Action Team, Task Force Recognized By Human Rights Commission

ORLEANS – “Is this your vehicle?”

In police work, it’s a question that’s fairly common and purely procedural. But depending on who you ask, it’s a question that can be taken in a different, unintended way.

Recently a newly minted police officer met with members of the Conversations With Police Task Force, where he learned from one of its members about the harm such a seemingly innocent question can cause someone.

“The person was offended,” recalled Orleans Police Chief Scott MacDonald, who is one of four local police chiefs that sit on the task force. ‘Why wouldn’t it be my vehicle? You’re just asking me that because I’m a person of color?’”

Police chiefs in Orleans, Chatham, Brewster and Harwich have learned a lot in recent years about how certain aspects of their job, much of it routine, can adversely impact some members of the communities they serve. In turn, residents are learning more about the challenges and stresses that local police deal with in doing their jobs.

The task force, a subcommittee of the Martin Luther King Jr. Action Team, has been meeting regularly since shortly after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police in May 2020. The group brings non-police members together with the four police chiefs to discuss issues such as race and policing. The goal is to better build the relationship between police and segments of the local population that historically have been underserved by law enforcement.

“We’ve built this trust, which has allowed people to sort of talk through these really challenging issues,” said Jeff Spalter, a member of the action team. “We have people of color on the team who have had bad experiences with police, and they’ve been strong enough to kind of share that. And the chiefs have listened and they’ve responded positively.”

Spalter and MacDonald said the task force has made great strides in recent years in building that trust and dialogue. Those efforts were recognized by the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission, which on Monday awarded the action team, including the task force, this year’s Rosenthal Community Champion Award. Named after Irving Leopold Rosenthal, the award is given annually by the commission to a person or group that works in support of furthering human rights issues in Barnstable County.

The award was given as part of the commission’s annual human rights celebration, which was held Monday morning at the Hyport Conference Center in Hyannis.

“To have the human rights commission recognize us with that award, it’s affirming that we’re moving in the right direction and we need to continue to do the work that needs to be done to make sure that those bridges are strengthened between police and the communities we serve,” Brewster Police Chief Heath Eldredge said.

Eldredge first forged a connection with the action team prior to the task force’s formation. About eight years ago, he worked with the team to help educate people about the role of local police, or the lack thereof, in federal immigration enforcement.

After Floyd’s death sparked national outrage, casting a negative shadow over the profession of law enforcement in the process, Eldredge joined MacDonald, Harwich Police Chief David Guillemette and then Chatham Police Chief Mark Pawlina in helping start the Conversations With Police Task Force. Current Chatham Chief Michael Anderson has assumed Pawlina’s role on the task force since the latter’s retirement.

Most telling for Spalter, it was local police who approached the action team about starting the task force, not the other way around.

“I think that really tells you how much they wanted to have a good relationship and how much they wanted to address the issue,” he said.

MacDonald said he’s proud of his department’s work and how it represents Orleans, and admits that he was defensive at first when questions and criticisms were raised by non-police members of the task force in the early going. Over time, however, he said an honest but comfortable dialogue has evolved among all members. At a recent meeting, he recalled, members spent the better part of an hour discussing a recent newspaper article about how police collect and use data.

“I’ll say this, it’s been a really interesting journey,” he said. “I can say I’ve personally gone through and experienced a range of different emotions, and I’m just thrilled at where we are as a group, because we’ve built this level of trust where we can speak openly and honestly about our feelings.”

Eldredge said his participation in the task force has allowed him to view his department’s work “through a different lens,” one that tries to better understand the people his officers interact with on a day to day basis.

“It’s helped to build empathy for me personally, and I try to share that down to the officers that I work with. Having empathy for people’s situations and their backgrounds.”

MacDonald said police are employing a similar approach in Orleans.

“If I’m a person of color, how would I look at the situation versus looking at it through the lens of a law enforcement officer?” he said. “And to listen to participants in our meetings, people of color, and hear their side, it really has been an eye opener.”

That empathetic focus has resulted in some small but meaningful changes in local policing, Spalter said. As an example, he said police are exercising more discretion as to whether or not to deploy a police cruiser to reports of suspicious behavior.

“Now what they’ll do is they’ll ask,” he said. “What are the behaviors that are suspicious? What is it about this person that makes them a threat? Because if it’s just that they’re Black, we may not send a car over there because it might create a potential confrontation that could go bad. We can take that risk off the table just by asking a few more questions.”

But it’s not just police that are using their involvement in the task force as an opportunity to learn. Similarly, non-police task force members have learned more about policing and why officers go about their jobs the way that they do.

“They’ve shared kind of the stress of being a police officer,” Spalter said. “They do not complain about it all, but they’ve been kind enough to share their feelings and the impact on their family. They talk about the rate of alcoholism and suicide and things that happen within the police force across the U.S. It’s above the average in America, and it’s because they put themselves in danger everyday.”

Eldredge said it was “humbling” to be recognized by the human rights commission, but the action team and task force aren’t resting on their laurels. Gains have been made in improving relations between police and communities of color in the Cape, but there’s still much more to be done, Eldredge and MacDonald say.

“Police reform has been around now for a couple of years, but we’re still going strong,” MacDonald said. “We’re not going to put this by the wayside. We’re moving forward. We’re not going to let this go.”