Chicago Police Surprise Neighborhood Kids With New Hoop

A very nice move from the Chicago Police Department that could use some positive news these days.

Former Rockford Police Chief Dan O'Shea took a considerable amount of heat about a year ago when he said this:

The 16 and 17-year-olds that are running around shooting each other, we're not wasting our time running around trying to save them. They're lost. We're trying to focus on the 3,4, and 5-year-olds all the way up through maybe 12, 13 where we have a chance at saving them and changing their lives and changing the direction they're going in their life.

I don't want to speak for the former Rockford Police chief but I think if he had a chance to go back in time and make that statement again he would possibly re-word it a little to change the focus of what he said.

A lot was made about the part about saying that the 16 and 17-year-olds shooting each other being "lost" wasn't interpreted the way I think he intended it to be received. He might have been right. That group of youth is probably too big a problem for the police to rectify before they reach adulthood. In my opinion, he probably should not have said that out loud even if that was what he believed. You don't want your police chief to say that they have "given up" on any part of the population.

This mistake allowed, what I thought his main message in the statement, to be dismissed by some and completely ignored by others. And that message was to foster good relationships with the very young so the police and the community can work together when they get older. Don't let the minds of the youth to be tainted by the views of people that had a bad relationship with the police, go out and foster new relationships and control the narrative before it's too late.

That's what I think the main message was from Dan O'Shea.

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And this is what Chicago's Police Department is trying to do here in this video. Foster a positive relationship with the grade school-aged children in the community so when they get older, they don't see the police as an enemy.

All cops aren't necessarily bad and all cops aren't necessarily good. Police departments all over the county have been receiving some pretty bad press lately and some of it is very well deserved. We need more honest efforts to connect with the community they protect and things might start to change a little.