On a day when forums were held in Little Rock and North Little Rock about the strained relations between police and community members, Little Rock's police chief said he doesn't expect the tensions to ease soon.
"I don't think this is going to go away. I think this will have stamina," Police Chief Kenton Buckner said during an appearance before the Little Rock Rotary Club on Tuesday morning. "To be truly honest with you, I think things are going to get worse. I think we are starting to see the surface of some of the things that will be playing out in American streets across the country."
Buckner said the events last week, in which black men were shot by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota and a gunman killed five officers in Dallas during a protest march, have outraged and shocked the country.
"The Dallas police officers killing shocked us," he said. "Who would kill five police officers at a peaceful protest? Who would do that?
"The Black Lives Matter movement was upset because why were we not upset about these other killings?"
At a forum held at North Little Rock City Hall on Tuesday night, the council chambers were filled with residents, elected officials and police officers.
"It's a second chance, ladies and gentlemen, for new beginnings," said State Rep. Eddie Armstrong, D-North Little Rock, who organized the forum with city officials.
Part of the North Little Rock forum was used to ask questions -- questions on body cameras, police de-escalation practices, community programs, mutual respect, officer psychological evaluations, police use of force.
One community member spoke about how she called police multiple times the Saturday before the Fourth of July to report fireworks and gunfire. But the officers did not arrive, and when she called back the dispatcher told her they did not dispatch any officers.
North Little Rock Police Chief Mike Davis apologized for the failure to dispatch and said there was no excuse for not responding to a call.
"That's unacceptable," Davis said. "We get a call, we have to respond, period."
Others asked questions about police de-escalation policies and whether or not North Little Rock police have body cameras.
Davis said the department is looking at providing body cameras, and the department has in-car cameras and microphones on officers during traffic stops.
As a woman shared her fear of police officers, Davis sat in the front of the packed room and took notes.
"As a black woman, honestly, I'm scared of the police," said 21-year-old Margaret Starks of North Little Rock. "I don't know what it is, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason, I don't feel safe around the police."
Also Tuesday night, community activists participated in a public meeting at Philander Smith College to discuss how to respond to police violence in Little Rock.
Organizers barred a reporter from entering the meeting, saying they wanted it to be a "safe space" for people to talk about their experiences without feeling like they had to censor themselves.
Little Rock is not so different from Ferguson, Mo.,, Baton Rouge or other cities where police shootings of black men lead to mass protests, said Arkansas NAACP President Dale Charles, adding that "it's a matter of time" before something similar happens here.
Little Rock police officers have fired their weapons on two occasions over the past two years, according to the department, and in neither case killed anybody. Nevertheless, Charles said, many police still target black people and treat them more roughly than white people.
"Police stop people, especially African Americans, and they presume they're already guilty," he said, even as officers have escaped consequences for killing. "They've got a real good out -- 'I thought my life was in danger' -- that's all they have to say."
Police are going to face more scrutiny after last week's shootings, Charles said, and Buckner needs to set the right tone for his officers to follow.
In his speech to the Rotary Club members, Buckner, who is black, said the Black Lives Matter movement has ignored black-on-black crimes, including 17 slayings this year in Little Rock.
"I've seen no T-shirts, I've seen no [protest] march. I've seen no one upset about that," the police chief said. "And the reason they are not upset about that is because the individual that killed him looked like the individual who was killed."
Metro on 07/13/2016