The Ideathon is a beautiful, urgent and unprecedented initiative to bring fresh ideas to the debate, dialogue and empathy between citizens and police. It is necessary to start from this bridges to reconcile communities, understand our fractures and reconstruct institutions in Mexico
To serve and protect the streets is a priceless experience [as a police officer]. But I know from my activism on social media that trying to change the citizen perception and image of police corporations is extremely difficult. We must all act from our own trenches to make the difference, even if it is not significant for some people, for others it is something valuable, we must leave a mark.
Before watching the film, I imagined that they were all corrupt, that they were authority figures who had to be feared, with a very tough character, obviously, because of their profession. But after the film, my perception changed completely because it reminded me that they are also human beings, just like me, and just like all of us, they are working precisely to have a life
To reunite citizens and cops to dialogue and generate ideas is fundamental in community building exercises. I hope that innovation to tackle violence and bring peace in our time can come out of this kind of events.
My perception (of the police) was that they had a high payroll, that they were bad people, that they took advantage of the power that the government and society gave them. After watching the film, I think they are just as vulnerable as us, that they have the same fears as us and that they deserve the same respect as us. It is a shame that society itself treats the police badly, they try to protect us and we respond by judging them and not having respect for them, trying to attack them as if they were our enemies.
The fact that [the film] tells the reality of the life of the policemen, the difficulties of the job... I think that in general terms it helps to see the police more humane and to understand a little more what the problems of the Institution are, rather than of the people.
¿Cómo nos arreglamos?” is a well-known slang phrase in Mexico when describing the mutually beneficial corruption agreements between citizens and authorities. It roughly translates to: “How are we going to fix this?” and insinuates the invitation: “shall we grease the wheel?”. It is with this fixing phrase in mind that we launched a call for ideas on how to “fix” the most broken part of the police- citizen relationship: trust.
Our Ideathon transformed into a country-wide virtual competition that asked teams of students and police cadets to come up with proposals on how to rebuild the eroded trust between citizens and police officers. We invited colleges and police academies to co-host this event with us. The response and involvement from allies, institutions and participants exceeded our expectations.
The following five videos show the proposals of the winning teams:
