All policing should be community policing. Police officers and residents work together every day, because it’s the only way to keep the streets safe. Over the past 30 years, though, whenever there has been a need to heal a rift between the police and the public, this basic principle has gotten watchword status.

We face such a rift today, particularly in New York City’s African-American and Hispanic communities, largely because of Police Department policies that inhibit true community policing and set harmful quotas for arrests and other police activities, like “stop, question and frisk.”

Police officers have recognized for decades that the department was driving a wedge between officers and the people we serve by making our jobs dependent on meeting these mandates — reducing public safety to a numbers game. As far back as 2004, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association warned that quotas were harming residents and police officers alike, and we filed grievances and fought for expanded state anti-quota legislation to stop it.

Unfortunately, our elected leaders and the courts have too often ignored these failed management policies, focusing instead on saddling police officers on the street with additional burdens and scrutiny. In doing so, they have advanced the false narrative that New York City police officers are, as a group, bad actors motivated by personal racial prejudice. This narrative has made our jobs far more difficult, and has further damaged the relationship with the New Yorkers we serve.