NAACP meetings held at police department
For at least the remainder of this year, the Anne Arundel County NAACP will have its monthly meetings in the Annapolis Police Department’s Joseph S. Johnson station on Taylor Avenue.
Rev. Rickey Nelson Jones, the Anne Arundel chapter president, described the collaboration in a press conference Friday as a way to begin bridging the tenured divide between law enforcement agencies and the Black community.
“I say we must move forward,” Jones said. “This adversarial relationship that exists no longer [has] a reason to continue. The police officers are there to protect the citizenry and the Black community should not have this type of relationship over and over, year after year, decade after decade. It is ridiculous.”
For their part, police officials described Friday’s announcement as the first response to their “clarion call” from January — a news conference on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to signal to local leaders and organizations that the department is open to a collaborative, community-based approach to crime prevention.
A proponent of social policing, a policy approach rooted in the idea that crime stems from social factors and needs, Annapolis Police Chief Ed Jackson said a closer relationship with civil rights groups would help the department better understand and address areas with critical needs.
“At the end of the day, we have to stop fooling ourselves,” Jackson said. “We have to do something different.”
The NAACP was slated to have its first meeting on Taylor Avenue Saturday but canceled due to inclement weather. Their first meeting at the Joseph S. Johnson station will be March 16.
As the two historically contentious organizations draw closer in Annapolis, city officials commended and welcomed their cooperation.
Alderwoman Rhonda Pindell Charles, the City Council’s public safety chair, applauded both Jackson and Jones for their leadership and their ability to work together.
“It is extremely important that we find as many partnerships and collaboration opportunities that we can,” Charles said. “In order to ensure public
safety, we have to make sure that our residents, our businesses and our visitors are educated, are informed, are healthy, have transportation, have decent housing, avail themselves of many opportunities and experiences that we see here in the city.”
Other than hosting the local chapter of the country’s oldest civil rights organization, Jackson said the police department would act as a presence at the NAACP meetings “if they need us.” Otherwise, the meetings will remain private and the station will only act as a venue.
The chief said the offering “dramatizes…the idea that the NAACP and the Annapolis Police Department, or law enforcement in general, can work together.”
“Both organizations have to put their first foot forward,” Jackson said.
Jones welcomed Jackson to the NAACP meetings, saying he wanted his members to become increasingly comfortable with both him and a police presence.