In this March 2018 file photo, Cleveland police cadets prepare to enter Cleveland City Council chambers for a graduation ceremony. The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Looking back into my adolescence, I can’t think of why I should trust the police when I’ve witnessed so much of their misconduct. They too often stood as obstacles to righteous justice.

In my East Side neighborhood, I swapped stories with friends about our run-ins with cops. The thing that I remember clearest from those days was our consensus on how coldhearted they were toward us.

I’ve had cops point guns at me and other Black boys, and I’ve been placed in handcuffs without a reason. Even now, as I embrace my twilight years, I can’t say my respect for cops has grown one bit.

Today, I have not a single friend in Cleveland who wears the blue, although I take no solace in uttering that statement. I simply find their perspective on our urban society — among cops that I have encountered — in conflict with mine.

It’s easier to mistrust what you do not know.

Yet that might change in the summer months ahead. Mayor Justin Bibb has ordered cops in uniform to park their patrol cars, get out, walk our neighborhoods and talk to residents for an hour each shift, which gives a police officer a chance to meet those of us who are on the right side of the law.

Such conversations with residents should have been part of policing long before Bibb’s election.

Unlike Frank Jackson and others who sat behind the mayor’s desk, Bibb decided to run the Cleveland Police Department instead of letting the department run City Hall.

Strong leaders lead; they don’t follow a predictable course. Over most of the past 30 years, Clevelanders have been in the market for a bold and progressive leader. Bibb appears to be one.

Still, I never expected His Honor to take an administrative sledgehammer to cops. I guess Bibb figured if he planned to reform the police department, he couldn’t put that tough task in the hands of men and women who pinned on a chief’s or a captain’s badge. He’d have to handle that duty himself.

Bibb took office with transformation of the department a priority. He steered clear of talk about “defunding the police,” clever language that works best only as an ultra-liberal’s campaign slogan.

So foot beats, even over short stretches of a cop’s shift, should help Bibb cut crime. I’ve seen firsthand how effective the tactic is in Prague, Stockholm, Lisbon, London, Cape Town and other places around the globe.

It’s been working in some U.S. cities, too.

For we ought to know well the men and women we hire. None of them should be strangers — nameless faces that bump into us only when a crime happens on our block.

Now, don’t confuse what I’m saying as my not appreciating what cops do. What kind of city (or world) would we have if they weren’t around to “protect and serve?” As frightful as our crime rate here is, it would be far, far worse absent cops — whether patrolling in a car or walking a beat.

All of us need cops; all cops need us.

In rolling out this policy, Bibb referred to foot beats as “an active presence,” an intriguing phrase to attach to community policing. I’d prefer, however, to call them something altogether different: a bridge being built between Blacks and blue.

Justice B. Hill grew up and still lives on the city’s East Side. He practiced journalism for more than 25 years before settling into teaching at Ohio University. He quit May 15, 2019, to write and globetrot. He’s doing both.

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