Police Seen as Helping Cause of Civil Rights
In the days since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for civil rights, law enforcement in the United States has gone from the “terribly negative role” of preserving the status quo to being “an agent of change,” Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian said Sunday.
“We’re not where Dr. King wanted us to be, but we have come a long way,” Melekian told the Conference of Racial Reconciliation at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.
A racially diverse crowd of about 600 attended the conference, co-sponsored by former Los Angeles Lakers forward A.C. Green and the Pasadena-based Office of Reconciliation Ministries. Melekian was the first of several speakers at the conference of church, community and political leaders trying to find ways to bridge the racial divides that still exist almost 36 years after King’s crusade for equality ended with his 1968 assassination in Memphis, Tenn.
As Pasadena chief since 1996, Melekian introduced community-based policing in the department and launched an initiative that has helped reduce deaths from gang violence in the city. As head of the Los Angeles County Chiefs of Police, he led the region’s first police ethics symposium, in 2001.
It is local police officers who determine whether the Constitution and its guarantees of individual rights and equal protections have meaning, Melekian said. “If officers go out and they are bigoted and biased and uncaring and selfish, then all my nice words are a lie and the words of the Constitution are a lie,” he said. “But if they go out and solve neighborhood problems and they treat people with dignity and respect, regardless of the circumstances ... then the Constitution is alive and well.”
Green, a prominent Christian athlete in his days as a National Basketball Assn. all-star, said in an interview that he hoped the conference would “help build bridges.”
The conference included a screening of a film Green co-produced, “Final Solution,” based on the life of Gerrit Wolfhaardt, a white South African paramilitary member who renounced his racist ways. Now an ordained minister, he lives in the United States and works in racial reconciliation causes.
