We applaud the Martha’s Vineyard chiefs of police association for its vision and proactive coordination in establishing a need for implicit bias training and seeking a preeminently qualified and experienced training team from Hilliard Heintze to facilitate sessions on Island May 4-6.

We thank the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation (also known as the Permanent Endowment) and the Martha’s Vineyard Diversity Coalition for joining our group, the Martha’s Vineyard Social Justice Leadership Foundation, in providing financial support for this training endeavor.

We also commend their sincere invitation of including a community segment in the leadership course to share the curricula framework presented to all police personnel this week and listen to its feedback about racially just policing and recommendations for advancing a progressive agenda for action.

We trust that the six Island police departments employ competent and devoted chiefs who embrace community-policing principles and seek to lead a change initiative that enhances meaningful partnership within their community. However, one of many essential steps for chiefs to develop is a unified, one-sentence values statement incorporated as the last sentence of each agency’s mission statement. For example, we will work in continuous partnership with other Island police agencies to improve police-community trust and confidence for fair and just law enforcement across Martha’s Vineyard.

The chiefs should consider meeting collectively in a series of Islandwide community forums to establish and strengthen community partnership, and specifically, to solicit residents’ concerns, both about public safety and about police actions and behavior. They also must sustain engagement with the community to produce partners in developing safety across the Island that’s consistent and supports the protection and strengthens trust that prevents future harm. Continuously meeting places responsibility on community members, and the dialogue should facilitate changes by those most affected.

They should reexamine the use of force and de-escalation tactics that value every citizen and prohibits unacceptable officer behavior. They also must keep this week’s training fresh by ensuring that bias in police behavior is addressed through strict supervision, coaching and disciplining, or terminating when needed. Chiefs must confront bias in their officers’ actions swiftly and employ strategies and tactics to eliminate it, which is good for the community and the officers across the Island.

Lastly, every chief should immediately hear the clarion call from the community members attending the training about the lack of a uniform officer complaint system and consider implementing a fix soonest. As Joe Carter, former Oak Bluffs police chief and our vice-president said, “All agencies should invest in an online website portal and a dedicated recorded telephone line to accept complaints, encouraging citizen identification for any follow-up and feedback but allow anonymous reporting.”

Laurie Perry

Edgartown

The writer is president of the Martha’s Vineyard Social Justice Leadership Foundation.