By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

President Obama has ended Secure Communities, the misguided and ineffective program that we opted to limit in Somerville earlier this year. In some ways, Secure Communities’ ignominious end was inevitable. A federal judge has already ruled that holding a person released by the courts—which the program required—violates the Fourth Amendment. Statistics showed that the majority of people deported because of Secure Communities had no criminal convictions. We were breaking apart families, which leads to more crime, in the name of a broken immigration system. Everyone knew this program was flawed and that it would end eventually, but faced with a Congress that refuses to govern because they’re more interested in winning elections than smart, evidence-based decisions, the President rightly acted within his power to end Secure Communities sooner rather than later. This is an important step because it shows that the federal government is now, finally, realizing what we already know in Somerville—that truly keeping a community safe requires the police and residents to work together.

Secure Communities undermined the trust needed for that kind of collaboration to happen between law enforcement and residents. Instead of targeting people who posed real threats to the community, it indiscriminately treated every person the same regardless of their history, save for one factor: their status in a broken immigration system that everyone knows is broken and is crying out for reform. That discouraged innocent immigrant victims and witnesses of crimes from reporting or cooperating with law enforcement due to fear of deportation. Police officers who rely on public cooperation to solve crimes and maintain public safety found their jobs harder, not easier, because of this program that also burdened them with doing the job of federal immigration enforcement. Secure Communities weakened communities and left us anything but secure.

We knew that here. Since 2008, the Somerville Police Department has had an internal policy that they do not contact federal immigration enforcement unless they are holding a suspect for a serious crime such as assault, rape or weapons charges. Since enacting that policy, crime in Somerville has dropped by roughly one-third. Our residents knew that our police were focused solely on pursuing and convicting actual criminals. They knew they wouldn’t be ripped from their families for doing the right thing.

The Somerville Police adopted that policy because the department is committed to community policing, and that community policing means more than a few community-oriented programs within the department or an extra walking beat for an officer. It means true collaboration between our community members and the police department—two-way communication based upon mutual understanding and trust. Reporting information to the police is an important part of that, but it goes beyond victims and witnesses providing that information and cooperating with investigations. Problem-solving is the key here, and residents, local business owners and the wider community are a big part of that, because the problems that police officers face are often not as simple as “a bad person did a bad thing.” Many factors can lead to crime or incidents that our officers must respond to.

We can’t arrest our way out of crime. Simply putting more officers on the street addresses the symptoms, not the disease. So we support strong family units—ending Secure Communities is part of that—and strong education. Our officers work to be part of the community, known to our residents and communicative. This all lays the foundation for community collaboration, where the people in our community can help the police identify problems that deserve attention and draw the connections between the issues we face as a community. Secure Communities eroded that trust. Now it is over, and our community will be stronger for it.

When police collaborate with the community, it strengthens public safety through problem-solving—and it also challenges our assumptions. The community can challenge the police department’s assumptions about the root causes of problems—and have their own assumptions about police officers challenged, too. The recent grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island, and the shooting of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, have put a spotlight on the issues of community and police relations, and the assumptions that groups can make about one another. Whatever you believe about the grand jury decisions, one lesson is clear: We must work on building mutual understanding and trust between our law enforcement officials and the people who live in our communities. Ending Secure Communities is a positive step in building that understanding and trust. I hope to see in the months to come that, after tragedy, we can again as a nation take positive steps to further build that understanding and trust, and make our communities safer for everyone.