Kansas City Police Commissioner and community activist Alvin Brooks is writing a book about his experience in an effort to reduce violence and racism.
“It has to be that we talk about and we deal with issues before the 6 p.m. news,” Brooks said.
To reduce crime and violence, Brooks told 41 Action News we must be proactive and not reactive.
“You can't arrest yourself and jail yourself out of this,” said Brooks.
As a former officer and police commissioner for the Kansas City Police Department, Brooks said law enforcement can only do so much.
“People think more police officers, or this or that. I think we have to change the culture, particularly as it relates to urban America,” Brooks said.
Since helping to start the AdHoc Group Against Crime in 1977 to try to change the culture, Brooks has talked about fighting crime with Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“We revolutionized that whole thing of vigils, prayer vigils, as well as marches on crack houses,” said Brooks.
Bush saw his work first hand in Kansas City and appointed Brooks as an adviser to the National Drug Advisory Council in 1989.
“There’s a correlation between poverty and crime and violence, and we have not learned yet that the way you reduce poverty is through education,” said Brooks.
Improving education everywhere, Brooks said, takes a long-term commitment from everyone.
“I hear people say, ‘Well, I’m glad I don’t live over there.’ Well, violence, poverty, it’s like a cancer you know. If you let it continue, it’s going to spread.”
That’s why Brooks joined KCPD after growing up on Kansas City’s east side where he said white adults and police abused him because of his race.
“It was a traumatic experience in my life, and I don't want to forget it and I want to share it,” said Brooks.
So he's writing his memoir to detail racism he’s experienced in his life.
“The playing field is still not level,” Brooks said. “It has to be. It has to be.”
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Patrick Fazio can be reached at patrick.fazio@kshb.com.
