In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, college campuses and public schools across the country are ending partnerships with local police departments, calling for the removal of officers from campuses, and defunding school resource officers. I believe that cutting ties between the University of Hawaii and the Honolulu Police Department would be counterproductive to our communitywide goals of ending racism and promoting social justice.

HPD Police Chief Susan Ballard came to the UH-Manoa campus this past semester to talk with us frankly about the police department’s role in addressing mental illness following the tragic death of two young officers near Diamond Head. She openly acknowledged that the police department is not the right solution for systemic issues including homelessness, poverty, mental illness and social welfare. The chief is an agent of change, not an enemy of social justice.

Instead of severing our relationship with police departments, leaders in higher education should be demanding that all police officers attend the same newly proposed anti-racism and social justice courses that will be required for all college students. We can’t educate each other if we build walls and burn bridges.

Behind the badges are men and women from our communities; many of them haven’t had the same opportunities for education that others do. Hawaii is unique because unlike most mainland cities, our police department represents the same cultures and ethnicities of our citizens. Officers in Hawaii are unique because they look just like the citizens whom they have a sworn duty to protect. We have an opportunity in Hawaii to be an example for the rest of the United States.

Unfortunately, police are trained with antiquated techniques by an institution with severely flawed structures based on oppression of minorities and low-income communities. As much as academics and advocates want to break police departments apart, that’s probably not going to happen here in Honolulu or most other mainland cities.

What we can do now, is share our understanding of society with them. Police officers are not taught anything about institutional racism, microaggressions and implicit bias at the police academy.

Clicking through a required annual online training about racial sensitivity has been ineffective in changing police officers’ views and behaviors. Imagine having every HPD officer attend a full semester course on a UH campus. Officers would be required to attend lectures, participate in discussions with students, write papers and work on group projects and presentations. Police would be forced to learn about topics that are shunned by the law enforcement community and hear directly from our students about the impacts of racism and inequality in our communities.

Instead of cutting all ties, we should be mandating police officers’ participation and engagement with our higher education community.

In her interview on “Face the Nation” last week, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “I’m really hoping that this time, we’ll have really honest conversations, conversations that are not judgmental. Conversations that are deep but honest conversations about what we’ve been through and who we want to be.”

The University of Hawaii needs to be driving the conversation, not shying away from it. Let’s open our doors and teach those who are willfully ignorant to the inequalities of the criminal justice system about who the real victims are and how the entire system needs to change.

David Riedman is a criminologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.