Opinion: CSSJC, CRESS, Youth Empowerment Center and the Town

The recent meeting of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee (CSSJC) (and how about an easier acronym?), with the Town Council, raised several questions that are neither new nor easy. I want to support the CSSJC positions and recommendations more wholeheartedly than I can right now and I want both groups to figure out how to work together more successfully. Making demands and pleading limited resources are clearly failed strategies.

The idea of CRESS (Amherst’s civilian community responders department) is so important that it needs full implementation with a well-trained staff as soon as possible. And it should be part of the Amherst Police Department’s mission to actively participate in making this happen. This is unlikely to happen if the CSSJC continues to coat its demands in an implicit and sometimes explicit anti-police narrative. I do not support the reduction of the town police force, and I do not see that as connected in any real way to the need for CRESS. I wish Police Departments everywhere did not have a paramilitary structure and I understand the need for accountability and supervision that it provides. I do not understand many of the implicit attitudes and assumptions that have often accompanied that structure. Armies are trained to identify enemies; police departments should not start with that or encourage it. I understand how history has made minority communities suspicious of police; I don’t understand why, in Amherst, we can’t work to mitigate that assumption.

I don’t understand the idea of a Youth Empowerment Center any more than I understand the nature of a Teen Room, so central to the Library Trustees’ desire for so large a Jones Library renovation and expansion.  I am generally opposed to any efforts to segregate populations.  If the unstated idea is to provide more supervision for teens I am opposed to it unless it is made explicit, discussed openly, and reflects the needs and desires of teens themselves. But I am bewildered by this idea in 2026; it sounds dated and adult-generated.  Teen centers are accessed today with buttons on screens. When teens gather together today it is not because they desire supervision or because they wish they had more facilities. Who is it who wants a Youth Empowerment Center?  When youth gather in town in public spaces it is because they already feel empowered.   

But if my idea is mistaken, it can easily be put to the test. There are already facilities available for after school and weekend use. These are primarily Regional facilities, so negotiations among school committees would have to be undertaken. If a dedicated Youth Empowerment Center proves to be needed let’s make it happen, for everyone.  People in power sometimes don’t like to be challenged, and people making demands sometimes cherish their grievances.  Can Amherst do better?