Nonviolent Police

The following article is edited from the 'nonviolent.action' conference on
Pegasus (the Australian node of APC computer network).  It is based on the
minutes of a talk, taken by Margaret Phillips.  The  talk, entitled "Kingian
Nonviolent Approaches to Social Change" was given by a Captain Charles Alphin,
of the St. Louis Police Department to a meeting of the Missouri Coalition for
Alternatives to Imprisonment.  Michele Coleman (515 East High Street, 4th
floor, Jefferson City, MO65101, phone 314 634 4843) is the contact for the
Coalition.

Alphin began by stating that until he met Coretta King in 1981, he had 
rejected Dr. Martin Luther King's approach and had enjoyed fighting.  His
meeting with Mrs. King had occurred when the M. L. King Centre of Atlanta,
Georgia had identified St Louis as a city with a high potential for (ethnic?)
violence, and one in which they wanted to work.  This experience, and a
subsequent tour along the Freedom Rides routes with civil rights organisers,
had fundamentally altered his beliefs about nonviolence, causing him to see it
as an antidote to violence and a proactive approach to just ways of dealing
with racism, poverty and violence.

As a result of this change in belief, Alphin has developed some effective
techniques to deal with the realities of crime, especially as experienced by
young poor, urban males. 

The philosophy underlying the techniques is based on the ideas of M.L. King
about the use of nonviolence to resolve deep social conflicts and inequities. 
When people can participate in the decisions that affect their lives, they can
solve their own problems.  Crime is a symptom, not a cause, and imprisonment
and enforcement are not solutions.  Criminal violence is caused by learned
values about appropriate responses to life conditions.

To test these insights in practice, Alphin took nineteen boys, some out of
juvenile detention, to the M.L. King Center for exposure to notions about
nonviolence as a way to live in the system.  Alphin's trust in the boys not to
run, the provision of an alternative supportive peer group and tours of the
Freedom Rides routes had deeply affected the boys and for at least one
individual, had given him such an interest in nonviolence, that he was
teaching it to others and had succeeded in having it  included in his high
school history courses. 

One component of the crime prevention program has been the Godfather Program. 
Men volunteer to act as a "significant other" and an alternative black role
model for youths in trouble, whose fathers were already in prison.  The youths
meet weekly and have to make commitments to attend school and participate in a
weekly religious observance of some kind, to develop an understanding of a
different source of viable  answers for the problems of living.

Another essential component of crime prevention has been community
empowerment, which deals with unemployment and economic exploitation.

Alphin's program consists of six steps: information gathering, education,
personal commitment, negotiation, direct action and reconciliation.  He has
taught it as a consultant to communities, probation and police officers, and
prison guards in other states of the US and even in Moscow.  Unfortunately,
local support has been lacking, Alphin has missed promotions because of his
ideas and the Godfather Program meetings were excluded from his own police
station.  All resources for the program have been donated to date, often by
churches, so funding has not been a problem.  For further information, Captain
Alphin can be contacted at 1200 Clark St, St. Louis, MO 63103, phone 314 444
5382.
Jan McNicol (editor)