Anchorage Police Chief Mark Mew ~
A couple of winters ago, a New York City beat cop dug into his pockets and bought boots and socks for a barefoot homeless guy in Times Square. A tourist captured the occurrence. Her photo went viral.
When this story broke, there was lots of media and public interest. The cops had mixed emotions about it. On the one hand, they were happy for the good press. In this business, you take everything you can get. On the other hand, the apparent amazement that such a thing could occur was baffling. “Who hasn’t done this?” a nation of cops was privately asking, “we do this all the time!”
They do, and they have always done so. And they do it here in Anchorage. Coffee and soup, sacks of groceries, sandwiches, cab fares, and in the old days—smokes. I remember Mid Shift passing the hat one night to pay for week’s worth of motel lodging for a family down on its luck. The cops don’t want any recognition, they don’t put it in their police reports, and they don’t get reimbursed from petty cash.
Cops are about solving problems, and they are about taking care of their beats. They are resourceful, and they will find the most expedient ways—official or unofficial—to establish and preserve peace in their areas of responsibility. So they will buy boots and talk to kids if it helps preserve the peace. Nationwide, this has always been their history, although from time to time and from place to place this ethic has been harder to find. Now is a time when we must look hard. There is no doubt that there are cities experiencing real and serious problems. These need to be fixed. But these problems do not exist everywhere, all the time, and failing to acknowledge this helps neither the cities in crisis nor the rest of us. The last thing we need is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, if you look hard enough for evil—anywhere—you will find some. But the vast majority of cops are really good people, and the vast majority of communities have a pretty decent relationship with their police departments, and the justice systems work pretty well most of the time. These things we must not forget or refuse to see.
In the last two years, we have had a couple of protests against the APD itself—in front of our building. The protestors committed no offenses, and we stayed away and let them have their say. To me, these are signs that Mayberry can and does exist in Anchorage, particularly when we want it to and make the conscious effort. I think there is trust and confidence between the police and the public in Anchorage, a reasonable amount anyway—and that is nothing to sneeze at. My job—and yours—is to build up the bank account of trust and confidence, and never allow it to be depleted.
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image “Faith and Confidence” by William C. Beall, Washington Daily News, 1957
