished at the ballot box and in the
courts.
“I’m here to insist that we are not
as divided as we seem,” Obama said
at the memorial in Dallas. The presi-
dent has made too many speeches after
tragic deaths over the past seven years.
There are words spoken at such oc-
casions—especially after Dallas—that
boil the blood of those in one camp
or the other. Some say that
Obama does not support
law enforcement person-
nel as strongly as he should;
some on the other side sug-
gest the president subtly at-
tacked black communities
when he said “[Y]ou know
how dangerous some of the
communities where these police of-
fi cers serve are, and you pretend as if
there’s no context. These things we
know to be true.”
The recent red-hot national debate
about guns has morphed into a discus-
sion about support for police. We were
taught as children that policemen are
our friends and they will always help
when we need it. Unfortunately, in
some communities, the reality is much
different where the lesson is to not
trust and run away from cops.
It makes for a nice speech for po-
liticans to talk about coming together,
understanding and respecting one
another. The important step is to un-
derstand why any community feels
the way it does. Society must take as
valid accusations of racism and dis-
crimination; it is disingenuous to say
that racism and prejudice do not ex-
ist. After the Philando Castile shoot-
ing in Falcon Heights, Minn., Gov.
Mark Dayton commented, “Would
this have happened if those passengers
would have been white? I don’t think
it would have.” Castile had been sub-
ject to 52 traffi c stops over the past few
years. How is a person supposed to feel
about cops after all that?
All the legislation, speeches and
court decisions in the world won’t
make a change. It will come when in-
dividuals drop their guard a bit, realize
that the person they think is their en-
emy wants the same things: safety and
security for their family and a peace-
ful existence. Want of food, shelter
and happiness is universal regardless of
background.
There is more that unites us than
divides us but at times it is hard to see
that through all the trees of anger, fear
and disrespect.
The mightiest forest begins with
but one sapling; our leaders should in-
spire us to plant a little sprig of toler-
ance that will muliply into a forest that
can never be cut down. —LAZ
Men of Keizer
and Rotary
volunteers
organizations Jeff Cowan
(and friend) and Bob
Shackelford (and Tan-
ya). Bob was instrumental
in organizing volunteers
from MAK.
Many thanks to all.
Pam Vorachek,
Executive Director,
Antique Powerland
Museum Association
editorial
letters
To the Editor:
I’d like to thank several
members of Keizer service
groups for their volunteer
help over the 4th of July weekend
at Antique Powerland. Two groups
assisted: Keizer Rotary and Men of
Action (a Keizer Chamber of Com-
merce group). Members who vol-
unteered were: Betty Hart and Alex
Miller (and son) from Rotary Club
of Keizer, Joe Cecere (and Jasmine),
Hughie Baker, Rob Miller, Mario
Monteil from Men of Action in
Keizer (MAK) and members of both
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America needs smart law enforcement
By JOHN TEAGUE
The July 7 events in Dallas, Tex-
as can’t help but evoke something.
I’m not especially given to sadness
or grief; I have another, rather un-
defi ned emotion, and I hear other
cops who share mine: it’s akin to
consternation mixed with a bit of
dread, and not so much for us cops
as for our collective, American fu-
ture.
Regardless, what happened
punctuated something that’s been
haunting my conscience for at least
the last two years. It isn’t the kill-
ing of police offi cers—occupational
violence is part of the job descrip-
tion; it’s the random killing of them.
If we’ve turned a corner where the
occasional, indiscriminate killing of
cops is a new normal, the conse-
quences will be dismal, and I don’t
mean for the cops—we’ll adjust our
tactics—but for the communities
we serve, and fi rstly in the poorer
neighborhoods, where the mostly
good people are most in need of
good policing.
The vast majority of peace offi -
cers patrol alone, and they’re used to
keeping the threats to their safety in
front of them. The consequence of
having to safeguard their fl anks and
rear is that cops will be less willing
to expose and invest themselves in
recalcitrant neighborhoods. Some
folks may think they’ll be unaffect-
ed, but deteriorating neighborhoods
have a pernicious way of metastasiz-
ing whole communities.
guest
column
By JOHN
TEAGUE
So, what’s to be done about it?
There’s no doubt some change in
policing is required because the
present strategy of policing people
instead of problems inevitably leads
to over-policing, too much law en-
forcement. That seems common-
sensical now, but we didn’t under-
stand it until relatively recently.
For decades, arrest-and-punish-
ment seemed to work and to make
sense. Maybe it did in what seemed
to be a relatively homogenous cul-
ture; however, our culture is not ho-
mogenous, except that almost every
man and woman—regardless of his
or her race or station in life—longs
for the same things: among them are
security in one’s home and person,
a good job, and an optimistic future
for their children.
The police play a signifi cant role
in securing the ability to achieve
those desires, but we should play a
role that is at the same time more
signifi cant and less unintentionally
harmful. Instead of quickly default-
ing to arrests, law enforcement has
been steadily, and with quickening
speed, moving in the direction of
fi xing root problems. It’s a moment
that’s been coming for two decades.
Yet at this crossroads, there are
also some who profi t from the
teased-out narrative that cops are
inherently bad for communities
and people of color, and they—wit-
tingly or not—provoke angry, im-
pressionable people into becoming
angry, dangerous people. If this con-
tinues—if there is a new normal—
then high-risk and at-risk commu-
nities, and ultimately all of us, will
experience more crime.
Two things need to happen. Peo-
ple need to protest softly without
letting agitators defi ne the narrative.
And policy-makers must resist the
urge to wrangle the police, hobbling
them into the same old tried-and-
failed tactics; rather, they need to let
us continue on the path of change.
But because they’ll be pressured to
take action now, policy-makers can
work with law enforcement to de-
fi ne the outcomes and set bench-
marks for getting there.
Because the systems that right
wrongs are often downstream from
police work, there isn’t always im-
mediate reward, but occasionally we
right wrongs that only we who are
in the right place at the right time
are able to make right. For this rea-
son, America needs cops. She needs
them to police smartly and justly,
and to be present and unafraid, even,
like in Dallas, to protect those who
protest them.
(John Teague is Chief of the
Keizer Police Department.)
Trump has credibility on NATO remarks
The world’s largest military alli-
ance met in Warsaw last week. The
largest agenda item was money.
The North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization (NATO) has been pushing
long and hard for more spending by
its members. Just last year, the alli-
ance increased defense spending for
the fi rst time in 20 years. However,
the fl y in the organization’s machin-
ery is that most NATO countries do
not pay their recommended share. If
this matter rings a bell for the read-
er, then it is timely to remind that
one of Donald Trump’s pet peeves
and one about which he has harped
and harped, and may be serious,
is that the U.S. should rethink its
involvement in the military alliance
because it is “obsolete” while oth-
er member nations don’t pay a fair
share.
Yet, those involved in NATO’s
leadership, as anyone who knows
how much having a job with lon-
gevity is valued by those in it, the
NATO Secretary General Jens
Stoltenberg, a Norwegian politi-
cian, said, “The world is a more dan-
gerous place than just a few years
ago.” That statement was likely in-
spired by the fact that the former
Soviet Union is Russia again, and al-
lows Vladimir Putin too much access
to the steroid storage. We’re all aware
that Putin, at the very least, has taken
back the Crimea and wants back all
of the Ukraine as well as those that
have been free of the Soviet yoke
for years, like Estonia, Latvia, Lithu-
ania and Poland. Of course, oth-
er nations are worried, too.
But back to the subject of mon-
ey. NATO statistics report that the
U.S. spent an estimated $650 bil-
lion last year. It turns out that our
amount is more than double that
amount of all the other member
nations combined so we’re mainly
protecting them: This fact grinds on
many Americans because the other
member states
enjoy a com-
bined
GDP
that tops that
of the U.S.
N A T O
publicly
ac-
k n ow l e d g e s
it has an “over-reliance” on the
U.S. and reports also that one of
the most economically weak mem-
ber nations, Greece, is the second
biggest NATO spender in propor-
tional terms at 2.38 percent. Hillary
Clinton has been soft on skinfl int
NATO members, imploring those
folks to please, please, please do their
part. Donald Trump has gone a lot
further in what he promises to de-
mand from the other members and,
if elected, he’ll put feet to a pro-
verbial fi re, and, whether Russia is
just playing boogeyman beyond the
Ukraine or not, get those people
off their nearly total defense depen-
dence-on-America ways.
The repeated fact here is that our
contribution in dollars to NATO is
$650 billion, with the U.K. at $60
billion, France at $44 billion and
gene h.
mcintyre
Germany at $40 billion with most
of the others in the category of small
change. Canada, with a fairly large
economy, comparably contributes
nearly nothing.
An impression of President
Barack Obama is that he’s been
weak-to-totally passive at getting
the NATO members to do their
part as his best asset comes across
as pontifi cating policy which adds
up to nothing more than a long
list of impressive words found only
in academia. Hillary Clinton tells us
she wants to wear his shoes which
are apparently just her size as they
share a seat on Air Force One and
campaign and are campaigning
for her in a modern day Astaire-
Rogers routine. If Donald Trump’s
elected, this is an issue it’s hoped he
will stand by his word, pinning the
cheapskates on the NATO mat and
thereby correcting the huge imbal-
ance in payments far too many years
overdue or demand the freeloaders
cough it up or the U.S. will exit
NATO.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)