ROGERS -- Community members got the opportunity to grill new police chief Hayes Minor during a forum Thursday night.
The topic was police and minority relationships and attendees asked about racial profiling, diversity training for officers and started the evening with asking what Rogers' response is to gangs.
There's no gang task force in Rogers, Minor said.
The city has six school resource officers in secondary schools to build relationships between police and young people, but it takes a community to eradicate a gang, he said. Pop culture can glamorize gangs and introduce selling drugs as a way to make a fast dollar. Parents are the first line of defense, Minor said.
Children need to know they can tell parents and teachers what they see and parents and teachers need to approach police with those confidences.
"Are there gangs in Rogers? Yes," Minor said, just before the meeting. "Is there a gang problem in Rogers? Not at this time."
The potential is always there, he said. The police monitor graffiti, but they need community members to report when something seems out of place.
"There's only 80 sets of eyes out there looking for this stuff," he told the group.
Part of the reason Rogers began having meetings in 2012 was to build trust between the minority community and the police leadership.
Building rapport with police is important for more than the minority community, said Geovanny Sarmiento, vice president of minority business development at the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber, Police Department and some businesses that provided food and location partner to provide the meetings.
Police can't be everywhere, see everything, but the community is there, Sarmiento said. When a person makes a report, the police can investigate, which is what they do best.
"Then we all win," Sarmiento said.
The first couple of meetings were a lot of listening to build community trust, Minor said. There are cultural fears of law enforcement and Rogers had to send out the message a person's minority or immigration status won't matter if they're a victim of a crime, he said.
Antonio Garcia, Rogers resident, is only 24, but he remembers seeing seeing a big police response during traffic stops involving Hispanic drivers. There might be four police cars for one driver. As a child it scared him.
"It's lessened," Garcia said.
The department could still do more to reach out to the Hispanic community, he said.
One attendee asked if officers ever held a forum with teens and allowed them to ask hard questions to police. Minor pledged to plan something with school resource officers. That kind of access would help teens relate to officers as someone other than a badge, Garcia said.
School resource officers walk a fine line because they are both a child's introduction to police and also serve a disciplinary role, said Rey Hernandez, executive director of the Workers Justice Center in Springdale. Rotating them or bringing in other officers for education could help with that.
There needs to be a Spanish language version of neighborhood watch program, he said. Kids can control the information coming into the home if a parent isn't fluent in English, he said.
He asked about recruiting minority officers, citing police disconnect in Ferguson, Mo.
There are 10 officers who are Hispanic and he wants more, Minor said.
"We're about 20 behind," he said. "It's something we have to tackle. The community demands it. Society deserves it."
Asked about racial profiling, Minor cited a traffic stop report that indicated 700 of 3234 traffic stops were identified as Hispanic, which compares to the city's reported demographic of 31 percent Hispanic in the 2010 Census. Administrators can break down information in the report by officer to check for profiling, Minor said.
His announcement that an officer has just been appointed as a part-time liaison for the Hispanic community was met by applause.
The meeting was in English and Hernandez offered to bring translation equipment for the next one. He asked Minor about adding cultural awareness training. Attendees chimed in it isn't just Spanish-speaking cultures, but Hmong, South Asia and Marshallese.
People from South Asia -- India, Pakistan and Bangladesh -- need to know police as approachable, said Krishna Verma, of Rogers.
She asked if there was a way to report non-emergency incidents online. Younger people don't want to call, but they text and others might be shy about reporting things to 911.
"911 should always be kept to an emergency service," Verma said.
Those attending the meeting said overall they felt police were doing a good job. Several talked about ways police can engage with the community.
Michel Rangel, Northwest Arkansas organizer with the immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United, said she felt the meeting went well.
Police are civil servants and that means they are there for all, she said.
"At the end of the day all police officers are there to serve the community," she said. "Everybody pays taxes."
NW News on 04/24/2015