Publisher Dan Haley looks back in barely concealed regret about policing.

But it is true that police departments come to reflect the communities they serve. And for all of Oak Park’s genuine progressive bonhomie, it always came with a giant side of “protect us from the West Side.”

That explains the cul-de-sacs all along Austin Boulevard. It explains the active othering of Austin, a neighborhood that when it was Irish, German, Italian and Greek, was our sister community.

He’s been biting his tongue about the cul-de-sacs, apparently, which to us at the corner of Humphrey and Randolph, to name one of the corners that welcomed them, were wholly beneficial as making for a pleasant block. Some, I know, saw it as a slap at black Austin. If it was that at all, and I think not, it was quite a bit more than that.

Dan closes, out of nowhere I…