Forum: Unity is the key to ‘bridging gap’

Community members took a step Thursday toward uniting with law enforcement officials, who stressed the importance of talking to the residents they serve to address challenges.
The St. Mary chapter of the NAACP hosted a law enforcement forum at the Patterson Area Civic Center. Diane Wiltz served as moderator.
Those on the panel included:
--Supervisory Senior Resident FBI Agent Donald Bostic of the Lafayette-Lake Charles office,
--St. Mary Parish Sheriff Mark Hebert
--Morgan City Police Chief James Blair,
--Franklin Police Chief Sabria McGuire
--Berwick Police Chief James Richard
--Assistant District Attorney Anthony Saleme of the 16th Judicial District Court
--Franklin City Marshal David McCoy
--Patterson Police Chief Patrick LaSalle
--Law Enforcement Coordinator Mike Campbell of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana.
St. Mary NAACP President Reginald Weary said chapter officials have been trying to organize the forum for about a year. The goal of the forum was to be proactive and start trying to “bridge the gap” between law enforcement and the public.
Bostic said society is “on a very dangerous path” of division, where people are increasingly divided along racial, economic, political and religious lines. “We have to start focusing, as a country, on what we have in common, not what we have apart from one another.”
Campbell said a lack of communication is a major struggle for law enforcement today. Campbell stressed the importance of having events, such as Thursday’s forum, to try to foster communication and preempt a tragic occurrence from happening in St. Mary Parish.
Blair said the best way to combat mistrust of police in the community is to go out into the community. Morgan City police are implementing a neighborhood watch program to help in that process.
“We want to be out there face to face with the various neighborhoods and everyone and break down those walls with each group together,” Blair said.
Being in the community as police officers is vital because “if you’re not in the community, you can’t police the community,” LaSalle said.
Patterson police and the city of Patterson are working to create a citizen review to get input from the public on incidents in the city, and LaSalle sees that as a positive.
St. Mary Parish is “very blessed” to have agencies and a community that work well together, Hebert said. The key to good relationships is respecting one another, even when making tough decisions.
Hebert learned early in his career the importance of engaging with the community to help law enforcement. Hebert completed a law enforcement accreditation program in 2015 and made “great strides” at improving the agency during that process.
Richard tries to focus on hiring officers from Berwick and who know everyone in the town to be effective doing community policing.
Franklin police have had a program in place for many years where an officer is assigned to a certain street each month and talks to residents about what issues are there, McGuire said.
McCoy said agencies need to respect the communities they serve and ensure new officers get out in the communities. McCoy focuses on talking to youth in the community and makes sure they understand who he is and his background.
The biggest challenge facing law enforcement in the past few years is social media, McGuire said. Things reported through social media are often “one-sided” and not factual.
From Saleme’s perspective, trying to get community members who may have information to help prosecute or solve a crime to come forward is the greatest challenge he sees. For Saleme to do his job properly, he has to have witnesses to testify to what happened in a particular case.
Police are also having difficulty reaching today’s “at-risk” youth, LaSalle said. “That’s where we’re failing.”
Most of the crime LaSalle sees comes from the younger generation, and people aren’t communicating properly with one another to solve that problem.
Richard said being a small department in Berwick makes meeting the “ever-changing laws” that require increased training requirements and investigating new cybercrimes difficult.
Bostic said “managing the expectations of an often ill-informed public” is one of the “most pressing challenges” for law enforcement.
Campbell encouraged people to educate themselves and wait until “all the facts are in” before forming an opinion on an incident.
Weary said the NAACP plans to hold more sessions to allow further dialog between law enforcement and the public.