New policing model for bad actors on both sides

We need a new model of American policing and I believe that the model is a combination of fewer police, more widespread gun ownership, liberalized concealed carry, community patrolling and a ready reserve of trained deputizable citizens who can be called upon in an emergency. I am 62 years old, and I have seen the current dynamic of police on minority incidents play out for as far back as I can remember. Sometimes the fault lies with the police and other times it doesn't, but it always plays out as a divisive racial issue, because there are bad actors on both sides who benefit when it does. You know the old saying about the height of insanity being trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I sympathize with both sides. How do you police a community with a high crime rate and embedded anger without every third police/citizen encounter escalating into a racial issue? On the other hand, put yourselves in the shoes of a law-abiding black man. How many times would you need to be put up against a wall and frisked, for the mere offense of walking down the sidewalk in your own community, before you become so angry that you begin to hate police?

I am at the point where I am willing to let it play out, because I am so fed up with seeing nothing change. I remember as a young man in my 20s thinking optimistically that after the angry old white bigots and civil rights leaders of the '60s died off, their children and grandchildren would figure it out and redirect America on a racially harmonious course. It saddens me to admit that I was naive.

Bruno Padovani

Naperville