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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts - 4. Trends and Outlook - 5. Another Type of Public Contact
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Chapter 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts 545
prevention. Ideally the ’policeman should be something of an educator and
a social worker at the same time that he is the arm of the law. Even in the
police systems in the North, where standards of professional policemanship
are highest, too little interest has been given to social and educational view-
points. One result of this Is that the policeman in America is not commonly
liked and trusted as he rightly ought to be.^®
Racial and social conditions make the policeman’s task much more
difficult in the South. The South, ’particularly, needs a stress on the preven-
tive aims and the peace-making functions of the police. Few strategic moves
to improve the Southern interracial situation would be more potent than
the opening of a pioneering modern police college in the South on a high
level, which would give a thorough social and pedagogical training as well
as a technical police training. The South is changing, and It Is the author’s
opinion that the graduates from such a school would not need to fear
unemployment. The use of equally well-trained Negro policemen, partic-
ularly for patrolling the Negro communities, would be an especially whole-
some reform. Public opinion in many Southern cities would tolerate such
a reform: as In many other fields, local politicians and the public Institu-
tions lag behind the possibilities.
5. Another Type of Public Contact
Besides the police and other functionaries who regard their chief function
with respect to Negroes to be restraint and suppression, there are public
officials in the South, as elsewhere, who regard their function to be service.
Longest established among these are the postal officials, who are unique
because they are under federal control and have to meet civil service
standards. Southern Negroes know that they can rely upon having their
letters duly delivered.®^ And they feel they can expect much more equal
treatment and courteous service from Uncle Sam’s agencies than from local
authorities.
Other people who are building up a tradition of equal and just treatment
of Negroes in public contacts are those concerned with social adjustment
and social reform. They have become especially numerous and important
under the New Deal. These officials have a relatively high level of general
education and professional training and, what is even more important, have
other goals than the perfunctory ones of preserving the social status quo.
They are bent upon preventing individual and social inefficiencies and
wrongs and upon improving conditions. Usually they are under some
federal control. Even if, as we have seen,® they do discriminate against
Negroes, they discriminate much less than has been the custom in the
South.
*See Chapter 15.
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