Improving Relations Between Citizen's and Police

In some communities in the United States, the relationship is frayed between law enforcement officers and the citizens they are sworn to serve. Some high profile police shootings or overly aggressive police encounters with citizens captured on video by police cams or citizens have only intensified the tension in some places. Since one of our goals in the PEACE TALKS RADIO series is to provide a forum that might lead to nonviolent conflict resolution strategies, we’ve sampled opinions from 13 people, all stakeholders in the issue, and asked each what they thought might help most to improve the relationship between the police and the citizenry. Then we followed up with a few questions for each. Current and former police officers, city councilors, community leaders, police trainers, and criminologists all suggest ways to bring more peace around the sometimes frayed connection between citizens and police. Guests include Steven Herbert, University of Washington Professor; Cleveland City Councilor Zack Reed; Former Albuquerque Police Department employee Karen Fischer, Albuquerque Police officers John Garcia, Shermane Carter and Brian Werle; Bernalillo County Deputies Aaron Schwartz and Autumn Neas; Santa Fe Police Officer Gardner Finney; Jim Ginger, CEO of Public Management Rources; Mike Scott, former police officer and director of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing: Greg Saville, police training expert and former police officer; Glenn Ivey, former prosecutor and former state's attorney in Prince Georges County, Maryland.