Forum engages officers, community
By John Joyce
Published in News on January 20, 2015 1:46 PM
Speaking to a gathering of mostly middle-aged and older black residents at Rebuilding Broken Places Saturday, Goldsboro police Chief Jeff Stewart said if the community wants to talk about race relations, the wrong people were in the room.
It is the city's youths who need to be present and to talk -- and to listen, Stewart said.
Saturday's forum -- "The Prison Industrial Complex and the U.S. Justice System: Speaking for the Speechless" -- was the third community meeting Stewart attended last week, he said.
None were attended by young people, he said.
"What we need to get are groups of these youths together and have these meetings," Stewart said.
The forum is the brainchild of Linda Wilkins-Daniels, first vice president of the African-American Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
Both Stewart and Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce were invited to attend, and each brought along his command staff.
Mrs. Wilkins-Daniels called the event a success.
"It was awesome. The law enforcement community wanted to embrace the idea of talking to the community," she said.
Both Stewart and Pierce addressed the crowd Saturday, each saying that their duty was to protect the residents of Goldsboro and Wayne County.
The officers they brought along with them initially sat at the back of the room.
Jaymes Powell, the AAC's communications director, invited the officers and deputies to move up, to join the community and to sit with the people.
Shifting the focus to the national discussion on race relations between police officers and citizens, Powell called up three black youths to the front of the room.
"You all have on Kevlar vests. You have those nice Glocks," he told the officers. "These kids have on T-shirts and sneakers. They aren't scary. Stop being afraid of our children."
ACLU policy director Sarah Preston and Raleigh-based attorney Nardine M. Guirguis provided the audience with information about legislation and shifts in sentencing practices they hoped might reduce the number of youth offenders being sent to adult prisons.
Mrs. Preston said efforts to improve the Prison Rate Elimination Act and the Young Offender Rehabilitation Act -- legislation that has bipartisan support -- will serve to do just that if passed.
"Over 50 percent of the referrals into the juvenile justice system are from schools," she said.
Fixing the problem created when school resource officers are now handling issues in schools that used to be addressed by teachers and principals would cut down on the number of children entering the justice system, she said.
"The Prison Rate Elimination Act is supposed to protect the youth who are supposed to be housed sight and sound apart from adults," she said.
The ACLU could not find a single prison in the state that was in full compliance with the law, she said.
Measures to correct that and to force prisons to fall in line, as well as support for the Young Offender Rehabilitation Act, which would allow 16- and 17-year-old offenders to be tried and sentenced as juveniles rather than as adults, show the state is moving in the right direction, she said.