La Salle Professor On Baltimore Riots: 'We Need To Change How We Police'
By Chris Stigall
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Charles Gallagher, the chair of the Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice Department at La Salle University spoke with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT morning host Chris Stigall about the sociology behind the riots in Baltimore.
"What you have is a handful of poor young disenfranchised black men who for all of their lives feel that they've been targeted by the police and sadly there is some truth to that. I am not making excuses. These folks should be in jail, but the idea that you push down, you push down, you push down and sooner or later somebody's going to push back and when they push back, people are like 'Oh my God, what's going on?"
While many have pointed the blame for the protests getting out of control on the media's coverage, but Gallagher feels that the true responsibility is much deeper than that.
"We can blame the media, 'it bleeds, it leads' kind of thing, but I think what really has to happen is a real accounting of how these folks are policed. The other qualifier, most police officers are doing their jobs, they're doing it appropriately, but you profile someone all the time, you have someone that's constantly being harassed by police, again we know that this happens, and you're going to have a group of people that take advantage of a situation like this to make the case."
In order to prevent incidents like this, one of the things that need to be changed according to Gallagher, is the relationships that a neighborhood has with the police.
"We have to change how we police. It's really about community relations with folks in these communities. Do you feel like a police officer is your friend or is it a foe?"
However, in order to make those changes, he calls for a certain kind of person to be in charge of the city.
"A lot of people feel that the police get away with murder and that's why you need leadership. You need a mayor that gets out immediately and says 'this is what we're going to do: A, B and C and we're going to be transparent and we're going to be vocal and we're going to bring people in from the community to be part of the process."