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Initiative on Cities seminar addresses urban policing, practices

(From left) Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans and Professor Shea Cronin speak at the Initiative on Cities Urban Seminar Series “Policing the City” Monday, moderated by Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore. PHOTO BY ALEX MASSET/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF
(From left) Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans and Professor Shea Cronin speak at the Initiative on Cities Urban Seminar Series “Policing the City” Monday, moderated by Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore. PHOTO BY ALEX MASSET/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

With a critical public eye on police departments following the summer’s occurrences of police-civilian violence in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York, Boston University’s Initiative on Cities held an Urban Seminar Series titled “Policing in the City” Monday to discuss urban police departments and the communities they serve.

Approximately 30 students, faculty and members of the BU community gathered at the Florence and Chafetz Hillel House to listen to Boston Police Department Commissioner William Evans, Rev. Jeffrey Brown and Metropolitan College Professor Shea Cronin address ways BPD is working with the community in a fair and just manner to ensure the safety of its citizens.

Panelists tackled topics such as gun control, racial bias, procedural justice practices and efforts to bring more culture and diversity to the academy. Brown said BPD is constantly trying to improve itself and the community.

“It starts with relationship building,” he said. “The challenge is how are we going to be able to get along with our diversities and differences. It’s the aim of the young protestors right now to look at the structural change.”

Cronin said the way officers behave can sometimes affect relationships with the community.

“One of the challenges that we see is that a lot of that trust, a lot of that sort of community relationship building, goes out the window very quickly when officers are engaged in a course of action, and they do so in a bad way,” he said.

While Brown and Evans disagreed about the ways the police choose to act in certain situations, both said it is important for community leaders and the general public to work with the police instead of against them.

Evans said he wants young people to go out and protest if they disagree with a policy or procedure.

“We’re engaging in youth dialogues all of the time,” he said. “It’s nice to hear young kids get involved in issues that surround their community. I want to hear the kids.”

Conor LeBlanc, administrative coordinator for the IoC, said the panel was held in light of current events across the United States.

“We really wanted to do an event about urban policing because, you know, with the events that have happened around the country within the last six months or … it’s clearly a really important issue in cities across the country,” he said.

Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, moderator of the panel, said he hopes the panel served as a teaching tool.

“I hope students will see that you know there’s this conversation about race and of these actions regarding race that may not be so seemingly obvious, and in this case, it involves cities and policing that are pretty important,” Elmore told The Daily Free Press after the panel.

This issue of urban policing transcends to BU as well, Elmore said.

“Our police have a good relationship with the Boston University community. It’s not perfect. There are those moments, and there are those circumstances,” he said. “Our police are small enough that we can have a level of internal accountability for them, and they are doing training so that they are sensitive to issues that the BU community faces.”

Several students who attended the panel said they have had firsthand experience with recent protests against police brutality.

“I was a part of the protests that were going on [in Boston], and I really, really appreciated how the police dealt with the protesters,” said Amina Egal, a sophomore in the College of General Studies. “They were peaceful and welcoming, and even the police commissioner himself kind of told us to go protest.”

Chelsea Beytas, a senior in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said she enjoyed hearing from the city leaders about how police departments are looking to work better with the community.

“I’m from the Cleveland area and over the winter had our own sort of, not disturbance, but incident to say, of law enforcement and the community itself,” she said. “For me, it was great to hear that there has been change since [the Commissioner] started working in law enforcement to where we are now in terms of viewing society more as the police being a part of it than fighting against it.”

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