How Trust Is Lost

Police get into accidents all the time. They make mistakes. How they behave when they do speaks to the relationship they want to have with the public.

I happened to be driving back from the dog groomer Thursday around 6:30 p.m. on North Decatur Road when I passed by a DeKalb County police car with a catastrophically blown front tire, surrounded by other cruisers. SWAT officers were all over the corner of the strip mall at the bottom of the hill. One was splayed out in the grass, alert but plainly inju…