In light of the recent killings of two Black men by police in Baton Rouge and Minnesota and the killing of four police officers and the wounding of eight others in Dallas, I wrote a letter to the mayor of Denver.  I decided to share it with you in the hope that it will inspire you to write to your federal, state and local officials to tell them about your concerns about policing in your communities and ask them to please do their best to help resolve this problem.  I also hope that you will offer any ideas that you have to help solve this problem and help in any other way that you can.  The letter follows immediately below.

July 9, 2016

Dear Mayor Hancock,

Because I know that you are a busy man I will get right to the point and be as brief as possible.  I am writing to you because of the recent incidents around the country involving the police and the citizens that they police.  When you view the pictures in articles on policing that have saturated the media lately, you can see it in the faces of every reasonable person involved in these situations, despite political party affiliation or the side of the issue that they stand on; the despair, strained emotions, frustration and pain.  The sense of virtual hopelessness expressed on the faces of those in these pictures, with regard to this situation is palpable.  I saw that on your face when you spoke about it.  Yet, one can still detect that glimmer of humanity and sincere desire to solve this problem that all reasonable people – through it all – are determined to and somehow cling to.

I have read numerous articles on the above mentioned incidents and strongly believe that it is far past time for our elected officials to stop playing politics and step up to solve this problem.  There are reasonable politicians in both parties and you can do this.  The problem is not going to go away without a lot of hard work.

There are also many reasonable police officers who have aired their points of view in favor of police officers and many civilians who have aired their points of view in favor of those who are being policed.  In some cases, police have sided with the civilians points of view and in some cases civilians have sided with the police’s points of view.  Among the police and civilians, these are the type of people who need to be intricately involved in working to solve this problem.

Many highly visible people throughout the country have asked regular citizens to reach out to our politicians at the federal, state and local levels.  That is what I want to do by way of this letter.  I have a suggestion as to how I believe that officials in Denver can be proactive in working toward a solution to this problem while at the same time helping to prevent Denver from someday facing a situation like those in Baton Rouge, Dallas and Minnesota.

America needs to Fix The Problem With The American Police Force Now.  That is the title of an article that I wrote and posted to my blog on December 15, 2015.  The suggestion/template that I am offering to help solve our policing problem begins in paragraph 9 of that article.  So rather than provide that information to you in this letter and make it even longer and less likely that you will read it I provided the aforementioned link to that information.

If you would prefer not to click on the link please Google my blog site, Political Pawns And Puppets.  When you reach the site, type the title in the link that I provided into the site’s search box and this will bring up the article.  In the event that you might be interested in reading all of the articles that I have written on this subject, simply type the word ‘police’ into the search box.

Respectfully,

 

Eulus Dennis

cc:

Stacie Gilmore, District 11 City Councilman