Walk & Talk unit

For STS students who live in public housing, the school is not the only environment in which police are more present than they would be for other students. At home, the Walk & Talk unit, a Community Outreach program comprising three officers, focuses solely on the properties under the Brookline Housing Authority (BHA) and seeks out stronger interpersonal relationships with the residents. But according to Kimberley Richardson, a BHA resident, much like the SRO position, the unit suffers from an incomplete picture.
“I didn’t know it was ever called an SRO. And as far as the Walk & Talk unit goes, I also didn’t know that they were called a Walk & Talk unit,” Richardson said. “All I knew is that when I first moved to Brookline, I always saw police officers around the public housing unit, and I didn’t understand why they were always here. But my thoughts were always, they’re here because they’re making sure that the people who live in public housing stay in line, so to speak.”
Richardson served on the Task Force’s subcommittee on the Walk & Talk unit, which looked into the history behind it. The unit was established in 1992, with mass incarceration at the national level ballooning during the War on Drugs. According to Walk & Talk Officer Tim Stephenson, this national context influenced the beginnings of the program, but it has since evolved.
“When it was created, from what I’ve heard, there was an issue with gangs and with drugs coming into the area and ending up in housing, and people from outside of housing coming in and trying to get some sort of an influence with drugs and gangs,” Stephenson said. “And so they set up this unit to go in there and try and keep that from happening. And since then, it has transformed to what it is now and what it has been for the last 17 years or so.”
Now, Stephenson said, it is a way for the police to connect with the low-income community, get to know the residents, and break down barriers.
Probing deeper into the details of the program, the Task Force uncovered something concerningly similar to their findings on the SRO position. Whereas the SRO developed its MOU behind closed doors, it appeared the Walk & Talk unit did not have any written expectations at all.
“That program’s been around for three decades. There’s never been an agreement signed between the Brookline Housing Authority and the Police Department of the town of Brookline,” Fernandez said. “There’s nothing about what the outcomes are supposed to be. There’s no program analysis that’s taken place in three decades. It just is.”
And according to the subcommittee’s report, since the early days of the program the BHA has been paying the BPD $15,000 annually in return for the Walk & Talk unit’s work. The subcommittee chair, Bonnie Bastien, said that the lack of written agreements has left too many questions open for such a large sum of money every year.
“That money exchange never had any documentation. It doesn’t have a contract, again, it doesn’t have any kind of anything that defines what that money is for,” Bastien said. “And so no one ever stopped it. I don’t know if it started exactly in the beginning or how much later after the beginning of the Walk & Talk program, but for decades, $15,000 moves from the BHA operating budget to the Brookline Police Department budget.”
Richardson said that the money could have gone to any number of places where the outcomes could have been more easily measured, given that the unit does not have any expectations set for what it should achieve.
“I’m all for the police, but I’m not all for the police making money in ways that they shouldn’t be,” Richardson said. “If we add up that money, do you know what kind of community center we could have had right here in public housing for the kids who don’t have a place to go?”
The subcommittee’s objective became very clear following this discovery: search for benefits to the community that outweighed the $15,000 expense.
The Police Reform Committee had a similar question, according to Hatchett, who led their subcommittee on Community Outreach, Youth, and Non-Traditional Roles. To understand public opinion on the program, they sent out a Walk & Talk survey to every resident of Brookline Housing Authority Properties. They received 70 responses. “Outstanding program,” one response said. “I would be delighted to meet the officers,” another said. Only 35 responded ‘yes’ when asked if they were familiar with the program, but an overwhelming number of residents both aware and unaware said they wanted the program to continue. Hatchett said she was not surprised, but that she was open to hearing that that was not the case.
“If the responses were no, then I would have had to have that tough conversation with three incredible members of my staff,” Hatchett said.
However, there were some issues with the demographics of their sample that Hatchett said they hope to address in further research.
“I would have liked to have seen more responses from residents who were people of color, more responses from residents who were youth,” Hatchett said. “We’re doing some follow-ups now to determine if residents who responded who were my age were responding for the lived experiences of their families, which might incorporate children.”
The subcommittee also plans to follow up with youth via the Brookline Teen Center, where Walk & Talk officers visit frequently and engage with students, mostly students of color. Overall, the survey included 27 people of color, including six Black people (by contrast, 26% of BHA residents overall are Black). Of those Black respondents, none were below 50 and none were male.

According to O’Neal, a Town Meeting Member who lives in public housing, this gap in representation paints an incomplete picture.
“If they were to ask some Black males from around here around my age how they felt about the program, they would’ve got this {negative} answer, and they wouldn’t have gotten it so late. I don’t feel there was any outreach to people like me, on both committees, to Black males from the age of 50 and below,” O’Neal said.
On Tuesday, March 9, the BHA held a public comment period in its monthly meeting to discuss the Walk & Talk program. During that time, three Black male residents of public housing spoke about their experiences – all three critical of the program. One was O’Neal, and another was Adeniyi Ijanusi, who said he agreed that Black men needed more of a voice.
“I know personally Black young males that are not in support of that program. It makes people uncomfortable,” Ijanusi said. “And that dynamic hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed in Brookline, and the story with people of color and policing hasn’t changed.”
Part of the reason so few people of color filled out the survey, Richardson said, was for fear of retribution. The Task Force reported anonymous BHA residents saying they feared losing their tenancy for speaking up about the police. To be able to reach those hesitant to speak, they had to conduct one-on-one anonymous interviews and strike all identifying information. Richardson said she had felt that same fear of speaking up at one point early in her time in housing.
“I remember when I first moved here to Brookline and I kept saying, like, just stay the course, Kimberley, don’t make noise. Don’t say anything. Just go to work and come home, because you just need this place because your kids need to be in school,” Richardson said. “No one should have to feel like a prisoner in their home. I shouldn’t have to tell myself to stay the course, don’t let your voice be known because of being afraid of being homeless.”
To further corroborate the anonymous accounts they collected, Bastien and the Task Force reached out to third parties that have heard many residents’ stories.
“We’ve learned from organizations that work with many BHA residents that that is absolutely the truth, that they’ve heard many times that people fear for their tenancy at BHA,” Bastien said. “So just the existence of that hesitancy means that the Walk & Talk program is problematic. It means that their presence is a threat one way or another.”
According to Bastien, these individual accounts must be heard alongside the Reform Committee’s survey findings, because the survey sample skewed towards whiter respondents, meaning the voices of people of color need to be amplified even more to be considered.
“When Black and brown people specifically express discomfort or hesitancy or fear around this program, we have to pay special attention to it,” Bastien said. “Because when we bury those voices in the majority of white voices that are happy with the program, who don’t experience policing in the same way, then we end up upholding racist systems.”
Richardson said that no matter how small a proportion it is, dissenting voices, especially on a topic as grave as policing, need to be listened to and valued.
“If some of us don’t feel safe, that means the community isn’t safe,” Richardson said. “So if 10 people out of a thousand people here in Brookline housing don’t feel comfortable because of that Walk & Talk unit, because they feel like they’re being policed or they’re being targeted or being surveilled or whatever the feelings are, then it’s not working. Because those 10 people have to come home every single day and wonder and be afraid and think, ‘what’s going to happen?’”