GOP hosts frank talk on citizens and police

Relationships and empathy. One begets the other. Both have been in short supply in a country driven to despair this month after deadly shootings by, and then of, police officers.

The large protests in Atlanta and elsewhere since the killings in St. Paul, Baton Rouge and Dallas were a sign many African-Americans, particularly young people, have given up hope the system works for them. Likewise, many in law enforcement are exasperated at being lumped together with the relatively small — if hardly trivial — number of officers who needlessly shot to kill. Each group only hears how they need to change, not how others plan to adapt.

Too little empathy. Too few relationships.

Those looking for a different model producing different results would have done well to be in College Park on Wednesday night, where a panel discussion hosted by Georgia Republicans waded into these issues.

Police engagement with citizens in College Park, said that city’s police chief, Keith Meadows, taught him a relevant lesson he impresses on his officers.

“We’re dealing with a generation of young people today that was raised on the internet, and they were taught to question information,” Meadows said. “When they question the information I’m giving them, I can’t take it personally, because that’s how they were raised.”

His counterpart in Douglasville, Chief Gary Sparks, said his department spends every Saturday building relationships with at-risk youth.

“They come to the police department, and they learn how to deal with police,” Spark said. “They learn what their rights are. They learn about their constitutional rights.”

He lamented the lack of publicity for the program, but he said it has helped his department avoid high-profile confrontations.

“Our youth know ... how to complain to the police,” he said. “They know the police chief, they know the mayor, they know the district attorney, because through this program we empower them. We encourage them.”

On the other side of the coin, pastor Joel Trout of Riverdale said citizens must be clear they don’t tolerate the kinds of violence that often puts police on heightened alert.

“Really it’s the community expecting a standard, whereby we don’t allow that in our community,” Trout said of shootings that have become routine. “It just don’t happen because we established a standard. So all the (officers) working a beat, they understand this is our standard. And we’ve established that for our community.”

He said more familiarity between officers and the people they serve might have prevented deaths like that of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man choked to death by officers trying to arrest him for illegally selling cigarettes.

“If Eric Garner had had a street beat officer in that community, he just would’ve gone up to Eric and said, ‘C’mon Eric. Quit selling those things.’ And it would have been over! ... But that (officer) lived somewhere else, and he’s in Eric’s community, and it escalates into, ‘I can’t breathe.’”

It’s worth noting the Georgia GOP wasn’t always in a position to pull off such an event. It took a lot of quiet work by Republicans such as Leo Smith and Michael McNeely, and by College Republicans at Morehouse and Spelman, building the relationships needed to engender more empathy between African-Americans and the GOP.