PB forum seen as start of police-changes dialogue
PINE BLUFF — A forum on law enforcement and social justice drew about 60 people from the Pine Bluff area to begin a dialogue on police interactions in the community, how to head off police brutality before it happens and how to deal with it when it happens.
Pine Bluff Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant presented a list of policies under consideration in the wake of the death of George Floyd who died while in police custody after a Minneapolis police officer is seen in video kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes May 25.
Floyd’s death touched off protests, some violent, around the world as people voiced their objections to the treatment of black people by law enforcement officers and called for an end to racial injustice.
The proposed policies call for a ban on chokeholds and strangleholds, a requirement for police to attempt de-escalation techniques to avoid physical confrontations, a required verbal warning when possible before using deadly force, a required use of force continuum, a required attempt to exhaust all alternatives before resorting to deadly force, requiring officers to intervene if they observe another officer using excessive force, a prohibition on shooting at moving vehicles, and required comprehensive reporting whenever force is used or threatened.
Those proposals, Sergeant said, are recommended by Campaign Zero, a project of the nonprofit group WeTheProtesters as part of its campaign to end police violence.
“Shortly after the George Floyd incident these policies were brought to me to consider to see if there was something that could be done here,” Sergeant said. “When I looked at it, something I saw was that some of these policies we were already doing but they were hidden existing policies. They weren’t spelled out well or readily available.”
While going through the department’s p0licies, Sergeant said, he learned that his own department’s use of force policy had been in effect for 15 years.
“How many of you realize that we’re not doing things the way we did them 15 years ago?” Sergeant asked. “Life has changed, and that means our policies have to change as well.”
On June 10, Sergeant said he issued a directive banning the use of chokeholds by police officers, an announcement that drew applause from people at the forum. He said he followed that up with another directive on June 19 requiring officers to intervene if another officer is seen using excessive force.
“Our policy already specified that any time an officer sees another officer violating department policy, that officer has a duty to report it,” he said. “We put out a special order that is a three-page comprehensive policy that tells you what that duty to intervene looks like, rather than just a sentence about violating policy. Now, not only do you have a duty to intervene, you must physically or verbally stop something that’s happening that should not be going on.”
After hearing comments from a panel consisting of Sergeant, Mayor Shirley Washington, Jefferson County Judge Gerald Robinson, Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr., community organizer Kymara Seals, and research specialist Matthew Pate, attendees separated into nine groups to consider three questions:
■ Based on the policies presented, what changes or additional policies do you believe local law enforcement should enact?
■ Have you or someone you know ever felt endangered, intimidated or unfairly targeted by local law enforcement? If so, why did you or that person feel that way?
■ Can you share any strategies that could help local law enforcement build a stronger and more trusting relationship with the community?
After considering and discussing the three questions for 12 minutes, each group presented its conclusions, with a common thread running through all of the discussions. All nine groups said to build a stronger and more trusting relationship with the community would require a community policing strategy that would get police out of their cars and into the neighborhoods where they patrol, and would require that police live in the communities where they work.
“We have some suggestions that really involve community policing, or more specifically, how to make that happen,” said Ginny Heisler of Pine Bluff. “We suggested that police officers spend more time out of their cars and in the neighborhoods so that they are actually interacting with the public and with the youth in the community so that they can build relationships with the children while they are young.”
Ken Corbin suggested that presence in the community is an important factor in providing a positive influence to residents.
“We know that there are benefits to living in the neighborhoods where they police,” he said. “They need to be seen, and they need to be heard so that they’re not looked at in fear but as a friend.”
Following the forum, Sergeant called the event an important first step in restoring trust between residents and police. He agreed with the community policing suggestions and said he implemented some measures to get police officer out of their patrol cars and into the neighborhoods to connect with people when he first took over as chief in 2018. But he said budget constraints have made it difficult to maintain that level of interaction.
“What ended up happening is [an] employment shortage so most of the officers we have with the numbers we have now have to go from call to call, so they don’t have the ability to do that aspect of it,” he said.
“Then we came into what we’re doing now with the pandemic. Those things kind of inhibited the way we wanted that to look, but … we’re going to have to look at some ways we can merge that idea together because that’s something I thought was important from the beginning.”
Keidra Burrell, a Pine Bluff attorney, said that change would require action from the community, such as communicating with public officials about what changes are desired.
“Contact your community leaders and before you leave tonight, engage with them,” Burrell said. “Yes, they are accountable to us, but we are accountable to them as well. They can’t do it alone.”