My apologies to the good folks in Como whose town meeting I missed this week.
No excuses, really. The sad truth is that more and more, if I haven’t put a reminder in my phone to alert me, I forget — even an event scheduled as regularly as 6 p.m. on the second Tuesday every month.
It wasn’t always this way. I once had a memory of my own. Now it’s in my phone and then only as good as my ability to put it there at the right time and date.
I missed what has been described impressive presentation that varied considerably from the usual agenda. Como Police Chief Earl Burdette had all the officers of his department present. He introduced them to the considerable gathering of townsfolk who attended.
Then Burdette talked, with the current tension nationally between law enforcement and Black Lives Matter movement in mind, about the responsibilities of police officers and the responsibilities of citizens when they interact.
First he addressed his law enforcement officers, telling them to be willing to retreat.
“There’s nothing wrong with just backing up and rethinking what you’re going to do; retreat until cooler heads get there,” Burdette said, recalling at our request his remarks from Tuesday night.
Retreating and rethinking will allow the officer to avoid regrets, the police chief continued.
Then Burdette addressed citizens. “Citizens must comply,” he said. “If it’s something that goes wrong out there, “there’s a place to deal with it. It’s at a board meeting,” he said, describing a citizen’s recourse if he or she feels like the officer has acted improperly.
Then Burdette offered further advice for citizens, based on what he as a black man and a father has been telling his son ever since he turned 16 and got his driver’s license:
“Pull over,” he said. As soon as you see an officer’s blue lights, pull over and stop as quickly as is safely feasible.
“Put your hands out the window,” is Burdette’s next advice. “Where the officer can see them.
Then it’s “yes sir” and “no sir,” the Como chief continued.
He also recommended keeping the driver’s license attached to the sun visor over the driver’s head.
“I can see your hands when you reach up to the sun visor,” Burdette said. When a male driver reaches for his wallet in his hip pocket, “If it’s at night, he can’t see what you’re doing.”
“It’s sad that we’ve reached that point, but it’s for safety on both ends,” Burdette continued, paraphrasing his remarks during Tuesday’s meeting. “Everybody has a part in this.”
“When you get good folks and the police at odds, the bad folks have got you where they want you to be.
“At the end of the day, you still have to have police. We will fail if we don’t have police.”