The strained relations between residents of predominantly African-American south St. Petersburg and the city's police force have been the source of distrust at best and deadly violence at worst.
St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman said a key reason he ran for mayor was to try to mend it.
"What I saw and I heard was a loss of trust, a loss of respect from the police to the community and the community to the police,” Kriseman said ahead of a forum at Gibbs High School on how police interact with residents on the south side.
Since Kriseman hired him last summer, St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway has pledged to heal the troubled relationship between residents of predominantly African-American south St. Petersburg and the police department. That's what brought him out to Gibbs High School Tuesday night for a discussion with the community that got pretty tense at times.
“Working together, we can solve a lot," Holloway said. "Working against each other, we're not going to go anywhere …Information we get tonight from you is another way we start building again. We're going to build a very strong house that's not going to fall in St. Petersburg.”
He talked about some of the programs the department is implementing using information gleaned from such meeting in the past, like a second chance program aimed at culling arrests of black youths for minor crimes and a method of tamping down racial profiling, something to which many of the city's young African-American men have said they feel particularly vulnerable.
“We're going to explain to you why we stop you, and be more professional," he said. "At the same time we're going to be looking at putting a database in that, when a young man or young woman is stopped, no matter what race they are, why are we stopping you? If we stop you more than ten times, that's going to send an alert up to the chain of command."
Holloway said if you're a known criminal it'd be a different story.
"Now if you're a burglar, we're going to stop you at two in the morning and ask you what you're doing out at 2 o'clock in the morning," he said. "But if we're going to keep stopping you for no reason, then we're going to figure it out …If we just keep stopping you for no reason then we're going to try to figure that out.”
Those in attendance broke out into more than a dozen small groups to have discussions on a smaller scale among police officers, activists, officials and community leaders to nail down the biggest problems between police and African Americans on the south side.
“Tonight is about us listening and hearing from you,” Kriseman said. “We can't start repairing relationships unless we know what the root causes of the problems are.”
One big issue was the constant anxiety felt by people who have been convicted of crimes in the past, but face constant harassment from police despite having paid their proverbial debts to society.
“There is such a distrust to the point that these guys, and I'm not talking about the 18-year-olds, the ones that's off the chain right now," said community activist "Mama T" Lassiter. "I'm talking about 30s or 40s. They are afraid of the police because it's like, they went to jail, did their time, got older, they're trying to hang with their family and do the right thing, but because of their past…every time certain police see them, they sweat them, they harass them. They don't even have anything concrete. But because they have that badge on, they feel like they're above the law.”
Then there's the question of monitoring of police interactions with citizens.
“Where are we on the cameras?" asked Dr. Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, planning director for the St. Pete's 2020 Plan, which takes a holistic approach to solving poverty, and all the social strife that comes with it, on the South Side. "Because the issue of what happens during the initial interaction between the officer and the citizens is within the purview of the resolution of the problems.”
The officers at the table said that the department, unlike that of Tampa and other places, is still uncertain on the effectiveness of police in-dash or body cameras, and at this point the storage of all the data that would accumulate under such a program remains a question mark.
The night's discussions weren't entirely steeped in civility, though.
At one point during the meeting, shouting erupted from a corner of the room as members of the African People's Socialist Party, better known as the Uhurus, said such meetings were bogus.
"This ain't no community meeting. This is about the police trying to cover up what they been doing to black people," said Omali Yeshitela, the group's leader.
Another unidentified speaker said economic disparities are the root of the problem, and the city has criminalized things people do out of desperation instead of helping get people out of poverty.
"Seventy percent of the black community in St. Petersburg lives at poverty level or under and you’re telling me that’s not a problem," he shouted. "That’s a crime. But St. Pete downtown is thriving but the black community looks like a bomb hit it."
Though it was exactly the sort of thing city officials were probably hoping to avoid, there were no physical altercations and police let the activists speak for more than four minutes. Some listened, some carried on the conversations among their groups, and the protesters left without incident.
“It's about trying to create a more positive atmosphere tonight.,” Kriseman had said moments prior. “Your police department and your city are listening.”
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2015.
