December 19, 2016
School resource officer and Northborough police officer Michael Bisset thinks trust between the public and police comes from dialogue and communication.
“I’d like to think that we can still trust the police, I still trust the police,” Bisset said. “I’d like to see that we could just start to trust each other a little more, and I think part of that maybe has to do with a dialogue being there between police officers and the rest of the general public.”
Along with communication, freshman Sydney Cerro explained that it’s important to look at the overall good deeds of the police when formulating a general opinion of them, not on secluded issues.
“[Police] help a lot and get a lot of crap for little mistakes of single policemen, and I think we should focus on the positive rather than the negative,” Cerro said.
However, according to Bisset, that doesn’t mean the mistakes and cases of misconduct and abuse of power don’t matter. While some people think that these are simply isolated incidents, others look towards police law enforcement reform.
“If [police misconduct] happens once, it’s an issue,” Bisset said. “I mean, that’s not okay. Do I think it’s pervasive in that there needs to be a complete overhaul of the system? No, I don’t think that that’s the case, but I do think it shouldn’t be something that’s brushed aside as really not a problem.”
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