When Pastor Chris Hill reached out to local law enforcement officials a little more than a month ago to see whether they could participate in a forum on the relationship between their departments and their communities, “there were no crises,” he recalls.
But between then and Tuesday night, when a crowd of more than 500 gathered at The Potter’s House in southeast Denver for the forum, there have been “lots of crises,” he says.
Topics at the almost two-hour session ranged from the January shooting death of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez in a Denver alley to Friday’s shooting of an unarmed black man, Naeschylus Vinzant, 37, in Aurora.
The six law enforcement officials participating in the discussion were Arapahoe County Sheriff David Walcher, Boulder Police Chief Greg Testa, Denver Police Chief Robert White, interim Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins, interim Aurora Police Chief Terry Jones and Jones’ recently hired successor, Nick Metz.
Included in the audience was state Rep. Rhonda Fields, state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler.
Walcher underscored the need for the evening when — discussing the tensions between law enforcement and the public that have roiled communities from Colorado to Ferguson, Mo., to Staten Island, N.Y. — he said: “It’s painful for me to say, but we seem to be more divided than we have been at any point in my lifetime.”
Each of the panelists stressed the importance of developing a relationship with the community, even if it meant exposing some of their own warts.
“Wearing this badge doesn’t make you a god,” Diggins said. “Policing has changed over the last 10 years, and it’s up to us to adapt to those changes.”
Added Walcher: “Law enforcement is better than it’s ever been, but we make mistakes. If we need to make changes in what we do, we will.”
But many in the audience seemed more interested in addressing perceived wrongs from the past.
About two dozen people lined up to direct comments to the panel, many of them focusing on incidents over the years.
A common thread in their stories: How could the officers involved justifiably take the actions that they did, whether it was pulling over an African-American driver or, in extreme cases, firing a weapon?
“Individuals can see something like this happen and ask, ‘How can the officer keep his or her job?’ White said. “But what’s often the case is that the officers know what they can and can’t do.
“Most of the time, the reality is that they didn’t break the law. But the question that needs to be asked is was the action that they took necessary?”
