Concerns about the police and the lack of progress in the city's Midtown section were among the reasons that St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster and Police Chief Chuck Harmon sat down with officials from the NAACP and ACLU this afternoon at City Hall.
The meeting was originally scheduled to be held at the St. Pete chapter of the Urban League, but it was re-scheduled for St. Pete City Hall, where myself (along with Mark Puente from the Times) were politely informed that it was off-limits to the press.
Rev. Manuel Sykes, president of the St. Pete chapter of the NAACP, told me that his organization isn't happy about some of the hiring practices with the city.
"Some promotions are discretionary, and we're seeing a trend of more and more white people in the public echelon where policies are made, where decisions are made, and that's wrong," he told me before today's meeting.
When Mayor Foster fired Goliath Davis two years ago, he told the press and the members in Midtown that he would become the point man in working on economic development in the historic African-American district. But Sykes said it hasn't worked out that way.
This article appears in May 23-29, 2013.