Athens law enforcement and African American organizations step in each other’s shoes as they vocally express the limitations they have between one another.
It has been nearly seven weeks, yet the solutions still seem unclear to the general public as to how law enforcement across the country will take action in light of the events in Ferguson, Missouri.
The Athens Police Department and Ohio University Police Department are undertaking these racial tensions and attempting to do something about it.
Thursday at the Athena Cinema, 20 S. Court St., law enforcement partnered together and hosted the first in a series regarding a discussion panel that focuses on the diverse organizations of the university. Sponsored by the Black Student Cultural Programming Board and Black Student Union, OU Police Chief Andrew Powers and Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle addressed the Multicultural Center and their student unions.
With everything that erupted over the summer in Ferguson, the chiefs started to rate their own relationships with OU’s diverse organizations.
“Between Chief Pyle and I, we want to reopen the lines of communication to better improve the relationships from students that may feel underserved and marginalized by the police,” Powers said.
With a turnout of nearly 50 African-American students, the questions piled on with pressing matters of personal encounters they have had with Athens law enforcement as well as the Chiefs’ responses and solutions for the students’ concerns.
In the beginning of the presentation, Winsome Chunnu-Brayda, associate director of the Multicultural Center, expressed that the main cause of riots that occurred in history connects to the reality that citizens do not have a voice in their own community. She explained that Michael Brown’s death was the spark that ignited years of resentment in Ferguson.
Chunnu-Brayda said opening up a dialogue between these two groups and giving students a voice significantly reduces the possibility of tension.
With a community as diverse as Athens, the officers reasoned it would have been difficult to not talk about these current events.
“From our perspective, we don’t feel like there is a significant problem in our community, and we certainly don’t want to create one, but we do want to make sure that all of those communication relationships are in place so that we can avoid an explosive build up in a variation of that situation,” Powers said.
Marcus Cole, a sophomore studying psychology, said a common ground was found between these groups Thursday night along with tangible suggestions to fixing this barrier between law enforcement and Ohio University’s minority groups.
“This was a good first step, but we as a black community have made a lot of ‘first steps,’ ” Cole said. “It’s the step three, four, and five that we need to work on.”
The hand continues to extend with OUPD hosting a barbecue outside of Baker Center this coming Tuesday for the Multicultural community. This event is only the first in a series of discussions set to be held with Athens law enforcement and various diverse groups in the community.
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