SCORPION hit the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, in late 2021 in unmarked cars, some without standard-issue dashboard cameras.

The police crime-suppression unit, divided into four, 10-person teams, racked up hundreds of arrests in months. It targeted suspected drug dens, gun smugglers, and reckless drivers who had grown brash during the pandemic.

SCORPION’s sting was effective, city leaders said. The acronym stands for Street Crimes Operation To Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, and by late last year, the crime wave had begun to subside. Democratic Mayor Jim Strickland hailed its achievements in his 2022 State of the City speech. In a city where leaders had embraced post-George Floyd police reforms, the changes seemed significant. Was Memphis on to something?

On Saturday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis permanently disbanded SCORPION. Hours earlier, the United States watched in horror as a video released by the city showed five of the unit’s officers beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old motorist, so badly that he died from his injuries three days later.

The demise of SCORPION shows a chief and a city trying to find a balance between addressing serious crime and reforming how U.S. policing is done. It comes as nationwide police reforms in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s 2020 murder by a Minneapolis officer collide with a wave of rising crime that began during the pandemic. And Memphis is a microcosm of how America is struggling to find aggressive, effective policing that doesn’t tip into brutality.

“There is a balance that has to be struck with gun crimes on the rise,” says Andrea Headley, an expert at Georgetown University on equity in the criminal justice system. “The desire for people to want to feel safe in their communities is real. At the same time, there is clear evidence around some of these aggressive units that they historically have been shown not to work.”

Memphis’ crime wave

When the SCORPION unit was forged, Memphis, like many other American cities, had seen troubling spikes in violent crime.

In 2020, more than 18,000 violent crimes were reported in the city – 1,359 for every 100,000 people, three times the national average. The pace quickened in early 2021. And in 2022, Memphis was forced into a four-hour citywide lockdown while a mass killer prowled the streets, ultimately killing four.

Memphians like Aaron Foster aren’t shocked by the numbers.

As a homeowner off Lamar Avenue – a largely Black area dotted with catfish joints and barbecue pits – Mr. Foster sees crime daily. A few feet away, police are investigating why an abandoned van is wrapped around a power pole.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Aaron Foster stands near his house Saturday in Memphis, Tennessee. He says harsh police tactics only fuel a cycle of violence in the city.

Crime, he says, can feel omnipresent. But he also has friends who have been on the receiving end of harassment and violence from SCORPION.

Mr. Nichols likely ran because he was scared, says Mr. Foster.

“Look, here he is, driving home in one of America’s most dangerous cities, and all of a sudden there are guys all over him,” says Mr. Foster. “Yeah, there are police lights, but he doesn’t have time to react. Suddenly he’s on the ground; then he’s up and running. Looking at what happened, who can blame him for running?”

“People will only have the boot on their neck for so long until they strike back,” says Mr. Foster.

SCORPION is one in a long tradition of crime suppression units in the U.S., many of which have ended in infamy.

• Detroit had its 1970s-era STRESS unit. One white officer, Raymond Peterson, killed at least five Black suspects in 1971 alone. He once called Detroit’s streets worse “than a jungle.”

• Atlanta’s Red Dog crime suppression unit notoriously fired 39 shots while breaking into the house of an 82-year old woman in 2008. She had fired a shot at them as they entered her house during a no-knock drug raid filled with errors, including falsifying evidence, according to investigations. The unit was shut down in 2011. Memphis Police Chief Davis ran the Red Dog program for a time when she was at the Atlanta Police Department.

• More recently, Washington’s RIP (Robbery Intervention Program) unit engaged in so-called jump-outs, where officers sped up to cars and jumped out, guns drawn. Last year, an investigation by The Appeal secured a trove of internal emails that show that militarized, tough-on-crime policing was championed throughout the ranks even after the public was told such tactics had ended.

The video of Mr. Nichols’ beating points to the chronic problem with such efforts: Police officers can become empowered by impunity.

“These kinds of units, because of their nature and autonomy that they’re given, they have a propensity to violate citizens’ constitutional rights,” says David Thomas, a former police officer who is now a forensic expert at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.

A better model?

The idea behind such units can have merit. Before it fell to budget cuts in the early 2010s, Memphis had Operation Blue CRUSH (Crime Reduction Using Statistical History), which tapped specialized units drawn from across the force to focus on hot spot areas.

The Blue CRUSH unit had a tough-on-crime aspect, sociologist Phyllis Betts told the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 2021. Its intent, however, was to “mobilize and connect with people in their neighborhoods.”

That, she told the paper, is “true community policing.”

The idea came from Ms. Betts’ husband, criminologist Richard Janikowski, whose parents fought Nazis as part of the Polish resistance in World War II. His work was guided by a concern for people living in marginalized and crime-ridden neighborhoods.

During the past decade, his ideas expanded nationwide. Studies have found that the hot spot policing pioneered by Blue CRUSH can work. Such efforts resulted in statistically significant reductions in crime, according to a 2018 report by the National Research Council’s Committee on Proactive Policing.

“When you have targeted police intervention with certain people or certain places, that can be effective,” says Professor Headley of Georgetown University. “But when you broadly incentivize police to make lots of arrests in certain areas, that usually leads to overpoliced communities. That harms people and doesn’t often lead” to less crime.

“That is the real tension here: Did it have to be this aggressive?”

Matthew Hinton/AP

The screen at the Smoothie King Center honors Tyre Nichols before an NBA game in New Orleans Saturday.

The key is accountability, adds Professor Thomas of Florida Gulf Coast University. “There needs to be strict oversight, and the edict should be quality over quantity, because you want convictions and you want those convictions to stand so that people understand what you are doing and support what you are doing,” he says.

“The greatest tragedy in policing,” he adds, “is that the profession has never learned from its mistakes.”

“Fists don’t work”

One Memphis woman worries about the hot spot approach. She asked that her full name not be used because of her work with local law enforcement.

She says smaller crimes, including traffic infractions, dominate online neighborhood bulletin boards. She lives near Cooper Street, a business district lined with schools and churches. Residents would call 911 nearly nightly as cars clocking over 60 mph raced down the street.

“People would be woken up by sirens, and in a neighborhood like this they would complain,” she says. “That would create a hot spot or an impression of a hot spot.”

Chuck Wenzler, a small-business owner on Madison Avenue, has seen the crime wave hit him personally. He had his motorcycle stolen. It was found stripped days later.

He agrees police should be tough – but to a clear point. Twenty years ago, a friend landed in a hospital for a year after being beaten by police. “Fists don’t work,” he says.

Various factors in Memphis offered some hope SCORPION might be different. It enjoyed bipartisan support. And the Memphis Police Department had shown it was open to change. It adopted much of the “8 Can’t Wait” campaign, which demanded eight police reforms in 2020.

Before her hiring, Chief Davis was president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. She testified to Congress in support of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which she said would address “the continued desecration of what I’ve always thought to be a noble profession.”

Residents have generally applauded Chief Davis for moving quickly to fire the officers. And activists and civic leaders have supported the move to disband SCORPION. But as recently as Friday, she was not willing to give up on the idea entirely.

She told The Associated Press, “The whole idea that the SCORPION unit is a bad unit, I just have a problem with that.”

It’s a frigid afternoon at the headquarters of Mutual Aid Eastie in East Boston, a predominantly working-class, immigrant community just across the Boston Harbor from downtown. There’s a tenants’ association meeting going on inside. Seated around a wooden dining table, members of a local housing advocacy group are helping two neighbors who have just received eviction notices decide what to do next. 

The atmosphere is jovial; they speak rapidly in Spanish and sip Mexican hot chocolates garnished with homemade whipped cream. In the kitchen there’s coffee brewing. Someone’s grandchildren wait patiently at the table, playing mobile games on their devices. 

Scenes like these are common at Mutual Aid Eastie’s communal space, a building donated by the local Channel Fish Co. The group – which is not incorporated as a nonprofit – holds weekly “office hours,” where neighbors can stop by to get help with complex problems like housing or food insecurity. Out back there’s a food pantry and a free library, stocked by the group’s staff. Among other services, the group has collected and distributed relief funds, advocated for immigrants in court, connected renters with lawyers and housing advocates, delivered groceries, and provided emotional healing to the East Boston community. 

As the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic tested America’s social fabric in early 2020, an unprecedented number of groups like Mutual Aid Eastie sprang up across the country, aiming to support those who’d fallen through the gaps in traditional social safety nets. In Boston, loose coalitions of passionate people involved in grassroots, non-hierarchical projects set out to transform the way communities interact with one another, envisioning a society that rejects the power dynamics of charity in favor of solidarity. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Co-facilitator Leonard "Leo" Olsen (center, standing) and lead outreach worker Zaida Adams (right) speak with visitors during office hours at Mutual Aid Eastie’s community space, Jan. 25, 2023, in East Boston. Mutual Aid Eastie is an organization where neighbors can stop by to get help with complex problems like housing or food insecurity.

Three years out, many of these networks have crumbled due to limited staffing, funding constraints, and volunteer burnout. Still, proponents and scholars see value in the lingering benefits of mutual aid in communities, and wonder if the movement might have a wider influence – perhaps toward a society in which being a neighbor means more than just living on the same street.

“We’re creating this as a space for neighbors to connect with each other again,” says Leonard “Leo” Olsen, Mutual Aid Eastie co-facilitator. “To convivir, as we say in Spanish, to actually live alongside one another and support each other.” 

Mutual aid, liberation, and the pandemic 

In the Boston area, the pandemic saw people in nearly every neighborhood voluntarily mobilizing into grassroots groups addressing the overwhelming need they saw growing in their communities. 

Mutual Aid Eastie was formed in early 2020 by a coalition of individuals from three local nonprofits – Maverick Landing Community Services, Eastie Farm, and Neighbors United for a Better East Boston – as a pandemic response. 

Each street in East Boston had a “captain,” whose job it was to connect with neighbors, linking them with food and resources while they quarantined at home.

Across the harbor in the suburb of Somerville, a newly formed group called Mutual Aid of Medford and Somerville (MAMAS) had constructed a similar network, utilizing Slack messaging channels and Google docs and designating neighborhood points of contact to ensure everyone who’d lost work could feed and support themselves and their families. Similar groups soon formed in Jamaica Plain, Allston, Cambridge, Dorchester, and Brookline.

In each neighborhood, the sudden mobilization of a massive, nascent volunteer force mirrored what was happening in nearly every city in America. The pandemic, it seemed, had awakened a deep collective urge to help one another.

But the concept of mutual aid is far older. In his 1902 book, “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,” Russian aristocrat-turned-anarchist Peter Kropotkin argued that it was cooperation, not competition, that led humankind to its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. Human societies, Kropotkin writes, thrive not through the self-interest encouraged by capitalism, but through mutual support based on principles of reciprocity, which he calls “mutual aid.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Co-facilitator Leonard "Leo" Olsen and lead outreach worker Zaida Adams pose outside Mutual Aid Eastie’s community space, Jan. 25, 2023, in East Boston.

In the United States, marginalized communities – those for whom the U.S. government was a primarily hostile entity – have historically had the most to gain from mutual aid. In the late 1700s, the Free African Society provided such support to formerly enslaved people in Philadelphia, and used the organization to consolidate the Black community’s power. Coupling aid with social agendas is a common thread throughout the mutual aid groups that have blossomed since, with many being explicitly associated with radical politics. In 1969, the Black Panther Party began its Free Breakfast for Children program, and distributed free food to urban children across the country under the assumption that Black liberation could not be realized by people with empty stomachs. 

“We hear news about mutual aid when it’s about an acute crisis,” says Dean Spade, a Seattle-based lawyer, activist, and author. “A lot of new people get involved during acute crises, but actually, it’s going on all the time in communities that live in perpetual crisis.” 

He sees the pandemic as part of a long history of disasters highlighting the inadequacies of traditional social safety nets, further catalyzing the public’s interest in radical practices. 

Similarly, the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the national uprising that followed sparked a wave of anti-government sentiment that saw communities from coast to coast organizing into loose support networks, furthering mutual aid’s entry into the public consciousness, Mr. Spade says. 

Modern mutual aid practitioners vary in their connection to the ideas laid out by Kropotkin. But at its heart, mutual aid embodies the values of community and reciprocity, and rejects the power dynamics between giver and receiver imposed by philanthropy. 

“It’s the opposite of survival of the fittest,” says Mr. Olsen in East Boston, who is familiar with Kropotkin. “It’s about thriving as a community, as opposed to trying to get ahead as an individual.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Loli comes for help during office hours at Mutual Aid Eastie’s community space, Jan. 25, 2023, in Boston. Loli was looking for food resources and help with school questions for her son.

Solidarity, not charity 

A key difference between mutual aid and the work of traditional philanthropies is that those receiving aid decide how it’s used, and those providing it ask no questions. Everyone needs something, and everyone has something to give.

When a devastating house fire tore through a three-story East Boston home in July 2022, injuring five firefighters and forcing 30 people to evacuate, Mr. Olsen and other Mutual Aid Eastie staff hosted a dinner for the evacuees at the Channel Fish building. The group had raised about $15,000 and had to decide how to distribute the money. It was the fire survivors themselves who made the final decision, holding a candid discussion that accounted for differences in family size and socioeconomic status. 

“They made 100% of the decisions,’’ says Deysi Gutierrez, one of Mutual Aid Eastie’s co-founders. “You’re doing a disservice if you don’t invite them to be part of the process.” 

In the Spring Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Crystal Huff, a co-founder of the MAMAS gardening collective, invites passersby to harvest from the tomato and lettuce plants that overflow from their front yard. Just a few houses down the street, yellow plastic crates spray-painted with MAMAS’ initials are filled with leafy plants. Though some had been picked clean in November – a sign displayed on the ground next to the crates read “Take what you want” – others were still heavy with ripe cherry tomatoes and eggplants. 

A few blocks away in the Winter Hill neighborhood, home-care speech therapist Aliza Arzt spends her Friday mornings zipping around Somerville in her gray Prius, stocking the city’s community fridges. With the help of her husband, Meredith “Merit” Porter, and a team of local volunteers, Ms. Arzt has been helping fight food insecurity in her neighborhood since the beginning of the pandemic. The couple are not directly affiliated with a specific organization, though by coordinating with local businesses, Ms. Arzt says Somerville community fridge volunteers move between 500 and 1,000 pounds of food per week. 

Mutual aid, as it’s practiced in Somerville and East Boston, is not meant to satisfy all community needs alone. Instead, MAMAS groceries and delivery coordinator Claire Blechman sees it as a direct challenge to local governments, highlighting the limits to their support nets by demonstrating the power of a handful of strong-willed neighbors with a fraction of the resources. 

“Even if you can’t meet everyone’s needs, you certainly can meet some of them, and that is something worth doing,” Ms. Blechman says. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A Little Free Library and food pantry is full of donations outside Mutual Aid Eastie's building.

A loss of momentum

Mutual Aid Eastie has a fiscal sponsor, Resist, a Boston-based “radical philanthropy” group that supports grassroots initiatives, which allows the group to pay its staff, part of what’s kept it going through the pandemic, Ms. Gutierrez says.  

But maintaining a volunteer network is demanding, and other groups fared worse. In the spring of 2020, Thomas Piñeros Shields, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, began attending a series of online meetings between mutual aid groups throughout Massachusetts hosted by the workers’ rights group Jobs With Justice, hoping to draft a formal report on the seemingly instantaneous rise of mutual aid in Massachusetts. 

At its height, there were between 20 and 30 groups from around the state attending meetings. But that number began declining around the fall of 2020, until eventually it was just a handful. Mr. Piñeros Shields attributes the falloff of mutual aid in Massachusetts to a combination of volunteer burnout, college students returning to in-person school, and people returning to work. But in many communities, particularly the poorer ones, the need remained. 

Many of the hotlines and communications channels that promised immediate aid during quarantine are no longer functional. MAMAS, which once offered everything from pet care to translation services, has been reduced to primarily its gardening collective, grocery delivery, and a pairing system that connects Somerville residents with neighbors who can provide for specific needs. An automated email response from Allston-Brighton Mutual Aid reads, “The pool of volunteers that we had in 2020 has since dwindled, and after months of struggling to keep ABMA afloat, we have decided to shut our operations down.”

Paradigm shift? 

Still, the remnants of mutual aid networks persist through informal projects scattered throughout the city. The MAMAS gardening collective and pairing system in Somerville remain strong, while Mutual Aid Eastie will continue serving its community with the help of Resist. 

In Boston and elsewhere, the future of mutual aid’s pandemic-related surge may be unclear. But despite its apparent trajectory, Mr. Piñeros Shields wonders whether mutual aid’s recent entrance into the American cultural mainstream has sown the seeds of something bigger. 

“There’s something that is shifting the language around our mutual responsibility to each other,” he says. “Conversations have moved towards more solidarity.” 

J. Pat Carter/AP/File

Two employees help a retirement center resident evacuate in Boynton Beach, Florida, as the storm that became Hurricane Katrina nears the state on Aug. 25, 2005.

When a natural disaster occurs, safety can hinge on moving people quickly. That becomes especially complicated when people have mobility issues or other disabilities.

The challenge is gaining relevance as global temperatures rise and extreme weather events like floods and heat waves grow more severe. In many parts of the world, residents and governments are not fully ready for this “acceleration and multiplication of threats,” says Sébastien Jodoin, founding director of the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Program at McGill University in Montreal.

When it comes to preparedness and disaster response, poorly designed and inaccessible policies can exacerbate social inequities, leaving some of the most vulnerable people to fend for themselves. Inclusive policies, on the other hand, can save lives.

What accessibility barriers exist in current disaster risk plans?

In 2005 during Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, people with disabilities died at a rate 2 to 4 times higher than others, largely because of the inaccessibility of transportation, shelter, evacuation, and rescue. One Katrina survivor, diagnosed with an illness that affects her mobility, recounted to The Associated Press how she relied on assistance from co-workers to climb two flights of stairs to safety as water levels rose. 

“We see that kind of story being repeated all over the world and across different events,” Dr. Jodoin says.

The problem: Nations are making plans for adaptation or disaster response, but often forgetting the particular needs of people with disabilities. One reason may be ignorance. 

“Many people don’t have the understanding that people with disabilities experience climate change very differently – much more intense – than other people and the coping mechanisms or strategies are much more limited for them,” says Elham Youssefian, senior adviser for inclusive humanitarian action at the International Disability Alliance. 

What are the benefits of disability-inclusive climate policy?

The most obvious beneficiaries are people with disabilities. But Dr. Jodoin, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, points to the so-called curb-cut effect as evidence that accessible planning can be broadly beneficial. While sidewalk ramps were designed for people with disabilities, the curb cuts also benefit kids on bikes, parents with strollers, and delivery workers.

Greater accessibility makes it possible for more people to use public services – and the same logic can be applied to climate adaptation. “The more ways you have for evacuating people in an accessible way, the more lives you’ll save,” he says. “When we have these inclusive climate solutions, there’s more people who benefit and whose lives are saved and who can also be part of a transition to carbon neutrality.”

What steps are being taken worldwide?

Almost all countries (but not the United States) have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted in 2006, which calls on governments to safeguard the rights of people with disabilities, including their right to life in emergencies. Moreover, signatory countries to the 2015 Paris Agreement (the U.S. among them) agreed to respect human rights when acting on climate change, including the rights of people with disabilities.

Turning promises into action has been slow during three decades of U.N. Conference of the Parties (or COP) meetings on climate change. However, Dr. Youssefian applauds a “huge achievement” at the 2022 conference, which she attended: The work plan for the Action on Climate Empowerment now officially mandates the inclusion of people with disabilities.

Dr. Youssefian says she hopes this will prompt governments to act, and also diversify the ranks of people seen as agents of change. 

“We, as persons with disabilities, really want to be part of the solution,” she emphasizes. “Persons with disabilities are 15% of the world population. So it’s a huge loss if we do not provide the opportunity for these 15% to help save the planet that we love.”

Tacos sold from baskets strapped onto the backs of bikes and steaming sweet potatoes served hot off the cart make up some of the unique sights and smells of Mexico’s vibrant street food culture.

The country has gained international attention for its fine dining in recent years, landing numerous restaurants on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. And traditional Mexican cuisine – defined not only for its iconic ingredients like heirloom corn, chiles, and beans, but also for the way in which the food is grown – was added to the United Nations’ list of intangible cultural heritage.

Despite this growing international attention, it’s the informal, homemade flavors that make food stalls and street vendors a mainstay of Mexican food.

Historians point to pre-Hispanic tianguis, or traveling markets, as the root of customary street dining here. The tradition was enriched at the turn of the 20th century when Mexicans flocked to cities during industrialization, and brought with them a demand for quick, affordable food – and flavors of the pueblos they left behind.

Today, most Mexicans, regardless of economic means, can point to a favorite taco counter or grilled-corn vendor. There’s delight in dining alongside strangers amid the bustle of daily city life.

Provecho!

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A mariachi horn player takes a break from performing in a restaurant to buy nuts from a vendor in Mineral de Pozos. The vendor carries the tray with nuts and toppings, like hot sauces, on his head. He totes the folded stand over his arm from street to street.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A woman serves customers in the Mercado Hidalgo. Her stall specializes in roasted chicken.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Hot sauces are lined up at Mariscos Pancho’s stall in the Mercado Hidalgo in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A man arranges churros – fried dough typically dipped in sugar and cinnamon – in Mercado Hidalgo.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Corn on the cob, known as elote, roasts on a grill in Mineral de Pozos, Mexico.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A vendor pauses between customers at a seafood kiosk in the Mercado Hidalgo in Guanajuato, Mexico, October 2022. Mexico has a vibrant culture of street food.

AP

J. Lawrence Turner, pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, speaks to a reporter at City Hall in response to the investigation of the death of Tyre Nichols.

Since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, more than 4,500 reform bills have been considered by all 50 state legislatures and the District of Columbia. At least 230 have been enacted into law, affecting recruitment practices and conduct on the beat and creating new systems for public oversight. Additional measures are shaping debates about law enforcement in city councils and police departments across the country.

When another tragic incident of police violence jars the nation, like the fatal Jan. 7 beating of Tyre Nichols by five officers in Memphis, Tennessee, all of that work is thrown into doubt – as if, yet again, nothing has changed. Yet the events of these past few days and the legal process that followed Mr. Nichols’ death – all five officers have been fired and charged with second-degree murder, and the special anti-violence unit they served shut down – challenge that conclusion. They show how far Americans have moved in recent years toward a shared view of justice based on equality, empathy, and accountability.

“It’s important to note that changing violent behavior and violent subculture is a long-term and difficult process,” Professor Howard Henderson, of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University, told a local news channel in Houston. “I think we’re moving forward. ... You have to promote transparency and openness.”

One measure of that progress was the public’s response to the video images of the assault on Mr. Nichols – and to the swift action taken by authorities. No cities burned. No one was hurt. In gatherings and protest marches across the country, city officials and police chiefs joined with clergy and ordinary citizens in shared anguish.

“To all our communities, but especially to the Black and brown men of Boston: You deserve to feel and be safe,” Mayor Michelle Wu told a vigil for Mr. Nichols Friday night at a new monument to Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. “Please know that we see you and we love you.”

That empathy was not just reserved for the victims of police brutality. Despite the troubled relationship between law enforcement and minority communities, the police remains the second- and third-most-trusted public institution in the United States, according to surveys by Gallup and Pew, respectively.

“We can’t just be onlookers,” the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner told his congregation at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis on Sunday. “That means we’ve got to have some brave conversations with those who are in leadership. You don’t have to have hate in your heart to hold somebody accountable.”

It requires time and statistics to measure the effectiveness of policy reforms. “While policies matter, the culture and context of the police department and the community it serves are also important factors in police violence,” states a University of Michigan study of police reforms.

One reliable indicator of change is already apparent. The fatigue that for so long was heard only in the pulpits of Black churches now resonates increasingly from the front steps of city halls and police stations in a unison of appeals for inclusive justice.