Chief seeking to build trust with community
Committee members will offer feedback on police stops.
Amid a national debate about law enforcement relations, Bastrop’s police chief is implementing new strategies that he hopes will build trust between the community and his department.
“If something does happen down the road, we’re going to own up to our mistakes,” Chief Steve Adcock said. “We have nothing to hide here. We want this department to have integrity.”
A little over a year into his tenure as the city’s top police official, Adcock has created a committee of community members to review footage from cameras installed on officers’ dashboards and give feedback on how the police are interacting with people they stop.
The group is made up of two people from the African-American community, two from the Hispanic community, one person from the Asian-American community and a white person from the faith community.
The goal is twofold: to increase transparency and give people a direct line of communication to the police chief, Adcock said. And unlike a citizens review committee, the group reviews footage before a problem or complaint arises.
“Not many chiefs will do that,” said Bill Hobby, head chaplain for the Bastrop Police Department and a member of the committee. “It’s just really exciting. A police department that’s really willing to be a part of the community and not just be the enforcers.”
Rev. Bernie Jackson, a pastor at Trinity Zion Ministries in Bastrop and a member of the committee, said she thinks the group’s work is important because it creates a foundation if something were to happen in Bastrop similar to problems in other parts of the country.
“I want young AfricanAmerican males to know if they are stopped by police officers that they are going to be treated fairly,” Jackson said.
Reviewing dash cam footage is not a new concept, but involving people outside the police agency and be- fore there’s a problem is, said Tracie Keesee, project director for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice.
The initiative will implement new programs in six different cities around the country to improve law enforcement relations and research their outcomes.
Keesee, a 25-year veteran of the Denver Police Department, is also the co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA, which promotes police transparency and accountability through research.
“I commend anyone who takes the substantial next step to try something, anything, that is going to be helpful to connect the police and the community,” Keesee said of Bastrop’s new committee.