Brookline Nixes Two Community-Based Police Programs

BROOKLINE, MA — Brookline officials voted to end the town's School Resource Officer program and the Walk and Talk program at Brookline's public housing properties.

The move, which just passed by a vote of 3 to 2 Tuesday night, came after months of discussions in separate police reimagining groups.

"It’s a new day in Brookline," Select Board member Raul Fernandez said in a release. He, along with member Miriam Aschkenasy and chairperson Heather Hamilton voted for the removal of those two departments. Former chair of the board Bernard Green and Jon VanScoyc voted against."As I’ve said before – a community decides its approach to public safety, not police. This is what that looks like."

Read more: Police Spend Too Much Time At Housing Authority: Report

After months of discussions that stemmed from calls for police reform last year amid social justice marches around the state and beyond, the Committee on Policing Reforms and the separate Task Force to Reimagine Policing in Brookline came up with two sets of recommendations to the Select Board earlier this year.

The two did not agree on what to do about the community-based policing programs that are known as the Walk and Talk, which involves having two or three officers assigned to the public housing properties so that when calls come into police from those properties, an officer familiar with the neighborhood and the people responds. The School Resource officers are similarly utilized when school officials would otherwise have to call police about an issue at the school.

Proponents of the in the Walk and Talk program, and the committee said both programs represented a softer, more human side to policing, and described it as integral to police work in town. The task force has said police spent too much time at the housing authority, noting that although some in the housing liked knowing police officers and knowing they were around, some people saw it as police surveilling them.

Fernandez, who chaired the task force, said during Tuesday's meeting even if those who expressed concern were in the minority, their fears should be taken seriously. Greene, who chaired the committee said taking the program away ignored calls from people of color in such public housing, that have repeatedly asked for more policing in their neighborhoods.

Community policing

Community policing was popular in the 1990s, when Brookline began its Walk and Talk program. But after 9/11, policing across the country became more military like. Many police departments, including Brookline, got funding from federal government to purchase equipment to plan for or respond to terrorism or bomb threats.

Community policing emphasizes de-escalation, daily engagement with residents, building trust with them and a greater sense of empathy and tolerance on the part of officers. It came on the radar of many following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Then President Barack Obama established the President’s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing to study ways to improve police-community relations. In its final report, the committee stressed a need for police departments shift away from what the report describes as a "warrior" mindset to that of a "guardian" and to adopt community-oriented, relationship building policing to promote safety.

After George Floyd was fatally killed by a police officer in Minnesota, community policing, again, came to the forefront.

During his campaign for President Joe Biden in 2020 proposed a $300 million investment in community policing initiatives aimed at "getting cops out of their cruisers and building relationships with the people and the communities they are there to serve and protect," he said.

Also on Tuesday

The Brookline Select Board also took steps to further prevent the police department from using federal or regional funds to procure military-type equipment or to expand the surveillance state.

Earlier this year, the Select Board voted to direct more funding to expand social services, to explore non-police response to mental health calls, and to strengthen civilian oversight over the police department.

The Select Board acts as the defacto police commissioner for the police department, but has been criticized for not using that authority enough.

The board is looking into home rule petitions that would give Brookline more control in hiring and promotions and alternatives to police in traffic enforcement.

The Task Force to Reimagine Policing in Brookline pushed for the removal of the two police beats. The School Committee and the Brookline Housing Authority Commissioners supported these changes.

Read this, too: Brookline Edges Toward Police Reform Changes