photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Many people attended a second half-day workshop as part of the Strengthening Police and Community Partnerships Program hosted by the Lawrence Police Department and Department of Justice facilitators on Saturday, August 3, 2024.

To build better understanding between the Lawrence Police Department and the community it serves, Lawrence will have to talk about misunderstandings — about what the police do, about how they’re perceived, and about how the community may be feeling.

That was a takeaway from Saturday’s workshop on police-community relations, the second of two facilitated by the Department of Justice as part of LPD’s Strengthening Police and Community Partnerships Program. This one focused on brainstorming solutions to the problems identified in the previous one, and the biggest problem that the LPD and DOJ pointed to was a perceived them vs. us mentality between people and police.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Officer Anthony Harvey and Katrice Woods present their solutions for the barrier of a perceived divide between people and police on Saturday, August 3, 2024.

LPD Officer Anthony Harvey said Saturday that officers can go a long way toward solving that by thinking about the community and putting themselves in another person’s shoes when they’re responding to a difficult, stressful situation.

“Being able to feel compassion and kind of feel how the community member feels during these traumatic events, whether it’s a high-priority call or just a regular routine call for the officer, is so important,” Harvey said.

Harvey was one of several dozen people — officers, advocates and other community members — who broke into small groups to discuss how to get past specific barriers between police and the people of Lawrence.

In total, the DOJ facilitators identified nine major hurdles from the concerns that the public voiced at the session last weekend. Aside from the us-and-them mindset, another one was a perceived lack of transparency and accountability in the LPD.

Lois Orth-Lopes, a former teacher at Lawrence Public Schools, said her group suggested incorporating additional steps of approval for police policy changes and wished for the LPD to host events to educate the community about how the department works.

“If the police were able to have informational sessions with various nonprofit agencies and the community, that will go a long way to helping grow the number of people understanding the police’s role and a lot of other things,” Orth-Lopes said.

Harvey, for his part, said that some community members were already interested in learning more about how officers were trained and how they could help shape LPD’s policies and procedures on police conduct.

The participants also discussed something that might be driving the misconceptions about policing — social media.

Aris Grady, whose father, Myrone Grady, is in the Lawrence police department, brought up how social media can be extremely polarizing and one sided. Many social media users are victims of “rage baiting,” which is interacting with posts that elicit an emotional response and continuing to interact with similar ones. Aris Grady said this can make it hard for people to see both sides of a story, and this is important with people and the LPD.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Community members brainstormed solutions to the barriers from the first workshop a part of the Strengthening Police and Community Partnerships Program on Saturday, August 3, 2024.

“You’re responsible for what you consume in the media, and not just consuming data that confirms what you already believe,” she said. “It’s important to separate our local police department from national narratives.”

The other barriers that were identified included effectively addressing mental health calls; a lack of cultural inclusivity and understanding; the possibility of people being triggered by police officers’ uniforms or equipment; community members not communicating well with police officers; how officers respond in times of crisis; homelessness and managing public spaces; and staffing challenges.

Following the presentations given by community members, everyone voted for the solutions they thought would make the most change and be the most doable. DOJ facilitators will put together a report highlighting the top solutions, which will be shared with the LPD and the community at a future date.

“We’re going to implement ideas from this, and I don’t want you to feel like your time is wasted,” said Police Chief Rich Lockhart. “If we don’t, I want you to hold us accountable. I want you to know that I am committed to this work. This is your police department.”