By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
May 6, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Board of Police Commissioners President Alvin Brooks ended his comments at last Saturday’s peace rally with a story.

The story revolved around a couple of youths trying to trick the smartest man in their village. The boys plan to present the wise man with a bird and ask whether it is alive or not. If the man says the bird is alive, the boys will crush it. If the man says the bird is dead, they will let it fly away. The boys approach the man and present the question. Brooks said the wise man reflected on the question, before answering, “its fate lies in your hands.”

“All of us are connected because we’re part of one humanity,” Brook said, adding the community’s fate is in our hands.

Community and together were the messages city and police officials conveyed last Saturday as the Kansas City Missouri Police Department sponsored a peace rally to encourage community-police partnerships. The rally was held in the parking lot of the Linwood and Prospect shopping center, the scene of a once vibrant business presence, now filled with vacant storefronts and buildings.

Mayor Sly James opened the rally by telling the crowd that the summer is on the horizon, and how it unfolds depends solely on the adults in the city. The summer can be a time of fun in the sun or, he continued, great angst and problems. Along with the city’s youth programs for the summer, such as Club KC and sports, the mayor also emphasized better education in the urban core. If a child is raised in a poor community, then they will hear 30 million fewer words than children in a more affluent community.

“When we show the youth of this city that we care about them, they may start to listen,” James said. “The city needs to be upset that our children our falling behind in schools. We need to be offended and in being offended, we need to take concrete steps to get them where they need to be because if they don’t have the skills, they can’t compete. And if they can’t compete, they’re going to come take your stuff and they’re going to wind up in trouble.”

Chief Darryl Forté kept his comments short because of the impending rain Saturday morning, but before he turned the rally over to the many police department members to mingle and chat with community members, he said they, the police, are just as responsible for the community’s problems as anyone else. For years, he said, the police followed the best practices of other cities. The police came in and did zero tolerance in communities then they wanted residents to step up and speak to the police when something was going wrong.

“I want to apologize to the community,” Forté said. “We’ve done sweeps and buy busts in areas then tackled the person after they bought $20 work of crack from us. So we’re responsible for where we are. We own this thing and we’re going to make it better. We’re going to start coming together in non-confrontational times.”

Forté added it’s great to see people engaged, but now they’re working to bring in the segments of the community that aren’t engaged. Regardless of demographic, he wants to see everyone get involved.

“That’s why we’re holding this rally,” Forté said. “We want to draw different segments out and engage them.”