I think I saw it first shortly after it was put in,
and it took me a little bit to connect it,
to think, "Well, what is that and what holiday is this?"
I really had no idea what it meant.
I didn't feel it was very attractive.
Later, I got a phone call from someone
who said, "Did you notice there's a blue line in Warwick?
And is that a statement about Black Lives Matter?"
So it made me wonder.
There were lines that were painted in other communities.
And we started getting phone calls, of course.
The village board felt that it was an important thing,
because our police force does a great job.
And it was very simple.
It's going to eventually fade.
It was just a tip of the hat.
I first saw the blue line showing of support
on the internet, and I was touched when I saw it.
I didn't expect it.
That blue line has been interpreted in different ways
by different people.
There are many people, good thinking people,
that were outraged.
And there are a lot of good thinking people
who felt, well, this is a way that we can say thanks
to our active police force.
Warwick is this town that wants to be adorable,
wants to be this beautiful place that people want to come to.
And all of a sudden, we've got this ugly line
down the middle of the road.
The reason that I say that it's clearly Blue Lives Matter
is because of the political context
in this country, the fact that the Black Lives Matter movement
has been gaining some traction.
Why do we need to suddenly stand up and say,
"We support our police"?
What was the intent of the blue line?
To show appreciation for law enforcement, local law
enforcement, without any of the other things being dragged in.
I don't think they were looking beyond Warwick
when they did that.
And why?
Why did they have to?
[woman playing guitar]
(SINGING) Things I never told you haunt and choke me
every day.
Want to give it up and let it go.
Warwick is mostly white.
There's not many times when I see any minorities really around.
I personally have had good and bad experiences
with the police.
More so when I was a little younger,
I experienced a lot more run-ins with the police.
Getting taken out of the car for no reason.
It only has to go badly once.
That's what comes to mind when I saw the line, is that
I just felt like it was dismissive.
This is a problem.
Even my friends don't generally talk about issues of race,
what they've noticed, what's going on in the country, what's
going on around them.
I think people are still very uncomfortable
about addressing race.
This is only a manifestation of something
deeper in our psyche around race.
And it's there whether the blue line surfaced or not.
"There is a national discussion currently being had about this.
And from where we're standing, the blue line
takes a side in that argument."
I decided to write a petition.
Not all of them, but there are police officers
doing terrible things.
And we can't just stand behind any act committed by any police
officer simply because they wear the uniform.
And that's what I was trying to draw attention to.
One of the comments on my petition
actually sprung another petition.
It was racially charged.
That was hard to see.
I don't know what will come of that.
I think most police officers, the vast majority of them,
are trying to do a good job.
And we should stand by them and honor them.
No.
Who put this out?
It says, "Black people are killing each other,
so the police have to do it, too."
That makes no sense to me.
See, the thing is, I could not support the letter that
is for the blue line.
There are almost 600 supporters. That horrifies me.
I didn't think there were that number of people in Warwick
who would support a letter like this.
Oh, boy.
[laughing]
[church bell ringing]
[dinging]
[interposing voices]
Get the blue line back.
That's it.
[interposing voices]
This afternoon, we made a determination
to take away the blue line and to repaint
it the colors of our nation.
To change it was to be more inclusive.
Excuse me.
If you can't hold your mouth, you can leave.
Mr. Mayor, I am ashamed of what you did today.
Yeah!
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
You disrespected the Warwick P.D. and all of the police
officers living here.
That wasn't the intent.
That wasn't —
Excuse me.
Don't put words in my mouth.
If you don't like it, you can walk out those doors.
It can be corrected!
I wrote a letter in opposition to the blue line.
All my cousins and uncles are New York City policemen.
I am just like you.
[interposing voices]
Please, please.
Hey!
I'm kind of done with that!
I'm done with the rudeness!
Let the man speak!
We're not against the police!
We have a context, a national context,
where the Blue Lives Matter is in opposition to Black Lives Matter.
[interposing voices]
You perceive it your way!
We perceive it our way!
We don't agree!
Let's have a quick dose of truth here.
Let's talk truth.
Police are being assassinated in this country
at unprecedented rates.
This is due to a lie that would have
us think that police are hunting down
young minority males for sport.
Black Lives Matter is built on this lie.
And the radicals' objection to the blue line
was because it challenges the Black Lives Matter lie.
Since January 1, there have been almost 750
black-on-black assassinations in Chicago.
But these deceitful radicals want
to focus on the less than 1% of instances
where a police officer engages and kills one such often
armed and dangerous thug.
Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
was a vicious thug engaged in a violent assault.
This shows how these radicals sit nice and comfortably
in Warwick and make lazy, ill-informed condemnations
of our police.
You don't get off scot-free here.
It's time to confront you and shut you down.
You have incited a war against our police.
"This kind of liberal.
This kind of radical."
What is that?
You're talking to your neighbors.
And so are black people!
— in Warwick, please.
Have any of you ever felt threatened by a cop?
You said you felt that that line was offensive
and that you felt threatened by that line.
We're coming together.
[interposing voices]
(NEWSCASTER) The Warwick community now a village divided.
Tonight's board meeting erupted into shouting and anger.
Warwick is 91% white, home to many in law enforcement.
For now, the line stays.
The controversy continues.
When you're talking about an issue like Black Lives Matter,
it's unfortunate that people can look at the name of it
and somehow think that it's offensive
when you're literally just saying that black lives … matter.
It seems like such a basic thing that, unless you're awful,
there's no reason for you to feel like it isn't true.
People were saying at the meeting
that, you know, "Black-on-black crime!"
It's crime.
And when the particular people they're talking about
do kill other black people, or whatever,
they go to jail for it.
I'm not a supporter of Black Lives Matter.
I'm a supporter of All Lives Matter.
My son is a New York City police officer.
I never know, when he leaves, am I ever going to see him again.
We were taught that if you were told to stop by a police officer
you stopped.
In some of the instances, where unfortunately people
were killed, they were given a chance to comply.
They didn't comply.
What did you think the police were going to do?
A snippet of a cell phone video of which you probably
don't see the whole thing from start to finish,
just the snippet, should not be the end
of a police officer's career.
You weren't there.
You've had no training.
You don't know what the police officers are up against.
Don't be an armchair cop.
Sometimes it just feels like people
are being willfully obtuse.
There's still this group that doesn't necessarily
get a fair shake, because people were
willing to forego the entire picture in order
to support this idea of what the police are.
It's just been a generally pretty difficult time
for a lot of people, so I think perceptions have changed.
And not just me, but I feel like people
see each other differently.
My mom is very tied to the police station.
They've known me since before I could probably speak.
We have blue painter's tape across our car supporting police.
After leaving the meeting and seeing —
just reflecting on how the meeting went
and how it kept running in circles and running in circles,
I was like, "That's not … We can't approach it that way."
The next day, that's when we decided
to go about it the complete opposite way.
We wanted to present a proper, more mature way
of going about things, as opposed
to what some of the other people were doing.
More civilized. — Right.
The mayor, he's trying really hard
to sit down with people on both sides of this issue
and figure out a way to resolve things.
Unfortunately, there's a really loud and small group,
but very hostile.
There are people who support the same things they support
in a very different way, and I think that they
will get what they want.
We have been through quite a week.
Definitely not the Warwick community
that we're so famous for.
There were a series of meetings where
people disagreed, but then also saw the common ground.
There was an understanding that it's
O.K. to reinstate the blue line.
But the question is, if there is people in our community
that do have fears, that should be part of that discussion.
I grew up in the city of Newburgh,
which isn't far from Warwick.
Growing up, seeing that with the black community
treated themselves definitely made me have a huge bias.
When all the Black Lives Matter stuff was coming out,
I'm like, "Oh, wow, I got no sympathy for you,
you guys are treating yourself like animals. Look at you."
Until this came about.
She was actually responsible for really opening my eyes to it.
She's like, "I have a black family,
I was raised by a black family."
And the Black Lives Matter was started
by three people who are saying that they weren't being heard.
And they felt there was injustices
in the criminal justice system.
Am I in the same camp as Don and Nicole?
No.
But I don't have to feel as strongly
about the thing they're passionate about in order
to work with them on it.
As we move forward, we're going to continue to disagree.
But we have to realize that we are all different,
and that conversation has to continue.
[applause]
There are going to be people who say
that the line is coming back, and that
still sends a terrible message.
And I hope that they see that the problems that they
have with the police that make them
have a problem with the line —
we're trying to address those.
What we get out of it is so much more than stripping
paint off the road.
We kind of wanted to make community outreach
not the people like me and him who
love the police, but the people who are
a little bit afraid or unsure.
Apprehensive.
This is a program that was developed
to help police and residents build relationships.
It's meant to take place in small groups
of 10 to 12 people.
We have the dialogue started.
We have the ear of the people who
are in charge of making those sorts of changes possible.
And we have the attention of people who didn't even really
believe it was necessary.
We didn't have that before.
We just had a line.
As a point of information, just to be updated,
so … the line will be allowed to fade away.
Then we transition to the statue?
It's basically going to be a three-tier thing, where
etched on one side is going to be the oath.
Then in the middle is an etching,
the blue line [inaudible].
So you're going to bring the blue line to the statute?
Yeah.
That's our plan, yeah.
To me, the blue line is a controversial issue,
and it will always remain so, especially in Warwick.
The blue line literally honors every fallen officer,
and it's out of respect that I want that blue line there.
If you choose not to visit, you don't
have to see the blue line.
Then the people who choose to visit and actually support
our police —
Don, keep in mind that when that whole crisis happened,
we could've dug in and said, "No return to the blue line."
We got controversy around that from people I know.
We got some negative stuff from that.
But we didn't, and it was an act of trust.
And I'm asking you to remember that.
I think it's still far from being resolved.
The deeper conversations haven't really continued in a way
that they need to continue.
That concerns me.
There has to be more people in our community a part
of that conversation, because none of us
speak for the whole community.
I used to think that Warwick as a whole
was generally more forward thinking,
but I had my suspicions.
At least it feels like, somewhat, concerns
are being heard.
I think we're at a crossroads right now.
We're at a point where we can accelerate
our forward movement, but we also
could very likely slide back.
To be able to grow, you have to be realistic.
You have to look at what's still lacking in the community, what
work still needs to be done.
I think that the line will fade, and I don't
think they'll paint another.
And that's fine.
But hopefully with that and after this whole election
that's been very divisive to our country, hopefully
there will be healing.
And then lines won't matter.
[music]
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