Police urged to engage minority communities

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

Police must demonstrate a commitment to directly engage the people they serve if relations between officers and minorities are going to improve, a criminal justice expert said at an Ohio public forum Tuesday.

Mistrust of police only serves to make violent neighborhoods worse, said David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He spoke in Cleveland at the first of four forums statewide examining relations between police and minority communities.

Gov. John Kasich and others are hoping public discussion will help build trust after a series of deaths among black people at the hands of police in Ohio and elsewhere. Others forums are planned for Toledo, Cincinnati and Wilberforce near Dayton.

Last month, Kasich announced he was forming the Ohio Task Force on Community-Police Relations, whose work would include the public forums to give people a chance to express their frustrations with police and the justice system.

The task force also will collect information and identify community concerns in developing recommendations on educating and training police in community outreach and “interaction with people in communities of color.”

“This has been an excruciatingly difficult time for members of the minority community, especially the African-American community,” the Republican governor said at the December news conference.