http://bit.ly/1aiTzho
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/policespeak-drops-racial-labels-community-the-winner-20131117-2xp28.html
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Nov 2013
Community on a winner with new language for fighting crime
The alarm clock was programmed for the 6.30am news bulletin. The first three stories centred on names that I recognised as Middle Eastern: Obeid, Gittany, Hamzy. The blanket of shame was poised to cover my head when the news reader mentioned their ethnicity. But he never did. This was a new alarm clock but we seem to have snoozed right through a milestone moment.
Eddie Obeid was at the centre of the ICAC inquiries. Simon Gittany was accused of throwing his fiancee from a 15th-floor balcony. Mohammed Hamzy was recently arrested as the de facto gang leader of Brothers 4 Life.
A decade ago, such names would have been magnets for the ”other” label, treated as non-Australians, baiting the shock jocks to call for immediate deportation. Police, media and government statements would have been littered with references to ”Middle Eastern” as if this explained everything, even though it explained nothing.
But this racialisation of the crimes was a cultural cop-out, as if the Middle Eastern DNA predisposed “these people” to crime, even though they were home-grown.
Fast forward 10 years, and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell congratulates the police for their efforts “to tackle gun crime across this city”. No reference to race. Simple as that. After ”breaking the back” of the gang on November 7, Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas also made no reference to race: “We arrested 10 members of the Brothers 4 Life gang, all of whom were hit with very serious charges.”
As well as commending Operation Talon, which has halved gun crimes since its start on August 17, Kaldas also noted the “members of the community who have already come forward … in helping us seize guns and arrest the criminals.”
Rather than resorting to racial labels and alienating the community, the new police culture builds on relationships and co-operation to deliver results.
The police statements to the media never once used crude descriptors such as ”Middle Eastern appearance” and demonstrated that this is irrelevant and unnecessary.
Contrary to all the scaremongering about removing these distracting descriptors, the recent arrests suggest that they may hinder rather than help in effective policing, as they risk putting offside those the police most need to be onside. Removal of racial references ensures lines of inquiry are not railroaded by ethnic detours.
By removing the race-tinted glasses and race labels from their apparatus, police may have inadvertently cracked the code of silence that often frustrates their efforts. By deeming race as irrelevant, the police leadership has steered public discourse towards a criminal gun culture, not a criminal ethnic culture, and talkback radio has finally followed suit. The strategy has succeeded in smoking out the criminals rather than driving them underground.
In my outreach work in building trust within the street sub-culture, it was clear that if there was no relationship, there was no responsibility. The rapport that the police have built with communities has replaced cold-calling with hot leads.
Kaldas aptly articulates this partnership: “Please remember, the information you provide could save the life of someone you love.”
When police behave badly, there are passionate demands for a public inquiry as to what went wrong. But when police swiftly snuff out a crime wave, there needs to be equally passionate demands for an inquiry as to what went right.
The lessons learned could be shared and applied not only in other Australian jurisdictions tackling gang and bikie crimes, but internationally.
If the police culture focuses on the criminal culture, not the ethnic culture, then it is a win-win-win for all concerned.