Lloyd Ford grew up in an Akron neighborhood where there was a general distrust of police.
So when he joined the Akron Police Department 32 years ago, he knew that it would be a challenge to build relationships of trust between law enforcement officers and the black community.
Over the years, that process has included convincing some people that the uniform has not changed who he is as a person and convincing some of his fellow officers that not every African-American perceives them as a threat.
As the nation reels from incidents of unarmed African-American males being killed by police officers under questionable circumstances and police officers being targeted and killed in response, many are asking how to build trust.
Ford believes he has something to contribute to the discussion.
“As simple as it sounds — but yet it sometimes seems so complicated for people to do — the way to build trust between the community and police is through respect, compassion and kindness,” Ford said. “… We’re all part of the same community. Because of that, we should grieve with all of the families who have lost loved ones.”
Ford, one of five Akron police officers in the department’s community relations unit, is among those making a conscious effort to bridge the confidence gap. They do it, in part, by educating fellow officers about how to engage and interact with people in black communities and by instructing members of the black community on how to interact with police.
Public perception
Lt. Rick Edwards said he believes the work of the community-oriented police officers has put the city in a unique place when it comes to the perception of police.
The department’s proactive stance on building trust doesn’t guarantee that things won’t flare up but it puts the city in a better position to resolve issues before they develop into civil unrest, he said.
“I encourage my officers to get out in the community. I tell them you can’t build relationships sitting at your desk, we have to get out there,” said Edwards, who heads the community relations division. “We’re not going to build relationships just going from call to call. Instead, we’re doing a number of things to build relationships in the community, including following up at locations where we have repeat calls to find out what’s going on to try to rectify the problem at the root of the multiple calls.”
Edwards said the department is working on a federal grant for community engagement and developing a citizens academy. More than 25 community relations programs already exist, including Safety Town, Do The Right Thing, Block Watch Captains Training, Kids Need A Firm Foundation (KNAFF), Coffee With the Chief, Community Mediations and Positive Tickets.
Familiar face in Akron
Detective Bertina King is one of the officers who regularly goes into the community to help build relationships. She has a stable, permanent presence as a West Akron resident. She also served as a cheerleading coach at Buchtel High School for four years, regularly stops in at community centers and attends funeral services for homicide victims.
“People are still surprised when they see me out of uniform in the community — I’ll see somebody in the grocery store and they’ll say, ‘Do you know who you are?’ and I’ll laugh and say, ‘Yes. We grocery shop, too.’ It’s important to talk to people, especially kids, because it lets them know we’re human, too,” King said. “On the other side, as police officers, we have to recognize that people are people, too. Just because you arrest somebody doesn’t mean you can’t be respectful.
“Everybody is somebody’s relative. I don’t want anybody treating my relatives poorly, so I don’t treat people’s relatives poorly,” King added. “I always tell other officers to remember that a person may be a suspect today but they could be a witness or a victim tomorrow. The way you treat a person today may determine whether they want to talk to you tomorrow.”
King and Ford work together on several of the community-policing initiatives, including “You and the Law.” Ford started the program — which is designed to teach adults and youth how to interact with police officers to ensure a peaceful and safe encounter — as a concerned father of students at Buchtel High School in the mid-1980s.
“I remember getting some flak from some officers for going out and teaching people about their basic rights and responsibilities,” Ford said. “For some reason, they didn’t think I should be doing that. The chief, then Chief [Edward] Irvine, called me in and I explained what I was doing and showed him the pamphlet I had been using from the NAACP. He approved of it and said we were going to make it the department’s program.”
Since then, the department has developed its own pamphlet and You and the Law has grown to include a partnership with Akron Public Schools and Akron PeaceMakers, an anti-crime youth civic program.
Showing respect
Ryan Hall, 19, an alumnus of Akron PeaceMakers, credits the You and the Law program with affirming what his parents taught him about showing respect to police officers. He said the lessons paid off when he was pulled over two weeks ago for speeding in Fairlawn.
“I was running late, trying to get from one job to another. I did exactly what I was taught to do in the You and the Law program. I answered the officer’s questions and complied,” Hall said. “The officer said because I was respectful and because of the way I communicated, he would give me a warning instead of a ticket. He said I was driving too fast but I wasn’t being reckless and he told me to slow down.”
When looking at what is going on in the country today, Hall, King, Edwards and Ford agree that something is terribly wrong. They cite a number of issues, the need for diversity on police departments, reforms in the criminal justice system, community education programs, guidelines to weed out people without the right temperament to be police officers and solid, uniform training.
Effective ways to address institutional racism and poverty also are needed, they said.
Ford said he is encouraged to see recent changes in the training requirements for Ohio police officers. He added that those requirements have been in place in the Akron Police Department for years. The changes — including increased training hours, implicit bias training and pre-certification psychological exams — are the result of recommendations from an advisory group on law enforcement training commissioned by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in December 2014.
“Without proper training, we can put ourselves in harmful situations and we can put others in harmful situations,” Ford said. “All I know is this killing has to stop. Nobody should lose their life without a justifiable reason. We have to treat people like people, on both sides of the fence, to find a way to heal and make the interaction better between law enforcement and the community.”
Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com. She can be followed at www.twitter.com/ColetteMJenkins.