E.J. Dionne's opinion column in the Washington Post recently mentioned Professor Rod K. Brunson's  2020 Washington Post commentary article underlining concern in Black communities with both “Protests focus on over-policing. But under-policing is also deadly.”

Within Black communities, there is a strong desire both for more effective policing and an end to abuses. Black and brown communities, Prof. Brunson wrote, “The result is that many black and brown communities now suffer from the worst of all worlds: over-aggressive police behavior in frequent encounters with residents, coupled with the inability of law enforcement to effectively protect public safety. But defunding police departments would address only one side of this problem. And the real, and significant, dangers of under-policing would just get worse in the neighborhoods that most need the police to improve — not disappear."

Prof. Brunson wrote, "The nation has focused lately on the dangers of police abuses for African Americans and other people of color, especially in lower-income neighborhoods. But the violent crimes that police have the most difficulty solving — drug- and gang-related shootings — primarily cluster in the same communities. The threat of retaliatory violence reaches beyond gun-toting gang members’ rivals and jeopardizes the safety of all residents in these enclaves where people sometimes say bullets have no names.”