Police departments need to hire more from within troubled neighborhoods and provide officers with better training to resolve conflict and handle people with mental health issues, said participants in a town hall organized Thursday by the National Black Police Association.
The session was part of the 44th annual conference of the organization, which was founded in 1972 and has chapters across the country. The theme of this year's conference, held after the unrest prompted by Freddie Gray's death in police custody and as killings by police fall under a national spotlight, was police-community relations.
"Law enforcement training has not kept up with the systemic issues of society," said Lenora Dawson, an aide to the Baltimore City Sheriff, who spoke on the panel. "We have to start taking a holistic approach to this and I think we have a long way to go."
The riots that erupted in Baltimore last year highlighted the tension between police and residents in the city, following complaints about brutality within the department. On Thursday, a jury convicted a Baltimore City police officer with first degree assault, for shooting an unarmed man in the groin, after two other officers had shot the man.
Members of the Nation of Islam in the audience and others called on black police officers to speak out more when they see problems by fellow officers.
Malik Aziz, deputy chief of the Dallas Police Department and chair of the National Black Police Association, also said police need to develop stronger community coalitions, reaching out to groups they know disagree.
"I'm not talking about a community coalition of just the people who love the police. That's the problem that we have," Aziz said. "Every time a police chief or a commissioner gets out there and says I'm meeting with the community, he's meeting with only the people he likes to meet with."