The Play's the Thing (Police Chief Magazine)
Police chief David Kurz and theatre professor David Kaye join forces to confront bias in police departments
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Police Chief David Kurz has given a great deal of thought to an incident he was made aware of earlier in his career. A police officer was on a construction detail when a car with four, young African American, men pulled up to him and stopped. It turned out they were lost. The young man in the front seat asked the officer for directions. The officer pondered this for a moment and then said, “Boy, it’s not easy to get there from here.” One of the men in the back seat rolled down the window and said, “Who you calling boy?” and the interaction went quickly downhill from there. A simple encounter that should have be innocuous became a situation.
Posted with the permission of Police Chief Magazine.
