COLUMBUS, Ind. — An invitation at a forum on police and community relations to forget about political correctness led to some frank conversation between law enforcement and the Black community at The Commons Thursday.
Indiana State Police Capt Ruben Marte and Maj. Todd Smith led the session called “Improving Police and Community Relations.”
As he did during a similar event at Columbus City Hall in early 2017, Marte played several excerpts from television news shows displaying tense or violent traffic encounters. He then asked audience members to imagine they were police officers and explain what they would do if they were the officer being featured in the news stories.
In at least three of video clips, Marte and Smith said the officer’s conduct was either wrong or, at best, questionable. However, by polling the audience on their wide variety of opinions and reactions, the ISP captain made a point that reasonable people can often draw different conclusions when witnessing a video of alleged police brutality.
About 90 minutes into the presentation, Marte stated that about 5% to 7% of employees of any business or organization – including law enforcement – are usually responsible for most problems. He also pointed out that when a driver gets pulled over, the officer doesn’t know if he or she is going to encounter a dangerous driver — and the motorist doesn’t know if he or she is going to encounter a bad cop.
While most of the audience appeared to appreciate Marte’s point, it did provoke a tense response from the audience.
“As a community, we don’t know if they are bad officers,” the unidentified man said. “But as a police department, you’d better know that, because you’ve gotta. Why don’t you guys do anything about that? You know who the bad ones are, because you work with them every day. And you can’t tell me that it may take a year to terminate them. Look how much damage they can do while you guys are taking your own sweet time about dealing with your own bad officers.”
For more on this story, see Saturday’s Republic.
