ment and the reality of what cops face every day. What’s ironic
is the sad truth of who is really hurt by the movement. Too of-
ten, our cultural dialogue has turned negative toward law en-
forcement officers. When families are telling kids to be scared
of police because of a few tragic incidents (most of which have
a reasonable explanation), the vicious circle of increased racial
tension and rising crime continues. According to the FBI, 80
percent of crimes in certain areas are gang related. Those are
exactly the places that need aggressive policing, like “quality of
life,” “broken windows” and “stop and frisk.”
Young boys in those neighborhoods need to build trust and
respect with the officers charged with making those neighbor-
hoods safe. Shame on leaders who cultivate an irrational fear of
police among black youth. The entire movement started on the
lie from Ferguson, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and has been per-
petuated by isolating certain statistics to paint a picture of cops
preying on unarmed blacks. The false narrative being pushed
by the Black Lives Matter movement is harming the very people
they claim to represent. Murder among black Americans is high
and rising. For nearly 20 years, the crime rates in our cities were
dropping, creating the opportunity for families to live without
the constant fear of being subjected to horrific street violence.
The dramatic change started under Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lead-
ership in New York City, when police policies known as “bro-
ken windows,” “CompStat” and “stop and frisk” were employed.
By the time he left office, murders had dropped from a high of
2,600 in 1990 to fewer than 900 in 2001. Rapes, robberies and
assaults all went down, showing a return of order to the city. The
trend was picked up in other cities across America, and for the
next two decades, crime dropped by nearly 50 percent.
Then Ferguson. A black man who had just been caught on
a store’s surveillance camera stealing cigars and strong-arming
the clerk assaulted a white cop named Darren Wilson. It took
only hours for the narrative to start that the officer killed a young
man who was attempting to surrender and begging for his life.
Then the evidence came into play. Turns out, the man assaulted
the officer, went for his gun and was shot as he charged Wil-
son. No matter, the political movement was spawned and the
facts only got in the way. Over the past couple years, police have
been under a microscope and new videos continue to surface
showing aggressive white cops and black citizens. What’s often
missing is the context.
America doesn’t have a race problem in the way the Black
Lives Matter movement would have you believe. The problem is
a civil-rights crisis in our cities, where black families are denied
access to a safe and prosperous environment because gang vio-
lence is on the rise. How can a society move forward if less than
three-quarters of the kids in a major city don’t finish school?
How can a community thrive when its unemployment is 50 per-
cent higher than the national average?
Cities need infrastructure, jobs and public safety. Let’s stop
making every viral video showing an ugly interaction a testa-
ment to a much bigger problem. Instead, the political and com-
munity leaders should focus on the much more serious prob-
lem of the blood spilling across American cities — most often,
young black men dying at the hands of other young black men.
America’s cities need more cops patrolling the neighbor-
hoods. More interaction with residents. More arrests of suspi-
cious individuals. There is a very thin line between civilization
and savagery…and that line is blue. d
Bill Spadea was honored with the Friend in Media award at the
2016 NJ State PBA Valor Awards. He hosts Chasing News on Fox
TV and is a morning-drive host on NJ 101.5 FM
www.njcopsmagazine.com
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