San Antonio continues work to improve relationship between police and minorities
SAN ANTONIO - As ongoing protests continue to put a spotlight on the tension between law enforcement and minority communities across the country, San Antonio activists, elected officials, and religious leaders are hoping to build on recent efforts to improve that relationship through policing reform.
"We've got to change the dynamic and the way police officers engage with persons of color," said Dr. Keely Petty of the Bethel Prevention Coalition. "It is a constant reminder that you could be here today and gone tomorrow."
An author, teacher, and current chair of the San Antonio Martin Luther King Commission, Dr. Petty was selected in 2016 to serve on the Mayor's Council on Police-Community Relations, a diverse collection of faith-based leaders, activists, community members and police officers.
Ivy Taylor, San Antonio's first African-American mayor, formed the committee following several high-profile cases of unarmed black men killed by police.
"The excessive use of often-deadly force by law enforcement officers on unarmed citizens (often minorities) has eroded the confidence of many U.S. citizens in the police officers whose responsibility it is to keep them safe," Taylor wrote in an April 2017 memo. "Although San Antonio has had its share of incidents, they have not to date been followed by violent, destructive unrest. Therefore, one of the goals is to ensure that San Antonio does not experience that kind of unrest and to restore confidence in law enforcement in those quarters of our community where it has been lost.”
"(The committee) was very productive and people were excited," said Dr. Petty. "An opportunity to give voice to what we were seeing in the community in regards to the way the police were treating common citizens."
Composed of 43 members, the mayor's council met five times over a series of months, focusing on four key ways to improve policing: Recruiting a more diverse pool of applicants, implementing more robust training, stronger transparency and accountability, and better collaboration with community groups.
Many of the recommendations ended up being adopted by the police department, current City Councilman Manny Pelaez said. "These were taken very seriously. (SAPD) has more crisis intervention and de-escalation training than they ever had before. That's now a new standard at SAPD."
Same goes for the training on how best to interact with people who have mental health issues.
"That was not something that was ever a best practice," Pelaez said. "But now it is."
And yet, here we are three years later. The death of George Floyd prompting protests and the kind of unrest former Mayor Taylor said the city hoped to avoid.
"What we're seeing culturally is an awakening. What I saw, it shook my soul," Dr. Petty said, referring to the video of Floyd's death. She thinks the Mayor's Council on Police-Community Relations, which ended after Taylor left office, should have continued. "I believe it would have given what we saw with the recent riots, it would have happened differently. We would have had a tone and tenor that the San Antonio police do care about how their officers treat persons of color."
"Clearly, as evidenced by the hundreds of people that are occupying downtown the past four or five days, there is a trust crisis," Pelaez said. "I think in San Antonio, it's safe to say we've got it better than we do in a lot of other cities. But there's always room for improvement."
Pelaez pointed out the SAPD does have a citizen advisory board, which meets regularly. He also praised the job done by Chief William McManus. "He is very vigilant that we have police officers that follow the rules, that treat people with respect, that he hires are professionals."
Pelaez also wouldn't be surprised to see more frequent meetings of the city's public safety committee. "To develop and implement strategies that bring the community closer to the police and the police closer to the community and engender more trust."