Los Angeles Police's Solution To Creating Trust In The Black Community

I saw this on HBO's Real Sports a few weeks ago.

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The Watts Bears might be the only football team in the Pop Warner league run by men with guns and badges.

The squad of 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds is drawn from housing projects in Watts and coached by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department.

For the cops it's part of community policing, aimed at building neighborhood bonds and reducing gang-related crime. For the boys it's a chance to hit somebody, with police officers cheering them on. . . . . .


The football team is the product of a partnership between the Police Department and the city's Housing Authority, which oversees housing projects that used to account for much of the crime and violence in Watts.

Officers who patrol the projects now do more than make arrests. They coach football and track, take children on field trips, to dance classes, science centers, horseback-riding lessons. They visit schools, talk with teachers and monitor players' grades and homework.

It's a test of "relationship policing" as a way to make life safer and break through generations of hostility between LAPD officers and residents of the projects. The program started two years ago; since then, there's been just one shooting death in Watts' largest housing projects, compared with 43 homicides in the previous six years.

Police don't get all the credit. But parents I spoke with at Saturday's game said their presence makes a difference.

Many said they'd been afraid to let their children play organized sports because local leagues play at parks where gang rivalries raise the risk of violence. . . . . .

The fliers that came home from their children's schools didn't say police were involved. That might have been a turnoff in a neighborhood where officers, for generations, have been considered an occupying force.

"We had no real relationship before," coach Sanchez said. "People might have wanted us there, but they didn't trust us."

Now, single mothers especially are beginning to see the officers as a source of opportunity rather than a ticket to jail for their young sons.

"I thank God they came," said Melody Culpepper, mother of 7-year-son Malachi Russ. "It changed the image that's been in my head about the police. You hear 'po-po, po-po coming' and you know what that means.

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LINK

On Real Sports, police said that since the team was started, they're getting a lot more tips on crime in the community because of the trust that's building between them and the parents. Here's the link to the preview:

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