The split-second law enforcement decision of when to pull the trigger often comes down to perception. Is that person acting suspiciously? Is he or she a threat?
And so much of the criticism of the police that has roiled the country over the past couple of years has centered on whether officers know the communities they patrol and understand the culture of the people who live in them.
It is a question that residents have been particularly passionate about here since the Wisconsin Supreme Court in June upheld a state law that eliminated a requirement that Milwaukee police officers live in the city.
Some African-American residents worry that eliminating the requirement will only worsen a long-strained relationship between black communities and the police. The fractured relationship has been on display over the past week after the fatal police shooting of an armed black man, Sylville K. Smith, led to explosive street demonstrations.
Keyon Jackson-Malone, a resident of the city’s predominantly black north side, said he feared that without a residency requirement, people would start coming from farther and farther away to serve as Milwaukee police officers. The metropolitan area’s suburbs and exurbs are among the whitest in the country, and some have a rural feel.
“There’s some white people that actually only know black people by what they’ve ever heard,” Mr. Jackson-Malone said. “There’s no experience. There’s no, ‘I went to school with 30 of them.’ ”
Rather, he added: “There’s a lot of: ‘I’m in fear of my life. They’re superhuman. They’re animals. They’re savage.’ A person that’s lived up north all their life has never had to come to the inner city, but he’s going to police this kid. He don’t understand about, Mama may be on drugs. He don’t have no empathy for the situation.”