my name is lorianne fibel
and i am honored to be the president of
bexley city council
i want to thank the bexley public
library
and uh the bexley's favorite librarian
ben heckman for hosting us tonight
in addition to welcoming everyone i was
asked to set the rules for tonight's
conversation
and to share my own personal story
so with a grateful heart i welcome all
the panelists
and organizers of tonight's town hall
as well as all of those who are joining
us on facebook live
topics and issues that challenge our
nation our state
and our hometown of bexley are not new
but have hit us in the face hard
in the last few weeks with the brutal
murder
of george floyd and they need to be
addressed
we will not rectify them tonight but our
community
is continuing a conversation that must
be part of our
everyday dialogue until we do
please remember that each person willing
to be a panelist tonight
had to put on his or her brave to attend
this evening
and will be sharing their own personal
feelings
and thoughts this is not going to be
easy
but bexley doesn't need easy
to make this a success
we are one bexley and we are bexley
strong
when my patients are most stressed
i try very hard to hear the mantra
of fred rogers in my head mr rogers
teaches us that there are three ways to
success
those are number one to be kind
number two to be kind
and you guessed it number three to be
kind
after reminding my children to start
their day
with their kind foot forward
i tell my children as i plant a big kiss
goodbye on their cheek
make mistakes and they echo back
and learn from them they are the reason
i wake up
every morning they are the reason for
the love
in my heart they are the reason for the
laughter
in our home but they are also the cause
of the gray
in my hair as i worry for their future
fdr suggests that we may not be able to
prepare the future
for our children but we can at least
prepare our children
for their future for what kind of future
are we preparing our children what words
of wisdom
can we share as i prepared to start my
first year as a teacher
following in my father's footsteps i
remember him saying
that i should be sure to befriend the
school custodian
and show the local police nothing but
respect
i didn't question his advice however i
have found his words of wisdom
to have benefited my life on numerous
occasions
while i wish he were around now to
explain himself
knowing that my father a rural
small-town
kid fresh out of college started his
career
teaching high school math on the west
side of dayton
in 1965 i suspect it has something to do
with the fact
this this would have placed him smack
dab
in the middle of the historic racial
riots
of 1966 that occurred on the west side
of dayton
alone in a new city no doubt the events
of that period were unsettling for him
and the individuals who he leaned on
helped him
to navigate his situation
and so from generation to generation
we teach our children what we know
to be true and our children listen
i call so many of the individuals who
have made it to their calling to don the
uniform
of the bexley police my friends
more than a few times the bexley pd has
come to my rescue
but my favorite times to recall are when
officer ayers
and sergeant holdren 21 years ago
rescued my then toddler from a locked
bathroom
and two years ago when officers fleming
and eriksen after doing all they could
to save my father-in-law's life hugged
my devastated children
as the ambulance drove away
as my father insisted i respect these
kind-hearted friends of mine
and i have taken advantage of my
position to get to know them
as people not just as city employees
but even before i had this gig i taught
my children to run
to the police not only for safety
but to thank them for their service and
my son
won't pass a person in uniform whether
they are a police officer
a firefighter or a part of the united
states armed forces without saying thank
you
this is my story it comes as no surprise
that my story
as a white woman with white children
is different than the stories of my
black friends
sadly this is not this is not the story
that the mother of one of my son's
very best friends would share
she would never tell her son to make
mistakes
he like so so many has been taught
that there is no wiggle room for
mistakes
our black babies learn from their
parents
and from the horrific events they
witness on tv
or god forbid in person that meeting
just that
one individual and a uniform that does
not
put their kind foot forward
can be a disastrous encounter indeed a
fatal one
i have faith in the kind hearts of the
individuals who govern
our city the kind hearts
of the bexley officers who are sworn to
keep every one of us
safe and the kind hearts of our
community members
i know that all of these groups will be
willing to do
the heavy lifting we need to listen
intently and strategize actively
to change the narrative for so many
families in bexley in ohio
and in the united states we must work
hard together bexley
so that every parent can kiss their baby
on the cheek
and feel safe to tell them to make
mistakes
we are going to now shift to the baker
family
who are right across from me i believe
uh
courtney is going to start us off
hi everyone out there um i'm poor
i am a bexy resident i've been in bexley
now
for 15 years um i'm really proud
to live in bexley and um
i'm not on any formal committee i'm not
a part of the bexley city council
really i'm just here as a community
member at large
but i want to say i am you know
very proud and honored to
be a part of this discussion tonight and
i think
the very unique thing and the thing that
brings me a lot of pride about bexley is
that this isn't the conversation that
just started
in the wake of george floyd's death we
have
been having conversations uh
for several years now about how we can
figure out new ways of healing
old wounds um
here in baxley here within um
our communities of color and i'm really
honored
um that we have gotten support from the
mayor from the chief
from the police department about how we
can begin to
con or how we can continue to bridge
those gaps
i appreciate you sharing laurie about
your story i think
for me briefly just a little bit about
me is that i have never had a
bad encounter with police
i love that i've never had a bad
encounter
with police but even saying that
even saying that i am
a black woman who went to georgetown i
have an advanced degree
i'm married i have kids i've never done
anything illegal i don't want to do
anything illegal
i am actually i think a pretty good
person
every time i see
cop lights in my rear wheel mirror i
feel scared
every time i see
a motorist stopped along broad street or
main street i look is this person black
is this person being stopped for some
other reason than just
being black and driving so these are
kinds of things that
i hope that we can continue to dialogue
and talk about and be real
about how they affect us how they affect
people like me how they don't affect
people like you in the same way
um so i really do appreciate this time
i'm gonna throw it over to my husband
jonathan
thanks courtney uh so for me uh
growing up in a 98 african-american
neighborhood maybe 99
african-american neighborhood
neighborhood i was always taught
to i survived by just being told to stay
out of the
white neighborhood you know to stay away
from
i would go jogging my mother said nope
you don't cross that bridge you just
turn your
butt around and go back the other
direction and so
i never envisioned uh
living in where i'm the only uh
african-american family
for 10 years or so and that's when i was
moved in on our block
in college i survived by learning how to
negotiate
the boundaries a little bit and so
uh for for me i thought about it this
way
uh you know in the workplace
you know if you have a hostile
environment
you call hr
in an academic setting in k-12
if you feel bullied you talk to the
principal
and so surely if someone at work was to
hit you or someone at school was to hit
you then that's assault that's a fight
probably a bad thing that's going to
happen but
hostility eats away at you
feeling bullied can eat away at you
and so if i'm feeling a bit of hostility
from law enforcement
if i'm feeling a little bit of bullying
by law enforcement then i'm not going to
feel
protected or served and
a 20 bill can be the tipping point if
you will in different
different ways and so you might feel
justified with the graffiti
that tags different buildings downtown
you might feel justified singing a song
by a local rapper or rotted rich
or some of the older people in wa
uh and so
that that doesn't feel good in fact
if you feel that bullying or that
harassment
you don't stick around that environment
too long
and so i think we definitely need to
de-escalate where appropriate in the
short term we need to establish
trust in the long term we need to look
at policy make some
decisions look at our priorities as
bexley
and so i think that
that's where 12 right the you google
that
as austin would say comes into play
that we want to move the needle
for minorities and african-americans in
this community
away from the feeling now it may not
always be true the feeling of
harassment and bullying and moving that
needle more towards feeling protected
and served and so we want to definitely
have you
comment in the thread we we know we have
about a hundred viewers let's keep it
going
if you have questions we have moderators
who are going to be looking at that as
well
but i'm going to turn it over to mayor
castle now
thank you john good evening i want to
also thank
uh the library for hosting us this
evening i feel
a little guilty that we're here in the
library and uh no one else gets to be in
the library right now so
sorry uh sorry internet uh but thank you
to ben heckman in the library for making
this space available for us it's a
perfect place for conversation
i want to thank the bex and minority
parents alliance um
dr baker courtney baker and off camera
you don't see this but brian dewery and
monica williams are over there
getting ready to take your questions on
the thread and uh they have been great
in uh being partners over the years and
and talking through and exploring the
issues we're talking about tonight
and uh certainly a big partner in
encouraging this town hall
and helping to organize it and set it up
i want to thank you guys
for spending some of your time this
evening with us so that we can
hear from you and share our thoughts and
have this dialogue together
bexley's history is uh complex
but it's also all too familiar across
many similar communities
across our country bexley started out as
a
privileged enclave a first ring suburb
it was a melding of mansion road mansion
lined streets
in the academic pleasant ridge area
and it has enjoyed throughout its time
a special place in the columbus map a
place where you go to bexley and you
maybe have a certain type of house
you maybe have a certain type of car you
maybe have a certain type of lifestyle
and bex has been around for a while so
we have been around through
the era of segregation we've been around
through the era of deed restrictions
and as courtney mentioned the
complicated histories and the difficult
histories and the difficult hurts and
difficult memories
that are associated with our collective
past continue to haunt us and i think
will for generations
and so it's incumbent upon us as we
diversify further as a community
to learn from the past and to move
forward
with purpose in improving the future
and when i talk about bexley's history
i'm not trying to pretend that
nothing that i just talked about exists
today
because that's not true we know that
racism is alive today
we know that bias is alive today both
explicit and implicit
and we know that we have seen outrageous
examples of that
on the national stage and we know that
undoubtedly there are examples of that
in our own community
and so it's incredibly important because
of that that we as leaders
and we as community members all work
together
to collectively talk about and learn
from
the issues that we're talking about
tonight now
i've been asked to share uh one of my
own personal stories and i'm going to
tell you a story that has
definitely impacted my role as the
safety director in bexley and as the
mayor in bexley prior to that as a city
council member
when i was just out of college which in
and of itself was a position of
privilege
i had a day when i showed up at the bmv
trying to sort out a problem
i hadn't shaved i didn't feel very well
i was wearing
scruffy clothing and i got in a
situation where
an officer of the law abused his
position of power
and made my life incredibly miserable
for a series of months
it was a position that i didn't deserve
and it was a position that i never
expected to be in
i grew up like many of the residents in
bexley in a in a privileged bubble in
many ways
and to have my world turned upside down
by a police officer
was a shock to my system i never
expected what happened
not unlike laurie anne i had viewed law
enforcement as
a good friend somebody who'd always be
there all the time and i learned
on one day very quickly that one person
in one perspective could dramatically
alter my life
now i had resources to fight
that injustice and i had support
networks to fight that injustice and i
had
frankly um the right demographic to help
me fight that injustice
and i want to think that we as a
community we as a country
need to work increasingly away from that
imbalance of power
and that imbalance of influence
for many many years anytime i would see
a police officer
my blood pressure would just go through
the roof i would start shaking
i remember the first time i got pulled
over after that
i was driving to church true story and i
think i was speeding
i was and uh blue lights started lit up
behind me and it had been maybe a few
years since the story i didn't really
give you the whole story but a few years
and i started shaking uncontrollably i
could not control myself
and the officer pulled me over and
explained that i'd been speeding i
admitted that i'd been speeding
and he gave me a warning which was very
nice of him i'm not going to ramble but
my point is
i've had subsequent very positive
experiences with
police officers and i've been lucky to
be in that position
i remember uh going on a bike ride with
our chief
around the city i can't remember if i
was a council member or maybe just
recently had become mayor do you
remember
you were council i was on council
finance director i was really working
hard so we're biking around the city and
kind of seeing what it's like to be a
police officer on a bike maybe and i
told the chief my story
and um it was a moment it was a liminal
moment for me a moment of understanding
a moment of conversation
it was a moment of healing frankly it's
a moment where i could explain what had
happened to me
and how it impacted my view of law
enforcement and how it impacted my view
as a council member i think there had
been an ordinance
having to do with uh mayor's court
uh sentencing and charges and i
explained to the chief
why i voted the way i voted and through
that conversation
we learned i think i learned something i
hope he learned something and he shared
his own story and
i hope that today is going to be like
that i hope that as we talk through
these stories
and i understand that even as i had a
story that traumatized me as a 22 year
old or whatever age i was
and that i've had to learn how to uh
grow as a person through that i
understand that i did that from a
position that's so uniquely different
than the position of the minority
community in bexley and throughout our
country
and i'm cognizant of that and that's
that's a very vivid experience that has
carried me through my leadership as the
mayor
in my perspective whenever i hear
concerns about equity and imbalances of
power
and even specific events that have
occurred i go back to that
time i go back to that memory and i
think humbly
that i need to always keep an open mind
and always be listening and always be
learning
we have been doing a lot of that in
bexley but we still have a lot further
to go
i think we're going to get into some
more of those details later this evening
so i'm going to pass the proverbial mic
along
to our chief of police larry reinhardt
thank you mayor
as the mayor said i am larry reinhardt
i'm the chief of police have been since
2007. i'm here tonight with
sergeant don overly sergeant overly has
26 years
in law enforcement and she does a lot of
things for this police department i'm
glad she could join us tonight
uh she runs our citizens police academy
uh the list of things that she is
responsible for and does
a great job with is too long for me to
read but i'm i'm very appreciative that
she is with us i'm also with
sergeant i'm sorry officer ah that's a
freudian slip
[Laughter]
not yet
officer john bernard has been a
detective
and has done a great job for the
organization as a detective and now
back as a patrol officer great
experience been in law enforcement 13
years and i'm very glad
that john could join us tonight the
bexley police department
has 31 sworn badge-carrying police
officers that includes me
and the deputy chief we're a small
organization we don't have lieutenants
and majors we have officers
sergeants one deputy chief and and one
chief
sixteen percent of those sworn officers
are non-white
and we we feel pretty good about that in
fact
as a community oriented police
department a community policing agency
we felt really good about ourselves for
a long long time
and there have been several times that
the the minority parents alliance has
reached out to us to talk about issues
and and we met and we talked but these
past few weeks
i have realized that i think many
members of our agency have realized
we didn't listen well enough we didn't
hear
uh what the minority parents alliance
was trying to share with us
we didn't hear the benefit
of the dialogue you were trying to say
hey
everything's not perfect in being a
person of color coming through bexley or
living in bexley
and and i'm so i i'm so humbled that
that the minority parents alliance
would will continue to work with us you
never gave up on us you continue to come
back and say
we need to talk more one thing that you
said
maybe a couple years ago that really
resonated with me was you said
listen we just don't want our kids to
grow up in bexley and be afraid
of the police now that resonated with me
and that's the approach that your
organization has always taken
and and i and i thank you for that and i
thank you that you have never beat us up
you've never gotten mad at us and walked
away from the table
you you've continued to come back well
these past few weeks
it's just been obvious even though we
pride ourselves as a police department
of being empathetic
we haven't been very empathetic
we haven't been we haven't listened we
haven't heard
the true experience and i won't get into
some of the stories now but you we're
listening now
we're listening now we're listening as
an agency now there are good people on
this police department we have a very
high
hiring standard and we have accumulated
some of the finest police officers
anywhere and i promise you we're
listening now
and i also will tell you right now those
times that maybe we were more
defensive than we needed to be and we
didn't hear what you were saying
and we didn't hear the stories about
what your what your children were
experiencing
i own that because empathy
and listening and the tone of this
agency
certainly starts at the top it starts
with me and
and i apologize for our deafness
but i promise you we are listening uh
we want we want to serve every corner of
this community
and we want to understand what your
experience is here
with law enforcement and living in this
community
and and we're willing to work hard we're
willing to listen and to work hard and
to hear
what you have to say and we're willing
to change
i mean we're a small agency and the
beauty of that is we can shift the way
we do business overnight
giant agencies can't and we see that all
over the news we can
and we have good police officers we have
a incredible community
we a great support channel here in this
town it's a great place to work
so we can change and be what we need to
be to serve
every element of this community and
we're going to do that we are we're
committed to that
and again i appreciate you you never
gave up on us
you continued to come back and you came
back
professionally not attacking
well you do have our attention and we
want to listen and we want to grow and
i'm hoping that anybody
who has a comment question of me
sergeant overly officer byrd please
just type your your question in to the
comment
comment space of the facebook thread
and uh i look forward to seeing how this
did i mess that up dawn
the mayor knew what i meant
but use your typewriter but yes
yeah yeah i'm sorry sorry
that's how it's gonna go but but thank
you thank you very much
i don't know who goes after me i think i
think we're ready for some questions now
so
what we're going to do is we're going to
listen
for the sweet voices of um
of our moderators who are off screen
um brian drewery and monica williams
um are gathering the questions do you
have any questions for us yes
yet yes oh yes they do
all right well let's get started
appreciate everybody from uh
so we'll start off um it seems to be
that on main street and broad street
that primarily african-american drivers
are stopped
why is that
and that would be to anybody well i can
start with that
right may i yeah go ahead uh
you know i know i know it appears that
way i don't know
i don't know the demographics of drivers
on broad street
and main street i don't know what the
percentages should be to be considered
fair i don't know we talk about it every
week the mayor and i
uh but i promise you that's not
intentional i know
it's easy to not believe me there is
nobody on this police department
that goes on the patrol car and says i'm
going to find an african-american to
stop
that's not intentional but i certainly
know that it appears that way
and and honestly i don't know how to fix
that mayor what are your thoughts about
that
well before we even go go there i think
we should talk a little bit about
what our demographics and traffic stops
actually say
so one of the things we're working on
and we talked about it council on
tuesday night
is a transparency report to the
community so that every year we're
reporting on our demographics as it
pertains to
police statistics as well as use of
force and other key metrics
one thing that we have been doing in
gathering that information is we've been
looking at our 2019 figures
and i don't have them off the top of my
head
but i think that the number of uh of
african americans stopped on in the
entire city so i'm not sure how it
breaks out to broaden maine
what is in somewhere around the 50
mark and so
again one of the things we talk about is
uh
we need to understand better uh how that
compares to our driving population
and uh learn from from that
learned from um looking at those
statistics at a deeper level and trying
to better understand that
but so i think first addressing um
you know you could have a stereotype on
either side one of the stereotypes would
be that every single person that the
police department pulls over
and i've read those comments on my own
thread is a person
of from a minority population we know
that that's not the case statistically
so with that at least placed we don't
know whether or not that number is
higher or lower than it would be based
on the average driver population that's
information we're working on and what
was the question you'd actually ask me
you answered it perfectly that wasn't
true thank you
i'm sorry did you just say that the
number of
the percentage of people stopped is 50
people of color i think around that are
not
non-white i think it's hard it's hard to
get a good number
because a lot of times it's unknown and
we're not going to ask somebody
okay so that just seems a little high
that seems very high considering that
you know i mean i get that people can
drive through
bexley they come from all over columbus
it's an open community we're not gated
any
you know very part of a little bit of
skated but
other than that like people drive
through to get to downtown and
other places but that just seems to me
as an african-american woman like that
just seems like
a really high number if you're looking
at our demographics for the city alone
it would be incredibly high and i know a
lot of people look at those numbers
think my goodness that's incredible
but uh the volume of traffic that comes
through this city is
incredible every day i think a lot of
the drivers don't know they're investing
but
there's such a high volume of traffic
through
here and let me ask uh officer byrd
because he works patrol in a patrol car
would you agree with that that the the
demographics that the traffic
the traffic on broad and main is almost
a city unto itself
absolutely there's uh and if i can
expand that a little bit more just as
far as uh
i guess the perception um of you know
black
people being pulled over more so than uh
you know
white people or um you know as a patrol
officer i've been
i did five years of patrol um and then i
did five years of detective bureau and
now i've come back out to patrol
and i just want to say that you know as
a patrol officer
a lot of times before we actually make a
traffic stop we have no clue what the
race of that driver is
um especially you know i like to run
radar
um you know i'm not really good at
guessing distances
but you know radar i'm picking up that
person's speed
you know maybe 50 75 yards away maybe
that's
a greater distance but you know
somewhere and basically i can't tell the
race of that driver
until they're almost you know within
like 10 feet of me
so you know that's one way that
you know we have no way a clue of
knowing what that uh race of that driver
is
um also most cars uh or not most a lot
of cars nowadays have tinted windows
once again makes it very hard for us to
know the race of that uh driver
um if we're behind a car and we haven't
you know it wasn't like we were
stationed somewhere and we saw them go
by
if we just get behind a car and run
their license plate for one reason or
another a lot of times we do not know
the race of that driver
until the pitcher pops up if a bmv
pitcher pops up
we don't have any clue what the race
that driver is until we get that picture
from the bmv
once we run their license plate so you
know i could see
you know how maybe you know just driving
by that might be your perspective but
you know as a patrol officer a lot of
times we do not know
the race of that driver until we
actually make contact with them
so then would you know if there's a high
percentage of
people who were stopped who are just
columbus residents once you kind of look
at their license next or everything do
you keep that kind of information
they're
they're back to residential columbus
residents
i would think that might that might be
available in our data system i've never
tried to pull that
okay i have never tried to get that info
we have a pretty complex data system
that we're still working on
we're still working with uh that's a
good question
i think a natural question that kind of
pops up when we talk about it too is
well okay so why are we doing so much
enforcement on broad and main street and
that question gets asked a lot because
pride and main street are our
pass-through streets in the city so why
would that be our focus
ostensibly if you're targeting a
different street
for enforcement purposes you're going to
be focused more on bexley residents on
say
cassidy or a drexel and the reason for
that is when we look at our traffic
our accident statistics and our
pedestrian hits they are
vastly focused at broad street and main
street so that's where our accidents are
happening
that's where cyclists are being hit
that's where pedestrians are being hit
so that is
that is a and maybe someone sergeant
overlay
who hasn't spoken yet could speak to why
those are our priority streets
so with broad streets 35 miles per hour
we've clocked cars 170. we had a
fatality up on
broad street doing the speed limit
however um
it was just a freak accident we had a
fatality up there so our officers do
hang out up there a little bit more than
driving through the
side streets with main street like the
mayor said the pedestrians
we've got a lot of pedestrians that you
know
we like to go where there's action you
know not always
does is there action on you claire or
something like that
you know you can drive down through
there but you you like to get up to the
main and broad streets where
you can stop a speeder from creating um
making a bad move maybe running a red
light and causing an accident
or someone on main street striking a
pedestrian
okay thank you very much for the very
thorough response to our
first question that was the first
question i'd like you to know that we do
have
dozens more
so um and follow up to that question
we've gotten
the following question in a number of
different ways
and i try to consolidate it for just one
question and that is
what specific action will the police
department take to create
more transparency about the data that
you do
have
that's a good question we we're working
with the data system and the mayor
is one of our more tech oriented minds
and he knows how he wants those numbers
to be
uh we you talked about a
a periodic posting of all of those
numbers your honor
yeah so a couple a couple things we're
working on along those lines we've we've
been working on
a accountability and transparency report
uh
actually started working on it that at
the end of 2019
it got sidelined with covid19 and
flooding and you know
all the things that we've been dealing
with this year
not an excuse but that's kind of why
that has been delayed
the the idea with that report would be
to show
a breakdown of enforcement by
demographic not just stops but
warnings versus citations and one of i
think another misconception is it pretty
consistently am i allowed to say what
our warning
rate is compared to yes sure pretty
consistently
uh 70 percent of police stops in bexley
uh result in a warning as opposed to a
citation and that's actually fairly
consistent across the different
demographics of people being stopped um
so we'll be
we'll be developing a report that goes
actually for 2019 and 18.
we've one of the things we want to do is
be able to understand our driving
population and be able to understand
better overlay that data
over that we haven't yet found a way to
scientifically
get that in a way that's not creepy well
i
volunteer my professional expertise to
help
well and and mr drewery he's off camera
has done some of his own informal
surveys so
he can speak to that but obviously we
want to
we're going to be looking at strong data
and it helps us too because it helps us
understand
where the where the concerns are but
also in uh reporting on um
use of force uh which is a obviously an
incredibly important topic bexley police
department
has a pretty low incidence of use of
force events but nonetheless we want to
be able to provide that
information clearly and transparently
and um
i don't know if monika you can maybe
help me this question i think was
starting to tip
on questions of accountability and
transparency
and the citizen review board model is
one that we've been working on for a
while
and if you didn't catch it because you
might not have been one of the people
steadfastly watching our council meeting
on tuesday night uh bexley announced and
rolled out a citizen review board on
tuesday
we're the first community in central
ohio to have it it's a
review board of citizens who if there is
a complaint of bias
or discrimination from any
member of city staff that includes the
police department and includes service
workers
uh code enforcement which is actually
one where uh we
we obviously need to be sensitive to
those issues um
and if a complaint is filed if the the
report back that's internal
is not satisfactory to the the
complainant then they can file an appeal
and part of that appeal process is that
a citizen review board
will review that complaint we'll review
the record and we'll issue a report
that report is public record it is fully
available
for obs for for release to the public
and for viewing by the public in fact
our policy asks that report be posted to
our website
and from that report the appeal will be
heard
the and i know that i need to not talk
too much because i know we have more
questions
but the initial three members of the
citizen review advisory board in bexley
a brian drewy who you'll be meeting
later this evening the
head of the bexley minority parents
alliance becky guzman who's a public
defender and has helped me in mayor's
court reforms
um and lee nathan's who is a resident
long time resident and has a background
academic background and police
leadership
and a good perspective so that is in
place that's we are now the only
community in central ohio to have it
um i want to thank the chief of police
and
and in helping us to move that forward
because it's obviously
um you know let's be honest it's not
it's not typically
a a device that's very welcomed by
police departments
but my perspective has been that in
order for us to move forward we need to
provide the utmost amount of
transparency and accountability
and if we truly believe in ourselves as
we do and if we truly are committed to
always improving as we are then there's
nothing for us to hide and so that's a
that's an announcement we made on on
tuesday night
thank you mayor okay uh next
question hopefully you can hear me is uh
will the vexilar city
and police adopt the eight can't wait
uh campaign of the eight things that uh
we have a discussion on as far as uh
police changes
i don't wanna answer this question you
want me to answer them
this is something we've all been working
on and it all lands on the marriage
that's the final product
so um the it can't wait
uh is part of the use of force project
and it's
eight policy objectives to um
put in place to make sure that use of
force by police
is a last resort that it is
uh obviously in any way possible
non-lethal
it involves banning carotid holds which
is a form of choke hold or actually
choke hold in general
and we reviewed our policies relative to
the eight can't wait we
satisfied seven of the eight uh and the
eighth uh
was amended on tuesday
yes sir as well so bexley is now fully
compliant with the eight campaign
use of force project fantastic thank you
sir
um the next question is a little bit
uh different than some of the other
questions and i thought we could spend
some time on this
what should uh white residents
investigate do
in response to the climate
in the country in general
i think she's looking at me
[Laughter]
you know that that that is something um
that is something that my family and i
have had a tremendous
tremendous amount of conversation
about uh last week we found ourselves on
vacation celebrating my husband and my
25th
wedding anniversary and our children
were with us and we
our youngest is 14 and our oldest is 22
and there were major uh pieces of
conversation
that we had about that and to it to a
great extent
we throw up our hands and say we don't
know
we don't know what we can do what can we
do
i have you know suggested to my children
you know to listen to educate ourselves
to try really hard
to reach out to our black friends
for any suggestions that they might be
willing to do
it is not the black community's
responsibility
to educate the white community about the
past
that has hurt them so much
but it is our responsibility to live
fully
fully in the future and
do what we can to make people feel
comfortable and good and to celebrate
everyone's everyone's color
whether they're white purple green or
orange
to to celebrate each other and what's
what's good about
them i threw up my hands and
i sat and i literally called
every black friend that i have
and reached out to them and said i care
about you
what would you suggest i do i just want
you to know
that i love you and monica williams was
one of those people
that i reached out to and i called and
as awkward as it was
and as unsettling and uneasy as it was
because what do you say i'm calling
because i i just want you to know i love
you
i'm thinking about you how's your family
doing
how are they getting through this and
you know what
monika sent me
every thing she could think of in a text
of things that i should
watch read learn about
my dear friend deborah did the same
thing she
she happens to have my son's dear friend
and and she knows my heart she knows my
heart is good and that i want
to make a difference but i don't always
know how
but as a council member i can tell you
that you can hold our feet to the fire
that you can keep the conversation going
we
want the conversation to keep going we
want the dialogue
every day we want good suggestions and
we will try to seek out
as many ideas as we possibly can to be
change makers
but we need the dialogue to continue
uh i'll go real quick sure um so
thank you very much to that and i guess
one thing i would say is
uh just to be supportive
and just for humanity overall right so
just say you know
give us your opinion this was wrong you
know
this is messed up like just
from that standpoint this situation
happened wherever it was is wrong
you know that's the first thing i say
the second thing i say
is uh to to use
and recognize that there's privilege
involved right and that that there's
actually an advocacy that
um you know non-minority
uh community members have that minority
members don't have quite honestly and so
use that
advocacy or that privilege if you will
to advocate
um and then i think to
to take us take a step into the
water of uncomfortability if you will
and
but then don't forget about us
in three months when all the cameras are
stopped rolling when all the protests
have subsided
and just still say how are you doing
and to use your influence your privilege
within your realm of
influence to help all people
african-american or otherwise
through situations so if you want to say
hey i'm here for you which is great
and then there's an opportunity at work
where there's a hiring decision
that could go 50 50 or whatever the case
is
i think our conversation internally
would be is the support there just when
the cameras are rolling
or even months and months later
so that's one thing i want to say about
about all that
and also oh one more thing uh yeah
uh okay i'll pass this boy
no go ahead go ahead that's okay we have
more questions
um just to jump back on on um
what you were saying laurie anne is i
appreciate you know because
we have been the recipients of you know
people
sending texts and sending love and
writing letters and we support you and
we love you
and you know we're here for you and
that's wonderful and i
appreciate it and i'm not in any way
making that
as a small thing because it's not and
it's weird and it's awkward
because you know we are beginning to
have those conversations that
are yucky and they make you feel bad and
you don't want to have them
and my god why didn't we fix this 50
years ago and why
are we still having these conversations
and they don't feel good
um but i appreciate them
um because we we need to have them
i think the thing that i
appreciate too um alicia
mitchell gave a a great speech on the
bexley conversation on sunday about
people saying you know to those
conversations that we're not
privy to that things aren't okay it's
not okay
to make a racist joke it's not okay to
make an off-colored comment it's
not okay to say things you know
just in in your circle of white friends
that you wouldn't say in front of a
mixed crowd and so
i feel like that's what we need to
we need to have those i love you
i'm with you i support you all that
but we also at the family gatherings
at the christmas dinner at the sunday
picnic
we don't have pickles anymore but you
know like we need
that kind of advocacy because that's
what makes
those lasting deep changes
you mentioned monique's list and it
involved learning it involved
thinking and learning and being and the
bexley
library has been a great partner with
the city and other organizations in
helping to
host conversations like this but
implicit bias training for the community
and i think what i have noticed in a lot
of those
events is that we see a lot of the same
residents which is great because we have
a
dedicated and loyal resident fan base
on those issues but there are a whole
lot of residents we don't see
and i think the question of what do i do
reach out to your neighbor say hey come
with me to the library come with me when
we're allowed to come back to liberty
come with me to a screening out in the
lawn as we watch a documentary together
some of the stuff we're planning on
in the coming months and years let's
have this conversation because these are
hard conversations
and the reality is that
the when it comes to policing when it
comes to interchange that occurs within
our community in policing
a lot of the times when we review
situations that have been heated or
charged or somebody felt deeply
misunderstood or wrongfully accused
it's involved an initial call that was
made by a resident
and we do need to call when we see
things that
when something doesn't quote unquote
seem right but that's a really difficult
decision in the lens of implicit bias
and so talking and being purposeful and
thinking through
that that piece of it i think is
incredibly important
as a community and we want our community
to be safe
we also want our community to be just
and equitable
can i ask a question i'm sorry
this is what we want we would like to
have um you know
a sincere conversation and dialogue
how how do
the police and you know maybe
you know on the heels of the central
park caller
and the weaponization of calling the
police and saying
there's a black man attacking me you
know how
is the bexley police responding and i'm
not saying that you're not but maybe you
can speak
more so that we know hey you're not just
gonna
send a patrol car out because there's a
black man walking in the alley
um so how how can
you help us to understand how you're
kind of de-weaponizing calling 9-1-1
when there's a spotting of a black
person i'll go first it is sergeant
overly who
supervises the dispatchers will
will correct me if i'm wrong but i think
our dispatchers
are are have become very in tune
to that when somebody calls and says
hey there's a suspicious person middle
of the day there's a suspicious person
on my street
our dispatchers know the questions to
answer and they become or to ask and
they've become very good at that
what ma'am what are they doing that's
suspicious well
they're walking down the street slowly
looking around okay ma'am uh is that
is that all they're doing and and the
dispatchers have become very good at
peeling the layers back and determining
i think so maybe i don't know if don
will agree with me
but i think they become very good at
peeling those layers back and
determining
whether or not this is a this is a real
suspicious person or maybe somebody's
got
some bias that they're not managing very
well
and usually it comes down to the
question or the statement of what i know
they don't live on this street
okay well that's not necessarily
suspicious
but even when we're in a situation where
we still have to send a car
oftentimes the officer will just drive
by
and if when the officer just drives by
if if it looks
if the person is just walking down the
street maybe took another weight
wherever they were going or maybe just
wanted to walk down the street and see
the houses that were on that street
you know we have some some streets here
that are very unique
uh uh the officer will drive by
and i hear that i hear that from the
patrol officers they tell me that you
know what
we uh it's been a long time since we've
been quick
to jump on that like it's a real
suspicion we make sure as best
we can from the dispatcher perspective
don what uh
the chief is correct when he says that
uh our dispatchers
all but one has some several years of
experience
and they do an amazing job at making
sure they're getting the information
as why the caller feels this individual
just doesn't fit in the community
but i want it to be understood though
that we still have to respond to stuff
and it makes it hard for us because we
know in our minds
this individual's not doing anything
they're just out for a walk
but we still like the chief set we still
have to drive by
um regardless of
you know regardless of how we
what we're thinking um and that's why we
just drive by
and turn the block and they're not doing
anything
i do this i'm i'm i'm on my radio
they're more clear sorry
let me ask you this my impression you
tell me if i'm wrong
my impression is we don't get quite as
many of those calls
as we once did calls that we
think are just race related we don't get
as many of those
do we i don't hear as many
and that's a good thing if they're
lessening officer byrd i don't know what
he experiences out on the road
i don't think we do as much um
you know we the calls we're getting i
feel are legit like people
you know stealing bikes or stuff they're
pretty legit now
so it's not like it wasn't always that
way but yeah there was a time even in my
time here that we got a lot of those
calls
and it was kind of a i don't want to say
a joke in the radio room because the
dispatchers knew
wait a minute come on now
but we have good dispatchers when you
say we have we have
really good police dispatchers uh
so we're going to move on to another
question i'd like to just say
based on some of the feedback that we're
getting in the
comments section that the purpose of
this meeting
is to continue a dialogue
that highlights some of the good things
that the city is doing to partner with
the community
and some of the practices that they put
in place
to ensure that the benson police
department
is treating all of his residents fairly
this
is a discussion we have received several
dozen questions we're going to try to
get through them but we do
want to allow the panel
to have an opportunity to weigh in and
add value
to the answer so that the answers aren't
just
single-minded and focus uh on one
person's opinion
but allow all the panel members if
appropriate to weigh in
so um so far it's going really well
and we're going to move on to another
question right
okay what is the status of the diversity
inclusion committee
and why was it to stand
i uh i would like to take that one
because
i believe that that question was asking
about
a group that i uh helped form several
years ago called the
it was called the diversity and
inclusion uh collaborative
and initially it started out as a group
of uh the
city the school district the library
capitol university csg
st charles and
bexley minority appearance alliance
joined at some point along the way
um and the and the purpose of that
collaborative was to
encourage these sorts of conversations
uh
programming implicit bias community
implicit bias training
hosting new resident events to try to
welcome new residents to the community
so they
felt included reaching out to
neighboring communities
and as that group developed
what happened was we had more and more
residents coming in who were
very appropriately bringing up some of
the issues that we're talking about
tonight
and talking about how can we change what
can we do to change
incredibly appropriate questions but it
shifted focus
we started to lose some of our
institutional partners
and it became a question of how to work
on internal
reforms in the city of bexley so we
engaged with a consultant
a diversity consultant by the name of
steve
francis who helped us create a strategic
plan
within the city to encourage
bexley as a welcoming community for all
and to start to carry through
with a lot of what we're talking about
it became really clear that
the structure of that group was
functioning more as an
as a independent grassroots organization
that was
agitating very appropriately for change
but it was difficult
to wear two hats where we were pointing
members to a group
but also responding to a grassroots
group
it didn't make sense for us to be
running a grassroots organization from
within the city of bexley
so when we finally when we finalized our
strategic plan
which council's actually begun being is
going to be voting on is currently
discussing
at the end of 2019 we encouraged
the residents who've become really
active in that group to form their own
grassroots organization
not unlike the bexie minority parents
alliance where they were working as a
partner
but they could set their own agenda it
didn't have to be something that the
city was steering
there's a really great very valid
purpose
for groups from the outside to push for
change
and it's incredibly important and our
ears are open and our eyes are open
um that group is is is has i believe has
formed
it's now the diversity equity and
inclusion group and alongside that we
have the lgbtqia group we have the
vaccine minority parents alliance group
and we have the bexley anti-racism
project so we have a
number of advocacy groups that are
working
in lots of different ways to encourage
uh reform and progress in the community
there has been a uh from from that
conversation
there has i've read plenty of social
media posts very similar
to the question that was just asked
about why the city got rid
of of that group and i very earnestly
feel
the city wrapped up a project and
encouraged
grassroots organizing and tonight is an
example of how we want to work together
with
entities throughout the city from a
variety of interests
and continuously improving
does anybody have anything else they'd
like to add
well i think i have a good follow-up
question and it's actually
a two-part question i combined a couple
of different questions into one
and that is how is the city
actively recruiting minority candidates
to
be a part of the city the police
department
and also the the school district
and then part two of the question is
around training
does the city and the police department
have ongoing
training for implicit bias or
unconscious bias
i'll ask that the chief the mayor and
jonathan baker
all weigh in on those questions
well in that order i'll i'll start with
the police department
we've we have
we've changed over the past five or six
years we've completely rebuilt our
hiring process maybe it's been more
years than that
and we start now with a national testing
uh network that that is just that that
many police departments
uh many police departments use the
testing process
is it includes video testing and a
variety of things
it's actually conducted at a couple of
local learning institutions
and it has been determined to have the
least adverse
impact of any uh of any of those
testing processes it's out of our hands
the candidate goes takes the test
checks what police departments they want
to apply for that's where the whole
thing starts
i attribute that to our 16 percent of
our agency now being non-white we've
hired a lot of new officers just since
i've been here
and that's because i think it's it's
very fair
user friendly for people of of all
races color creed sexual orientation it
doesn't
discriminate at least it gets it
it has as least discriminatory as exists
right now and that has contributed
that's attracted
a lot of people to this agency i also
think
that culturally in bexley the bexley
police department
is known to be and i know a lot of
people don't don't
maybe won't believe this it's known to
be a very professional
organization with a very high hiring
standard and that's attractive to
minority candidates
the our command structure is a very fair
unbiased
command structure and people know that
people go
where they can have the best career i
think and that's how we've attracted
so many uh so many officers of color
and they can pick and choose because
there's so many agencies that are
trying to hide to hire and that's a big
deal for us because
we don't have you might you might spend
your whole career here
not john byrd but you might spend your
whole career here and not be a sergeant
because we're just small and you're not
going to be on a swat team
you're never going to be in a canine
unit and you're never going to be in the
mountain
horse unit and the helicopter unit the
mayor won't fund that
so so my point is we don't have
specialized units we're too small
we re we reply use mutual aid for that
so anyway that's what we've done
and and we do spread the word i mean
we try to get the word spread into
minority uh
areas and and it's working i would think
16 we feel pretty good about that and i
think that's only going to increase
because
i think minority officers believe
this is a good place to come and be a
police officer
i think that's the police department
oh implicit bias training you know we do
ongoing
in fact it's almost weekly now and i'll
tell you how that works
implicit bias issues of diversity we use
the attorney general's web portal
and we use lexapool who is a national
organization
that oversees our policy now we have a
lot of control in tweaking and changing
policy
and the mayor just exercised that in the
last week
but they also send out every day
you know policy is a great wonderful
thing and we're a policy driven
organization
but it's no good if the officers aren't
trained
and held accountable to know the
language in the policy
every day officers get questions to
their email
that they have to answer about policy
and we have our focus certainly has been
implicit bias in all issues of diversity
we also subscribe to an organization
online organization called police one
and we pay them we pay them for
additional
training so our officers get they're
getting it from three different
directions
on an ongoing basis no longer do we just
have one annual
time that we talk about implicit bias
and no longer do we just have one
annual time when you're tested on policy
it's an
ongoing process now i i speak to that
as though uh i'm i'm the guy that made
all that happen
i am not i have good people that work at
the organization the deputy chief
has has really burrowed into this to
determine how we can continue that
ongoing training
every sergeant is involved in it i mean
uh
i'm glad to take credit for it and speak
to it publicly but i
i can't take credit for it i have a lot
of good people to make that happen
so in addition to that um the police
department was the first department in
the city
to undergo implicit routine inclusive
bias training
um since then we've partnered with the
kern institute at osu
and had implicit bias training workshops
for our
non-police staff and for our elected
officials and we plan to continue to do
that
in addition to that we've been talking
about above and beyond some of the
online coursework for the police
department
working on more localized uh training
that's more informal more based upon
empathy more based upon understanding
about some of the issues we've been
talking about this evening so this is
one of the things we talked about
tuesday evening we've also um engaged
with a
diversity consultant to audit our hiring
practices
throughout the city um and our
purchasing practices
uh well that's that engagement started
in early 2020 it's ongoing
and we've already been learning a whole
lot about
uh recruitment techniques and ways to
kind of broaden the way that we're
looking for
great candidates for city employment i
think the chief and the mayor
talked about it in terms of what we're
doing how many parents want about it for
from a personal standpoint so i
appreciate
as a resident the efforts that being put
in place uh the current institute is
like is like
down the street from where i work at the
university
and so for me an issue could be in terms
of implicit bias or unconscious bias
is with gender you know and so
i've learned to be aware of
my own biases and how and then the
question becomes
how do i counteract those and so for
example
i may have an unconscious bias that
i feel safer walking around on campus at
night and turns out that my students
to my smaller female students may feel
less comfortable
and so i've had to make some changes
myself i may have an unconscious bias
growing up
in chicago listening to certain music
and having certain experiences with law
enforcement
that i'm actually true confession
uh more against law enforcement my
natural
self that's my bias against law
enforcement and i think what i've had to
do
was build the trust hang out go to the
police department
see it from a different perspective talk
to the chief
have dawn over to the house for a
cookout like these kind of things are
helping counteract my
bias with actual real life experiences
that have been positive and i think that
swing so i think that's what needs to
happen
whether it's with law enforcement or
with race relations
you recognize your bias and then kind of
counteract like a muscle strengthen it
so then you can respond in the right
situation
can i ask a question just to piggyback
on all of that
um i i think i told some people that
i had a cousin who was in texas i don't
know if he's watching hey cuz
um he was a count he was a cop for 30
years and retired five years ago
and we talked a lot about
um the culture within police departments
and what happens if
there's a bad cop or if there's a bad
situation or
what have you you know and i appreciate
the implicit bias i am please
i appreciate the implicit bias training
and the unconscious bias training
i'm just wondering if you guys can speak
to what is the culture within
actually the police department that
if somebody does something if somebody
says something that's out of line or
says something
against women or says something against
you know people of color or
somebody you know like what is
what is that culture like and is it
accepted i mean one of the things that
my cousin was talking about is that
it is very very hard in some departments
to speak up when you see something wrong
because
there's this code you know and so
the only way that you change the code is
to change the culture so maybe if you
guys could talk about
what that culture is like when somebody
does see something
within yourself not necessarily it's
just coming from the outside from the
public like a complaint
but anyway how do we self police
thank you and that's policy driven i
will tell you this
uh when i came here in in 07
i was struck by how
how we not only followed policy and i've
said this to the sergeants before
if you if you have an infraction
uh in the organization and you violate
policy
you're written up and it goes in your
file for the appropriate amount of time
i i i had people who came in and said
hey
i had sergeants i experienced sergeant
come and say hey
i i was a little bit late i shouldn't
have been
and i need and i need to have paper in
my file for that that's
i thought that's unheard of i've never
heard of that
they i inherited a very disciplined
very policy driven organization and i
think i probably owe that to the
police chief that was here before me but
i inherited that
sergeants have continued that there's a
standard at this
agency that i that i still see every day
and i think
wow i mean uh third shift
i get in at five in the morning 5 15
sometimes i need to see third shift
before they go home
they don't get off until 6 30. every
organization i've been associated with
they're in the locker room at 6 20
change and
i i watch those officers they stand
downstairs
in full uniform with all their gear even
while the next shift is
suiting up to go are going out the door
and it's 6 30
they go up the stairs that's a policy
issue
i think our culture and i think the way
we police each other
is incredible would you agree that
sergeant overly i don't
think we have a lot of time
it's not tolerated if there is a comment
made
it's not tolerated by the stat the
it's not tolerated within the officers
and and we've dealt with that
i was the only female at my agency for
quite some time
so there were times where i had to say i
don't appreciate that what you just said
and i have the backing of my fellow
officers
and it's just educating you know it's
educating um
and we don't tolerate that i it it's
easy for me to sit here and say that i
just hope you believe it because
it's very true it does not happen i've
worked in broken cultures
and i and i tell you i know y'all got to
wrap this up
but no i i you can't change culture i
know the books say you can the
the schools say you can't i've tried and
other agencies when i came here and
found this culture to be so good
i thought and the reason i say you can't
change culture is because
who you think you might do it to
attrition who trains your new
officers the older officers and it
perpetuates itself
i'm thankful that we don't have that
problem our officers love our community
they do so they they do they know us
they they they know all of us they know
who's related to whom they know i mean
they
they do and and it's amazing we're going
to move on to the next question
sorry i'm sorry thank you so
we talked in this information about data
and so
several questions saying okay we have
this data we'll be shared
let information be given and in top of
that also
combining with that is like what are the
police
policies and guidelines and how's that
so people know from there what is the
procedure in policy so it's kind of a
two-part
but information being shared it's like
communication from there
because people are going this number
here this number there i don't know
i got my eyeballs i see this and that
information is and it's that number
once you get your data will that be
shared
so to start with uh we have we have
committed to uh releasing 2019 and 18
uh community accountability reports uh
that share the data within the next six
to eight weeks
uh why does it take us six to eight
weeks well uh your
your graphic design and compiling staff
consists of myself
and sam metcalf who's off camera over
here is our communications coordinator
and then the police department which is
a we are a lean
organization bexley is not i'm not going
to name any names but we are not
other suburbs in central ohio that have
a deep field of
of folks who can communicate and compile
and report so
we're going to develop a report we've
committed to doing that in the past
and we're still working on it and we've
committed to expedite that even in the
midst of a lot of the stuff that we've
been working on
uh here at the city of bexley as it
pertains to police
policy and we we started to talk about
how to publish police policy in a more
transparent way
we haven't really had that conversation
very completely yet so
chief i'm going to pass that one to you
that's uh
i don't know i don't know what policy
it's appropriate to post online for
everybody to see
and what policy it might not be for
instance any policy that has to do
with some of our operational stuff
there's just some concern
there about some of our operational
practices
that that shouldn't that shouldn't be
out there in the public
venue but that's probably just a little
bit of it most of the policy
uh i mean we have great policy and it's
all online
i guess we just need to talk more about
that what we think is appropriate
to be out there in the in in the public
venue and what's
not well an example that is the it can't
wait question
um use the force project so we have a
use of force policy
um but it's not the only policy that we
have that pertains to use of force
and so in order to provide a complete
answer to that question we
captain goff was digging through all of
our policies to give a full picture
and he's worked on a report which now
needs to be updated because we changed
the policy
but that report needs to get out and
we're gonna get that out and that will
provide
an analysis of our policies and expose
the so if there are issues of
concern to the community first off many
of those policies are our public record
and we'll work on releasing them
and as topics gather interest and
attention we'll work on communicating
clearly about what they are
thank you thank you very much the next
question is
along the same lines uh as policy
and it is what anti-racist policies
is the city council planning to
implement
regarding housing discrimination
supporting minority businesses
etc these are great questions
we did in um
in 2015 i was a
um co-sponsor
of the anti-discrimination ordinance in
2015.
um we
prior to covet 19 and all kinds of crazy
stuff going on
i was in the midst of talking to
individuals about writing an ordinance
to help
with the whole equity and using
vouchers as ways of paying
for rental properties
for individuals and um
we will continue with this amendment to
our strategic plan
it is a fluid piece a piece that
has now been read once will be read at
least will be read at least two more
times but i
but we want to be transparent with that
we want our community to be involved we
we want their input we want them to come
to council via zoom or
in person and we will do everything we
can to make sure that we hear as many
voices
concerning that as possible and we were
ready for new ideas and
um and anxious we too have done
implicit bias and we would like for that
to continue at least every two years
we have been in contact with people at
capitol university
and we are hoping that our council
and perhaps the school board will be
permitted to
audit the freshman class
that class course that every freshman at
capital has to take
concerning racial
racism and diversity and inclusion
so we're trying and we're we are ready
to listen to
any other i hope i answered the question
but we
we are ready to to to listen and to
have conversations with our community i
have a question
okay so you see me now with the suit and
jacket on
and so but i'm also an african-american
boy that became a man and so if you look
at the protests
a lot of the issues were a lot of
concerns
were women and parents
wondering about their young boy's
safety will these young boys make it
home
and as someone was kind of growing up
now i'm a
middle-aged man uh i'm representing
their voice today
in many ways that's who i am when you
see me on the street with the hoodie
you don't know that a phd and so
my comment is is more so
we can feel targeted and and i get it
from the
percentage standpoint in terms of
columbus on the outside there and
you know odds are i'm not from columbus
or i'm not from vex if i'm from columbus
i'm trespassing
but we can feel targeted and there's
that whole thing about feeling like
harassed and bullied compared to
protected
and served and if we're feeling targeted
then how can we gain trust
from the police how can we trust the
police how can we feel the police is
going to trust
us and so i i'm comforted to hear about
the warnings
and the lack of force or not the
use of appropriate force but
we can still feel targeted and so how do
we resolve
that peace to the point where
and if i commit a crime hey to you know
make sure that the punishment fits the
crime but sometimes
i'm walking my dog i get accosted
sometimes i see children who are white
do the same thing i'm doing and they get
a pass that's that's part that's my
perspective
but that's what i see i'm thinking about
my group as a
as a whole and it just feels like
if we're being targeted we're getting a
little more scrutiny
and we don't want less scrutiny per say
we want appropriate we want
what's equitable we want the same and so
i think
that's all we're asking for whether
that's bikes
whether that's playground whether that's
i'm just walking home with my friends
in in the old vernacular brian i would
say
why why the cops always sweat me
you know and so that's my question then
i'll leave and brian's no second
can i answer that yeah sure
i think we have to do that the only way
we can we can
we can change that is by somehow
impacting
our officers by training by
somehow impacting our officers to really
understand
what you just said my wake up
moment to that most recently was monika
and she said something very similar that
you were there
but we have to impact officers and
that's the issue with
training training discussion
that really that officers need to leave
the room
thinking wow you know what that he's
right
that's an issue because i can't i can't
change that through contact with you
because that initial contact
is when that that young man or woman is
thinking why are you stopping talking to
me
i'm just walking down the street you
know so we don't have to really have
that opportunity
it's got to be through somehow and this
is the challenge is my challenge
to impact officers to get them in a good
setting a good environment
and you you're going to be a part of
that for me
because you have been the most the the
best minority parents alliance has been
the most effective voice
in that now because as you just
what you just said is impactful
i think and you didn't attack anybody
you didn't make any false allegations
accusations you didn't attack anybody
you just explained the situation
that's the same way i need to get that
to my police officers not to start with
my sergeants
and they need that on an ongoing basis
that understanding
and i and you know how the only way i'm
going to change it
it's not real bad but it needs to be a
heck of a lot better
is in working with you and talking about
ways that you can talk to the officers
we can communicate that effectively and
impact them
that's the key thanks great
uh we have five more minutes so i think
we're gonna do a wrap up we've got
uh probably 100 more questions
some repeated multiple times i hear you
but we wanted to get a chance in there
to wrap up and
check off our next steps
next steps that's what we're talking
about right now next step
yes i i i'm gonna suggest a next step
a next step that i tried very hard and
um
monica has to to swear that this is true
it's true i i tried
not once but twice to get monika
to run for city council and when she
said no
i called my buddy patrick and i asked
him to run
we we need individuals of color
in our elected offices we we do
we need your voices we meet our awards
and our awards and our commissions
and and what keeps resonating in
my mind is
my angelo it doesn't matter what we say
people will forget it doesn't what we do
people will forget it
it's how we make people feel if we make
that child
in a hoodie feel like he is less
than another white child in the same
hoodie
we have failed we have failed him and we
have to continually think
about our next steps and how we can make
children of color adults of color
in this community feel like they're
every bit a part of this community and i
don't know the answers
but we're going to keep this dialogue
going i don't know if others have
the next steps
that was a fantastic wrap-up brian
brian drury has joined us who's the
chair of beck's minority parents
alliance thank you for coming on
on camera from behind the microphone
over there brian uh so
again one of the things i i was just
kind of looking at some of the comments
and you know i appreciate those and one
of the things that
i ask the community is to continue to
come and you know
challenge not only the city but also
being pa but also be a part of it too
the people who've been working on this
committee it's a small group
and we need more people to do more
things so if you're serious
and want to make some changes let us
know and
we will do whatever we can to help that
process
we are excited from there about some of
the changes i know people want more
um but again you know you know come to
city council talk to them
uh you've seen the mayor here talk to
them please cheat
lieutenants in there talk to them about
you know your concerns
let them know we are taking all the
information we'll share that with
everybody
um but uh continue like the uh bexley
and and jonathan baker says next meeting
is uh september 17th at 7 p.m she was
pointing at
yeah thank you but continue
to have that ongoing dialogue you know
the young people from the bexley
anti-racist project from there i mean
that march
moved me those young people want change
and want change now
so uh be part of something do something
courtney do you have any closing
thoughts or did i put you on the spot
i don't right now i'm sorry
um thank you for joining us this evening
are we does anyone else have
clothes and thoughts i don't want to
close anybody off um
thank you again to minority parents
alliance um for partnering with us
taking questions helping facilitate the
conversation
um i hope that uh we i hope that we've
all learned from each other through this
conversation and i
i want to i want to ask you residents of
bexley
minority parents alliance police
department orient fiber
hold me accountable hold laurie ann
fiable accountable for what she's
committing here
we've talked about a lot of the new
things that we're doing we've talked
about a little bit some of the older
stuff we've been doing
we are constantly trying to innovate in
this space
and yet to brian's point our perspective
is limited we need more partners in that
we need more voices
and we need to be able to hear from all
those perspectives and
accommodate those perspectives and learn
and grow from those perspectives
for example bexley is proud to have the
first
citizens review board but that review
board is only as good as it
as it gets used appropriately so the
proof is in the pudding
and we are dedicating ourselves to
making
the pudding right that's a terrible way
of saying it all right
i hope that you i hope that you guys
join us september 17th at our next uh
town hall and i know that there are
going to be a lot of other opportunities
coming up in our community
for conversation i know that the bexley
anti-racism project is organizing
weekly events i know that we'll be
hearing more from the dei group
i know the bmpa is probably going to
eventually resume
some of their famous cookouts and events
and activities to help network in bexley
we're here to listen we're here to learn
thank you for sticking with us tonight
and please reach out thank you