 Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for this community conversation. I'm Scott Cook, CEO for the Longmont Chamber of Commerce. On behalf of the Chamber and our partners on this project, the Longmont Leader and Longmont Public Media, welcome. Our nation is again grappling with racial tension. It seems this tension feels all too familiar to us and that can lead us to the question of what to do next or what the right path forward is. The Chamber as a business organization does not normally take up issues such as this. In our advocacy work, we concentrate on business issues. However, business is about people and at the Longmont Chamber we believe opening and operating a business is for anyone that wants to pursue that dream. While again we as individuals may not know what we can do to help solve our nation's problems, I would like to remind all of us that we each have an important role to play in our own community. To help you with that, you will hear today from our speakers their stories and their experiences. This will give you some background information and then we've asked both of them to give us a couple of ideas on how we can build Longmont together. When we talk about diversity in our community, that can mean a lot of things and there are many people that we can invite this afternoon. Today's conversation is a part of what we hope is an ongoing conversation that will include all aspects of our diverse community. If you enjoy the event today and would like to see more like this, please let us know. Your feedback is very welcome. A note on the questions. In our conversation, you will hear questions that were asked earlier, questions from our partner, the Longmont Leader, and your own questions. To ask a question, you will see an ask a question button at the bottom of your screen. Click on the button and enter your question. You can also use the chat section as well, but it'll be easier for us to spot your questions using the question feature. May see made from the Longmont Leader will be moderating the questions. Our goal today is to have a productive conversation that moves our community forward by recognizing what we've done correctly and those things which we still need to work on. Difficult questions are welcome. Our speakers are prepared for them, so please ask them. Questions, though, that include profanity or in any way harassing towards our speakers or anyone else in the audience will not be tolerated and will not be read by may see our question monitors. Attendees can and will be removed if that is needed. Again, questions are welcome, even the difficult ones. I will now turn it over to Liz Smokowski, CEO of the Longmont Humane Society. Liz has worked with nonprofits in Longmont for over 15 years. She is a past chamber board director and believes that diversity and inclusion are essential elements to the building of our community. Liz will then introduce our speakers. Liz? Thank you Scott. I'm honored to have been asked to moderate today. This is an important time and an opportunity for change to take place. We have two leaders with us today that have played and will continue to play a key role in making change happen. Ms. Glinda Robinson is a longtime resident of Longmont. In the early 1980s, she founded an award-winning maintenance facilities company. Ms. Robinson is a graduate of California State University in Long Beach with a BS degree in criminal justice and a graduate of Leadership America. At the height of the civil rights movement, Ms. Robinson was an impressionable young junior at Memphis State University. While there, she became an active participant in the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., just prior to his assassination in 1968. That involvement set her on a course to keep the King Dream alive. She's worked tirelessly to make a difference through special events, workshops, group meetings, lectures and the like, all with a goal to simply make a difference. The Longmont Mayor and City Council issued a proclamation celebrating Ms. Robinson as the founder of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s week-long celebration that acknowledges her work and commitment to maintaining the legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ms. Robinson is an ordained minister and a mentor to many. Her heart's desire is to work to spread the gospel of love and build people as we create community. Joining her, living in Longmont since 1978, Public Safety Chief Mike Butler has over 30 years of comprehensive policing experience ranging from beat officer to police chief with nationally recognized police departments. Since 1993, Mike has been at the helm of the Longmont Police Department. In 2008, Mr. Butler assumed responsibilities for the Longmont Fire Department as well. During his tenure, the Longmont Police Department was chosen as one of the top 10 community policing departments in the nation by the United States Department of Justice. He has assisted in or taken a primary role in the development of several innovative management systems and programs. Welcome to you both. Ms. Glenn, in our earlier conversations this week, you shared with us some of the history of what has taken place. To start off today, can you give us a brief history lesson? Sure, I'd be honored to do that. I actually will just share a small portion and then later when we come back, I'll continue. First of all, I'd like to say thank you, Scott and your team, all these partners for putting together this conversation. Everybody is talking about having a conversation these days and that's what they want to do. And so thank the Longmont Chamber and your partners for tackling such a complex task at hand. Though I see it also as a matter of heart. You all know that I always come from the place of valuing people, matters of the heart. And small business is the economic engine of this country is and always will be. And so you deserve to be applauded and supported for carrying on this. We're in the business of business but really we're in the business of people. And so thank you for starting the conversation. I think I will do a couple of things right here right now and then I will I'll break and then I'll run you through history on the next go around. How's that? Okay, I wanted to do two things. I want to define racism. We have a, I just told Mike, we got a big topic here that we're tackling here. Race policing and all of that with racism, but I want to define racism. Racism is the conscious or unconscious belief in the superiority of one race over and against another race. And it's manifested in the use of power or influence or resources or even communication that seeks to reject or marginalize or even oppress a person of another ethnicity. The other words that are being thrown around are systemic racism. I've heard people say systematic racism. No, it's systemic racism. And that talks about racism being embedded in the structures of society, whether economic or political or legal, medical, housing or employment. It's a part of the policies and procedures of how a system operates, thus systemic racism. And so on the next go around, I'll start and talk about slavery and how we got here in 1619 and try to run through history. Why don't you just go ahead and do that now? I think it would set the stage and really give us some good foundation for this conversation. Okay, so I'll give you another definition. Slavery. Slavery is a legal system that represses or has repressed a group of people simply because of the color of their skin. But that system somehow got embedded in every structure of the society and still lives and thrives in our system today. This is kind of why we're all seeing this uprising and this tension and all of these things surrounding what we're looking at. In fact, one of the things we were talking about was policing and police brutality is a national epidemic for us. All of our eyes have literally witnessed people being gunned down or shot down or choked. I myself am the result or at least my family. I am the result of a nephew in 1981 who was stopped for speeding on the streets of Signal Hill, California. And two hours later, he was a senior running back at Long Beach State. Nobody knew that. He was driving a brand new TR7. Nobody knew that. They accused him of stealing that. But he ended up two hours later losing his life to that. And so I know the side of of families having to deal with just with the loss of a person, first of all, then he was accused of committing suicide, which his mother said, no, we know that that's not accurate, that could not happen. It took five years. My family went through trials, grand jury investigations, exhuming his body, testing everything, five years to prove that he didn't commit suicide or do any of the things that he was accused of. After that, my family, I would say this would be my sister who out of all nine of us, she was the only one that only had one child. That was her only child. So after that was over, Johnny Cochran represented the family. And I don't want to use the word one because nothing on this earth can bring Ron Settles back. My sister had invested a lot in this life. She died in 1988. So trial ended in 85. They got paid or whatever it was. And she kept saying, this is not about any money. But they did sue the city of Signal Hill. They won. She died of a broken heart, I'm sure. So so I know firsthand the loss of what it's like and sitting in trial and sitting in church at a funeral of such a vibrant life and such a vibrant body. He would be 61 years old today. And he was my buddy. We were good friends. He babysat my daughter for me as we were transitioning to move to Colorado in 1980. So I had a great relationship with him. He was a great young man. And so that's the part of that that I know and the police brutality that we're even talking about and even witnessing. I also had the opportunity early on to meet Mike and see a whole different side. Well, my degree is in criminal justice. So I mean, I know that side and and I've worked that side. So I know there are good cops and bad cops. And I know that it's a hard issue. I just keep going back to that. And as a preacher, and I know y'all don't want me to start preaching up in here today. But the Bible says that we're to love God with our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Do we love ourselves? I mean that to me that would be the issue. That's that heart issue. And so everybody needs to examine themselves and and decide what does it take for me to get these channels clear and love somebody so or love myself and then only then can I love somebody. So it's a it's a and we also talked about this. Everybody's complicated. This this word this little four letter word called love. It's simple. The person treat others like you want to be treated. That's the model of the United States of America. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What's so complicated about that? And so there is a point that we have to decide within ourselves. What can I do to manifest that love? Dr. King said darkness can't drive out darkness. Only light can do that hate can't drive out hate. Only love can do that. The answer is love and and we've so complicated it. We got to simplify it and take it back to its simplest form. So I can stop there or I could start with 1619 if you want to. Oh my goodness. So slavery I defined it for you and of course again I'll just say it again. It's a legal system that repressed or represses a group of people because of the color of their skin and that system is embedded in every structure of society even today. So in 1619 the first African Africans enslaved Africans arrived on American soil against their will to provide free labor to white landowners. American found founders founding fathers met in the late 1700s forming a constitutional convention to establish the United States of America which we're saying was established in on July 4th 1776. The Declaration of Independence was then drafted saying we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that are among these life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and I'm sorry to report to you this is not every man's reality. Well since then we've been arguing over what it constitutes to be a man and so African Americans were not even considered man. Some of them were considered three-fifths of a man thus the problem we had now which jumping forward to the civil rights movement you all have all seen these signs that simply say I am a man. That while that was pertinent to those garbage workers which is what the that whole strike was about in 1968 me marching right down the street with my sign saying honor king honor king no something about justice it'll come to me in a minute honor oh honor king and racism I'm carrying this sign and I'm watching these men who are being treated less than human by the way I'm going to segue to that that picture of me in that march is at the civil rights museum in Memphis Tennessee and and I knew that then but this past summer I was in Washington DC and I came up the escalator and my daughter who lives in Atlanta says mom with all the work you've been doing in Longmont Boulder see you front-range all that don't you think you're in this museum and I said honey child not a chance we come up the escalator and she goes there's that picture right there so Frederick Douglass is right up here the civil rights picture with me carrying this sign saying I was a 19-year-old junior at Memphis State honor king in racism is right there and below that is Abraham Lincoln okay so I decided I'm in pretty good company so that but to me it's heartwarming to have been able to make history there I mean doing this work it's not easy work freedom isn't free I know plenty people who died for these rights that all of us enjoy because all of our lives changed at the passage of the 1964 civil rights act and at the passage of the 1965 voting rights act and I'm going to run through that quickly or do you want me to stop why don't we move over to Mike okay and have him share with us a little bit about your experiences through history with policing all right well first of all I I am honored to be at the same table as Pastor Glenda Robinson we've known each other for a long long time and I have great respect for her and I do appreciate this history lesson and I am very very respectful and I honor your own personal history as you talked about that Glenda it's it's quite moving and quite touching I also want to thank chamber of commerce the Long Maw leader and the Long Maw public media for organizing this event it's an important event and I couldn't agree more that these discussions need to happen and I'm part of being I'm happy to be part of the initial discussion that we're having I also believe that we need to try to figure out how to define the kind of future that we want to all live into and what we want to inhabit and I think Glenda was getting into some of that as well and I think she and I in our own personal conversations have talked a little bit about that but I've been involved in some level of policing for a few decades it's actually over 40 years not not over 30 it's over 40 years and you're right in terms of December of 1993 I became the police chief here in Long Maw and in some month in 2008 I became the public safety chief which oversees police fire a couple of other divisions and we have a relatively new division called a division of community health resiliency which has case managers clinicians paramedics police officers and people who can actually help people in the community who are struggling with their mental health and addiction so my history with policing that's kind of a personal kind of resume that I'm just going to stop there and talking about that but I think one of the things that we're all talking about in this country in terms of the role for policing in our communities is something it's a very very valuable conversation that we need to have what should police be doing in our community and I can tell you for years police chiefs would go out into their communities and say if you need us call us for anything well basically communities took police departments and police chiefs up on that to the point where a large large percentage of our calls for service don't have a crime attached to them and so we got saddled with a lot of particular issues over the years and I don't think that's necessarily been good for the police and I know it hasn't been good for the community and along with that what we've done is that we have criminalized a lot of human behavior over the years and again saddled police with by mandating that they go out and invoke the criminal justice system and that is not a good way to do business either with these social and health issues the big one that we can all look at that happened over decades is the war on drugs the war on drugs was a devastating set of circumstances for our country and most particularly for people of color and if you want to talk about the spirit impact within our criminal justice system a lot of it has the source the sources this war on drugs and so this war on drugs basically assisted in enlarging police departments all over the country and it also helped develop a large very large prison apparatus in this country and many people know that the united states and prisons more people per capita than any other country any other developed country in the world and that disparate impact in terms of people of color is alive and well there and so the conversation I think needs to really head towards well what is the appropriate role for police in our communities and and we in Longmont have done a lot of work in terms of making significant adjustments to try to find that more appropriate role here in our community and I don't know how much time we'll have to talk about that but one of the things that we need to do you're hearing about police reform hearing about criminal justice system reform I think we can go back a little bit further and talk about how do we reform the way we think about certain kinds of human behavior and we need to reform this whole notion that we need to criminalize it and I'm a big advocate that we do need to stop doing that that there are other mechanisms and structures and ways of doing business that are much much more effective much less polarizing and would actually become I think a way of doing business that could really serve our communities and so there are things that we've done in our community with Longmont police that have we believe modeled that way of doing business we arrest fewer people than we've done in the past we've summoned fewer people we've used systems and processes and programs like restorative justice we have referred over 6 000 people that we could have arrested and could have ended up in some serious trouble within the criminal justice system instead of doing that we referred them to restorative justice we started programs like the angel initiative if you're struggling with an addiction come on down to the police department and we'll help you find a treatment provider we have access to over 100 different addiction treatment service providers and we've leveraged literally millions of dollars in free treatment our community is no longer a community in that if you're struggling with a chemical substance addiction that you can't get treatment now I know there's a little cognitive dissonance saying I need to go to the police department to try to work on my addiction but you can do that and over 250 people in this community have done that and everybody that has walked through our doors we have found them treatment and in some cases they possessed either narcotics illicit narcotics or paraphernalia we're not interested in that we'll destroy that but we're interested in and help you use a human being find another path we've started programs like core which is short for a co-responder program people struggling with their mental health what we can do and if they commit a crime we are we are resting fewer and fewer and fewer of those folks and helping them find services in a way that again can help them find a different path and then there's a program called lead the law enforcement addiction assistance diversion program in essence it does the same thing for people struggling with addiction it uses a harm reduction model to help people find another path and their services and I will tell you some level you hear the phrase the proof is in the pudding we are seeing fewer people along these lines and we've ever seen in the past we're seeing fewer suicide attempts fewer suicides we've we've we've encountered people that we have we've worked with that over you know approaching a thousand different contacts dozens of visits to the emergency department have basically been trespassed from everywhere and the only organization in this community that was assisting them was law and law public safety and we have story after story after story of people who have we've helped take another path and and so this doesn't just deal with race it also deals for us with people who are struggling in a lot of different ways and so and so including our folks who are experiencing homelessness so I just I'll stop there in terms of talking about what we're doing here in Longmont but let me just say this about policing in this country there's some history that's rather disturbing to many of us in policing in terms of what's happened over the years and decades with the policing profession and we've been saying in Longmont for a long time that we need to figure out how to recalibrate reset rethink the words now or reimagine what police can be doing in our communities what we should be doing and we want to be able to do that with the voice of our community as well and over the years that I've been in Longmont that's exactly what we did the voice of the community basically guided what we did and how we did it and so our entire policing profession needs to be thinking that way in terms of what we're doing and how we're doing it what kind of services we're providing and at some level being able to share partner and collaborate more with other entities within our any one community in terms of addressing a lot of the issues and I'm convinced that our elected officials at all levels need also take another look at how they're dealing with social and health issues the passing of a law the stiffening of a penalty as if those will serve as an insurance policy that's going to protect us from the human condition doesn't work and we have to come up with an entirely new ways of seeing how we're going to do this work and when they do that one of the things that I know that happened is whenever they passed a law or stiffened the penalty they expected their local police department to go down and start enforcing those laws and so we would go into communities and neighborhoods especially neighborhoods where they're economically disadvantaged people or socially marginalized people and have to enforce the law oftentimes there's neighborhoods in any community that have the financial wear with all or health insurance or options to deal with what's going on with somebody perhaps in their family or a neighbor with a health or social issue and they don't need basically to call the police or invoke the criminal justice system unfortunately there are some neighborhoods where folks don't have options and so at some level we've been and I don't want to make any excuses here but we've been forced to go into neighborhoods where people don't have and we've still become the arm of of government that's enforcing these laws well guessing that puts us in connect contact with it puts us in contact with people who are economically disadvantaged who are socially marginalized potentially people of color and that is the wrong way to do business so as we talk about reform reforming police reforming the criminal justice system we also have to think about how we're going to move forward with how we're dealing with certain human behaviors that for decades all we did was criminalize and again the example being the war on drugs anybody any anytime someone says we want to declare war on something that's domestic whether it's a social issue health issue I know what's going to happen that's going to go south on us that's not going to work we have to figure out how to see people differently and so whether you're struggling with an addiction whether you're struggling with your mental health whether you're struggling with homelessness struggling with poverty we need to take another approach and we need to stop looking at people as a problem to be solved we need to stop looking at people through the lens of their deficiencies we need to see people differently we need to see people in terms of and I will and I thought Linda said it so well in terms of the God that resides within them and and we need to see that they do have potential they do have possibilities they do want to be appreciated and valued and that's the approach we've taken in long month in terms of saying we value you enough to spend time with you to the point where we're getting information back from people in our community who will say the only friend I have is a police officer because they have spent time with me they've helped me find treatment they've helped me find a support system they've guided me down this path that's what police can do and I'll just end with this in terms of a possible future for police you know if we looked at our community and said it's made up of the social fabric and what police can do how do you strengthen the social fabric what police can do is help we can help mend the social fabric we can help strengthen that social fabric and we can help build that and enlarge that social fabric some of you know in this room and some of you know who are watching this that a very good friend of mine Dan Benevitis and I walked over 200 neighborhoods in this community and we mostly walked apartment complexes and we mostly walked mobile home parks and for the last two years almost two years we walked amongst exclusively Latino neighborhoods because we knew Latino people in our community had this sense of fear were they going to get deported were they going to feel could they be safe in accessing government services police services could they feel like they belong to this community our whole purpose in walking these neighborhoods was to encourage people to feel and believe they belong and then we would make an invitation to them to become more engaged in our in our community and it's amazing how many people want to get engaged and one of the things that we discovered in these walks we met over 3000 people was that people have gifts they have talents they have skills they have expertise and resources a lot of people don't know the other thing that we found out was that not only do they have these gifts they want to be able to offer these gifts and then and then what they didn't know though was how to do that and I think we need to get really good in our community and I would make the case in any community that that kind of social capital exists in abundance that there is an abundance of gifts talents and skills in any one community and as we move forward in terms of trying to deal with particular health and social issues that we have to somehow make a place for the people for the gifts of people in this community to be a part of helping move this community forward so I could say a lot more about this but I'll leave it at that and we'll get into some other issues but I again I'm just honored to be here with Linda for our audience before we go any further we are having video issues so we want to make you aware that this will be available on Lawnmine Public Media's YouTube channel to view at a later time thank you again to both of you clearly such things such as racism and bias are in the forefront of so many people's minds good as you said we're seeing it on the news every day currently share with us what are your thoughts about what's going on you didn't let me finish my history lesson but it it's okay I'll I'll walk down through and feel free to back up well I wanted to go back to the civil war of the war between the states and and what it was fought over and we're even arguing over that people are saying it wasn't fought over slavery the reason I wanted to go back there is because my history is long and personal my grandfather murder Sylvester Strong was born in 1860 in 1865 due to the emancipation proclamation he became a citizen fast forward till he became a young man he helped found the AME church back in my hometown in in Tennessee and so between the AME church and a group of white men came and took him physically took him with them to college he got his college degree and he became the professor if you will of the town you know he was a teacher and that was an honorable profession especially for black people and so there are things about him I never got to meet him because he died in a 1946 and I was born later than that it's uh what my my folks kept him alive because of the just what we were talking about the valuable work he did and I'm always bragging about what you and Dan have been doing too in your neighborhood so people will be contacting you about that and about a couple of other things initiatives that that you've done at this is what we gotta do we gotta go outside the box we can't just focus on hate and we can't just say it's easy to do we can't just look and say um oh there are no black people in my neighborhood and I don't even know any and so it ends there we gotta come outside of ourselves and make it a pledge or a decision I'm gonna meet a person not of my own race I'm going to get involved and interact with someone who's different than me so that I really wanted to go through that because you know the civil war was 1861 to 1865 the the north one people seem to have forgotten that but uh I was proud of my grandfather and the legacy that he left in just doing good to people he just always valued people and so uh everybody still talks about professor strong my brother is now known as professor strong he's 89 and I'm sure he's watching from Memphis you guys were talking about people watching from Nebraska I think my brother and my sister are watching from Memphis but anyhow just wanted to kind of go back to that a lot of bad things happened and a lot of good things happened during the the civil war fast forward reconstruction period yay people black folks went to congress and they were elected to key positions and and they served congress and communities uh were well established and were able to uh be self-sustaining and and all of that and now enters this racist system of Jim Crow not even a person uh everybody who is Jim Crow it's a system designed well their main tag was separate but equal if anybody knows anything about those restrooms if you ever had a chance to drive through the south and see colored white water fountains toilets everything rest restaurants or hamburger stands front front window white back window color anyhow so those were things and I can say this because this is I grew up in this and I I was like I couldn't figure out what was wrong until we moved on into the the um the sixties and people things were starting to happen in 1960 we had the freedom riders and they um they rode the freedom riders rode across the south trying to get advantages for black folks to be able to ride the bus public transportation and then in 1955 it well I'll go back to 54 brown versus board of education uh Thurgood Marshall representing the NAACP saying why do we have black schools and why do we have white schools that's what I went to in all black school no race mixing was the the tag and so um I graduated in 65 and it was still that way it was ruled unconstitutional in 1954 55 56 but nobody followed the laws this is this is the issue that people have with the legislation of these states they can do whatever they want to do and I can say that firsthand because I know about the civil rights act I know about the voting rights act and marching for people to have that advantage so then I'm going to even fast forward well I wanted to say uh some things about people who died because a lot of people a lady walked up to my door the other day a friend that I've known for 40 years and and when George Floyd died and she said and I said where are you man but in the sixties when Dr. King delivered that infamous I have a dream speech um that was August 28th 1963 September 1963 those four little black girls were bombed at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama November 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated people have been dying for the right to be free and for the right for us to have some of these liberties and people seem to forget how you know it's like my foreign no more if it didn't happen to me and in my neighborhood I don't know I don't know what they're doing but I think we're in a time right now where it can no longer be if you choose not to get involved or choose not to look or choose not to see that people are dying to live I have young black men coming to me saying I don't want to die today what are what are what am I going to tell them I just say well you just have to keep keep living been working with uh michael darty on you know exactly what kids are doing it's unfortunate that the conversations that I have to have with my children and my grandchildren are so different than the conversations that all of you get to have with your own children you know and and I'm particularly you know jumpy because of Ronnie Settles he said to his dad that morning his dad was shaving and uh and he was standing next to him and he says dad this is going to be my year he was the senior he was thinking of going to play for the Dallas Cowboys and he was excited and then two hours later he's he's dead this this is this is heart-wrenching for some of us you know some of us aren't fazed by it and not touched by it and you know we got to move on I know but this is these are conversations and not just conversations but actions things we got to do and I applaud you for taking the helm and you've got to clone yourself and mentor some other people and start consulting and telling them about these little how hard is it to walk a neighborhood with a with a Latino man on a Sunday afternoon I'm sure people enjoy that the trust is gone the trust in this system it isn't working it isn't working certainly not for for my people and so we got to figure out what we can do so anyhow I I shared that 63 and then 65 was the riots began people say those people are tearing up their cities those weren't our cities just know that they own nothing there but and it's not a good thing it's not a thing that we glory in but Dr. King said the riots are the voices of the unheard people are not being heard and so they they're like okay here take this so I went on through the 60s oh then in 1966 I went I was at HBCU historically black college and university and then my parents said we don't have any more money to keep you at Lane College you got to transfer to Memphis State because they're taking colors there now oh so I go to this university 40,000 white students at about 40 of us and they let it be known that they did not want us there but I was there from 66 to 68 Dr. King came to Memphis once again in support of garbage workers one thing I know about Dr. King is when people died he showed up he kept saying he wasn't coming he would not be in Memphis and no no no I got many other things at hand but when two men Robert Robert Walker and Echo called 30 and 36 years of age and I called their names because I don't ever want to forget those people who paid the price for the freedoms that we enjoy as well they climbed it they couldn't wouldn't couldn't take breaks didn't have set working hours they work 16 and 18 hours a day they they ran three and four generation households and so I remember this like it was yesterday it was cold and sleety icy rainy in March well actually in February is when they died and so they climbed in the back of a garbage truck to get warm and dry and someone tripped the switch on the back of the garbage truck and they ground up with the garbage this is you know I mean this is not just everyday kind of stuff people died and here we are talking about freedom and I continually say freedom is not free so anyhow fast forward with that 68 and that's February 68 March 68 I am in that March with the I am a man signs and then on April 3rd you all know the night of April 3rd Dr. King came to Memphis on behalf of the garbage strike and delivered his infamous I've been to the mountaintop speech the next day we are in well I was in class still sleety snowy rain I mean rainy cold if you know anything about southern cold it's bone chilling cold and so we came in from across the from the student center across the street I lived in Minder's Hall and the all the girls in the dorm were circled around the television they would not allow us to watch TV but that night they said y'all can have the TV we were like oh what's going on and they said Martin Luther King has been killed and they started running up and down those halls cheering and screaming and shouting to the top of their lungs that he got exactly what he deserved and he was nothing but a commie and a troublemaker and a this and that what do you think we felt I was pretty devastated I was angry I was I wanted to hurt somebody I was hateful I want to say but my heart has never really been hateful but I had that was a process I had to go through quite a process to fix myself if you will or or find out what what I can do to take all of this negative and all of this hatred and turn it into something positive and so it was at that point well it took me a few years so 68 I left at the end of that semester I left Memphis I left all of that I I really could not deal with it and I moved to Long Beach California where my sister and her family were and then I worked for 53 at Long Beach State 53 psychologists and three psychiatrists and they all wanted to fix me and they were all right mostly male three ladies they all wanted to fix me but we we all in that process taught each other a whole bunch of things about human nature and about life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness I haven't don't know that I've arrived there as yet but anyhow it was in that period that I had a chance to program myself because I had the wrong view of things I always thought that I could help somebody and fix somebody and do whatever but really the fixing is in you and if you are fixed then you just join hands with that brother I think I quoted to you all the other day no man is an island no man stands alone each man's joy is joy to me each man's grief is my own we need one another so I will defend each man as my brother each man as my friend and so I began from there to establish some friends and relationships and all all with all kinds of people we can't limit ourselves to our own ethnicity this world is so much bigger than that and I so do know that I value people and if there's and I'm constantly praying every day if there's any wicked way in me you know help me fix me I want to be productive I want to be an agent of change an agent of reconciliation I want to extend the olive branch across the across the chair I want to do whatever I can do when I leave this planet I want people to know that I cared I better stop there we've both touched a little bit on moving forward and so we are at a place right now in this community that is really needing some guidance or perhaps a call to action there are those of us that are trying to learn trying to listen and also want to know what can we do how can I take my lack of knowledge and use it in a good way what would you say to that so I I have a have a number of things that that that I want to recommend I am I think I mentioned that I'm a part of the age old national association for the advancement of colored people in double acp well boulder county has an NAACP chapter and most people say oh black people getting together we have 400 members we make up 1% of the loma boulder county population I mean not that many so guess guess what our members are they look like you guys and we're doing great work incredible work we are we're working on the police reform with both well both city of bolter you know that the zadek ensign situation where this young man was out in his yard he was a student at naropa university and he had a trash clicker and he was stopped had a gun drawn because he was instructed to get on his knees and he's like what I didn't do anything and and within seconds six officers were around him with their guns pointed at his head and as I expressed to him the difference between ron settles and him and you is that you're alive to talk about it ron is no longer alive and so and so the community has rushed to solve the problem I know you've heard a lot of negative stuff from me today but I'm all about being a solution provider and so I'm always coming to the table to say what can we do what can we do to do something and that's the first if I do something you know people say I don't know what to do well call call somebody call the the mayor call city council sign up for those meetings every Tuesday night write your congressperson your your senator your your representative everybody can do that you can make a call to the NAACP but I would rather say join them it's $30 a year and we work by committees and we've gotten incredible work done and we were only three years old two two two or three years old maybe three I'm on the executive committee so we have a meeting here immediately after this one but do something you know extend that olive branch meet another person of color you know my door is always open y'all can always always call me and then we can donate to causes to organizations maybe you can't be there physically be there but you certainly can donate to an organization that's advancing the cause of justice and freedom we didn't even talk about justice Dr. King said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere well guess what aren't just like everybody benefited from the civil rights movement in the voting rights act our justice is being threatened right now and if we don't do something I don't know where we will end up and then for me you know I'm I'm in my 70s and so I don't worry about myself that much but I've got children and grandchildren that are coming up what are you gonna leave them leave this place way better than I found it but I don't know that I can do that but another case in point is they don't even know this history that's the sad thing my my kids were the twins were at a daycare and they got shoved down to the ground by the director I'm just finding this out and I'm saying what you know kids can't really get the story right and they're trying to explain it to me and they were crying and they don't know why they don't know that it's because of the color of their skin but it it happens it still happens and so educate we got to educate ourselves educate ourselves to the laws educate ourselves as to what what is going on uh say something and do something am I running out of time oh okay I can still keep talking okay um so the big thing now some of you may have heard some of you may have not is how to be an anti-racist you know it's racist and anti-racist racist and most people don't even know the definition of either but I do um I do there is a book called by that and it's the number one best seller right now uh yeah how to be an anti-racist by Ibram X Kendi that's um so and then I know that tomorrow night or no Wednesday I'm going to be with the Longmont LAD Longmont Area Democrats and talking about um reform and all of that and actually yeah that's another whole subject and I know Mike can address that but to talk about uh uh police everybody's talking about defunding let's just defund the the police departments I don't think that that's what they mean at all they couldn't mean that they just shut down the police who are you gonna call go spussers no so that's not what what they're talking about but I think what they're talking about is um um you use the word read something repositioning recalibrating resetting come back to that place of protecting and serving you know become that person that I can say hey Mike I you know I trust you and I and I believe in you not that you're gonna you know come in in my neighborhood and tear it down or or anything like that or kill up everybody in the house but so that's that's just some things I have more and I think I said I don't know if I shared this with you all or not but I'm also on the Longmont Multicultural Action Committee and um they uh their model we believe in the people of Longmont working together to be a caring and inclusive community proud to embrace respect and celebrate each other and so they've come out with their position statement it's simple NAACP has a great position statement that you know here's here's what we're doing we're standing in solidarity I'm with you you're with me this is a community come you and me together that's Mike do you have anything you would like to add regarding that call to action so I really agree with what Glenn has said around do something there's lots of things that people can do in our community unfortunately we're in a time of COVID-19 and and you know part of the solution here is gatherings part of the solution is coming together part of the solution is getting to know your neighbor part of the solution is developing strong neighborhoods part of the solution is working in organizations like the Longmont Community Justice Partnership like over 20,000 people have in this community in terms of bringing community-based justice to our community not just not justice from the criminal justice system but community-based justice we can enlarge that by two or three times in this community and really make a huge difference in people's lives and in the safety of this community so I guess this is kind of post-COVID kinds of ways of thinking about things and in terms of of what to do but strengthen your neighborhood get to know your neighbor there are neighborhood group leaders association that you can get involved with become more engaged with your community in some form some way or some fashion by the way you know our police officers walk neighborhoods as well and and so it's not just that I walk the neighborhood with Dan Benavidez our police officers also walk them they don't walk in the neighborhoods when there's a call or when they're looking for information or trying to look at a crime scene they're in these neighborhoods now as carved out of their time of the work they normally do to try to get to know the people and try to get people get people to know them and so I just want to make that point very clear that that's happening and will continue to happen I think last year our police officers walked close to 800 neighborhoods if I recall and so it's so we're out there and we want to be known and we want to personalize who we are and we want people to engage with us as well but we also know now is a difficult time whether it's the issue of racism whether it's the issue of trust whether it's the issue of a health disease called COVID-19 we're in these difficult times but I think we're going to get beyond them hopefully sooner than later and this kind of gathering and coming together is so critical and I am totally convinced I mean people talk about the size of police departments in this country and and how big they are and and and one of the things I think we could do I mean sometimes there's this gap between what the community believes its needs and what the size of the police department is in terms of needing police services and oftentimes people believe we should fill that gap with more police officers but we haven't taken that attack in terms of trying to fill that kind of social gap well our our whole emphasis has been you need to somehow the communities the neighborhoods the people the families need to figure out how to fill those gaps and and so Glenda said it's so well in terms of what that could look like so I'll leave it at that well thank you to both of you for setting examples for all of us on how to be more civic minded and more inclusive whenever we can be at this point we'd like to turn to Macy to ask some questions that have come into us from the community from the viewers etc Macy's with Lamont leader and she will ask those thank you guys so much for being here by the way I didn't get a chance to say so so we have active questions from our audience here and one of the most negative vote on what's kind of important to them so one of the biggest questions right now is how do you train police to de-escalate potentially violent incidents so there is there are protocols and specific training for de-escalation but I want to back that one up a little bit and talk about who you need to have as police officers what should be their personal attributes to become a police officer yes you know I I won't dwell too much on the current state legislation but it missed an opportunity to discuss hiring profiles and what attributes we should be hiring to become police officers and so of course we're going to run across circumstances where there is violence involved that happens but what we want to be able to do is have people who know that there are other ways to solve and resolve and de-escalate those circumstances without using violence themselves and so we've trained our we hire people who can do that we don't hire anybody who has an ounce of violence in their background we just don't we hire people who are more inclined to become to become to get engaged in relationships we want to hire people who want to connect who want to relate who want to have a sense of service and so there's a lot more to that profile that we use but that's critically important so that when they do encounter a set of circumstances that's violent that they're going to rely more on their own verbal skills their their own emotional intelligence their sense of being able to connect and relate and to work with people in a way that could calm people down without having to use force and that happens a lot in our community it happens an awful lot and so however given circumstances that where that may not be happening we do have techniques that we use with people that are non-force related in terms of sometimes we just back off we have been involved in circumstances where people have been angry they've been they've been verbally violent emotionally violent with somebody else or with a neighbor or with us and sometimes the best thing for us to do is just to back off and and not be not necessarily be in their presence and give them time to kind of decompress if you will the circumstances they're in and so we train that we train that and so we we use a lot of verbal skills we use a lot of emotional intelligence our the capacity of our emotional intelligence we don't necessarily want to force anything if the situation is calm one of the things we make clear to our officers is we keep it calm and and so we do not want to take any set of circumstances that's calm and settled and stable and make it something different the other thing that phrase I use sometimes is sometimes people will get in police officers they'll get in a personal space and they'll say things to police officers and they'll threaten police officers and they'll sometimes threaten to hurt police officers and what we expect out of our police officers in Longmont is that they won't react to that that they'll do what they need to do to calm themselves and to respond in a way that you can turn away potential wrath with quietness and soft answers and so in essence that's we do a lot of what I just talked about the last question was from Bill Ellis by the way and the next question was posed by Carol Pransky forgive me if I got that wrong what is the experience of people of color with police and in in our community in Longmont well I'll just talk real quickly and I and I certainly want to hear what Glenda has to say but you know our experience has been to really try to personalize who we are and to really get to know people and we believe especially a Latino Latino population comprises 30 percent of our community and one of the one of the attributes of our Latino communities that they truly value relationships and and so and sometimes we don't want a new business with anybody until we've established a relationship with them and our Latino communities definitely falls into that realm and so you know I will also say some people want to know numbers and statistics well our communities around 30% Latino and in 2017 when we we did the data analysis here just a little while ago about 31% of the people we either ticketed or arrested were Latino in 2018 it was 30% and in 2019 it was 29% and so the ratio even though we don't we don't arrest our ticket near as much as a lot of other departments do our size per capita because of all the other things that we have going on and by the way the number of people that we refer to restorative justice at the Longmont Community Justice Partnership is around 30% Latino and so we utilize all of these alternative complementary services that we provide to everybody we don't care what color they are we don't care what background ethnicity race they are and our the data bears that out in terms of the the numbers that we we have collected over time so so our focus is relationship our focus is get to know as many people in our Latino community as possible because that Dan and I walked mostly almost exclusively Latino neighborhoods from I think it was like December of November of 16 through through 19 and and so with the whole idea of getting people to feel less fear because of the ongoing conversations around the national conversation around deportation and so we wanted to make it very clear to people in our community that that wasn't a fear they needed to have with Longmont police and so we we took a lot of time not just me but a lot of other people within the police department to really try to convince and encourage people that they didn't have anything to fear from us around that and that we wanted them to be able to access us and to feel safe with us and so there's a lot more we've done but you know one of the things that we know with people a color Latino people is that one of the things we've learned I will say this is that you got to go where they're at you got to go to their neighborhoods you got to go to their homes you got to go and meet them where they feel safest and when Dan and I would walk these neighborhoods it was great in terms of how we got invited into people's homes we saw they're they showed us hobbies they introduced friends sometimes they would give us food or sometimes we would just be on their front lawn or their driveway and I know some of you in this room that you all can't see walked with us and experienced that very same dynamic but you got to go to where people are at government just can't sit back in his offices and behind the doors of government and and say well they'll come to us eventually and they and the people will come to us you have to get into the neighborhoods and you got to meet people where they're at I can't emphasize that enough and so that's what we're doing I will I when I got the invitation I kind of read over it and this is what's daily life like in Longlock for a black person uh my answer was it's good good yet challenging at times you know I mean I my son was born here and um and so he grew up right here in this town so he was a kid in this town he was a teenager in this town and he was a young adult here too and things between him being a little boy and you know teenager um teenager tween or before that excuse me and then uh teenager and then a young adult he went away to college was okay um he did get stopped by the police officers uh and it's it's so funny because it depends on who you are because he was a Longlock athlete football basketball track all that and so people knew him but the ones who didn't know him made me nervous I must say you know because when we got here in 80 and I think it was 82 that those two Latino young men were killed exactly right after my nephew Ronnie and so I thought my god where have you moved us to hit this place you know um although he fared okay because uh he knew officer Ross who was the school resource school officer at Longmont High and uh he knew somebody else but the couple of times that he did get stopped that that they didn't know him made me nervous he called me and um and when he was stopped he was he went to KU sorry to say he's a rock talk Jayhawk my daughter is a CU Buffalo but um he was home for break and he got stopped on 9th I live on 9th on the west side he was going east side night and lashley or something and he was stopped and within seconds he called me and he said mom there there are four cop cars all right they pulled up on the grass and you know around and surrounded him that makes you nervous it makes me nervous based on what I went through with my nephew so he put the he said the officers are here and I said what do they want and he said well they said your your tags have expired and I said okay they haven't expired they're in the glove compartment sometimes I go a year without putting them on in fact a female officer stopped me two years ago and said I said why aren't you stopping me and she goes your your tags expired um three months ago and I said oh no he she said can I put him on I said please be my guest so I was able to anyhow he was talking to the officer I asked if I could talk to him and um things worked out but I'm saying why did it take three police cars to surround the car he was in it it just makes you nervous I it makes me nervous he also was stopped now he's a big guy he has he's six four or so and he has friends he's the shortest one of this day out of those four guys so he was stopped on I-25 by um I guess the North Glen police officers and they had them get out of the car first question is why are you stopping me they they never really said I don't I don't know anyhow he got out of the car and um the officer said the more they peeled out I think the tallest one was six eight so six four to six eight four guys and the officer said I must just tell you this and I I'll be honest with you you guys are scaring us right now the two officers and I'm thinking y'all got the guns you got the billy club you got the handcuffs what what and really they had no reason to stop them so that scares me you know I'm past that stage he's almost 40 but again like I said I have grandchildren who are coming along and one is male black males that makes me nervous so so we got it some things got to be done some reform has to take place we got to come to the table and talk like you've done and like you propose other cities have got to do that other other people have got to do that so anyhow sorry that's a long answer to your question other folks are wondering uh you know Mike as you are about to retire at the end of this week what's next I mean it seems like the you know the culture has kind of been ingrained under your leadership and in the police department what does that mean for the city and then like how much further did they need to go Glenda to continue this conversation well let me just say this these conversations aren't going to stop um and I said years ago when I first got this job that I could be here 20 30 years and next person's going to come in roll up their sleeves and say we have a lot of work to do we have a lot of work to do and we're not done and and the other part of this is our community is not done yeah and um a police department sometimes is only as good as the community works in and so I invite you and I won't be around after a while but I invite anybody in this community to become more engaged in in in our police services um help us develop policies procedures become a part of the citizen review panel um you know walk our hallways volunteer to do some work internally get to know our police officers but I this department is in good hands and I can assure you that these conversations aren't going to stop we have work to do our community has work to do and and it would behoove us all that we keep on going in this direction yeah I know we are about to wrap up time do you mind if I email all of these wonderful questions from these folks to you and would you mind answering we'll make sure these folks get an answer to their questions thank you and then we have about three more minutes before we need to wrap up um I need to do closing statements I get to do closing statements at five minutes um so one of the I think one of the quick questions Glinda um that I have here from Rose Gracie is and actually I just moved it okay what is your recommendation for black citizens of Longmont to connect with others and it just is in our local black community okay thank you for that question it it's a challenge because there is no community per se no no black community per se so it's hard to pinpoint where people are we have done a few things to to pull the community together I'm at Second Baptist Church it's 112 years old and I'm the second woman in the pulpit in those 112 years I invite them to church and I'm not saying that you have to join or you have to be a member there but for the last 40 years for me that has been our community and and I am actually the community liaison so just just give me the information and I'll connect that's one of the things that I learned from my grandfather and my I mean my yeah my grandfather and my grandmother pulling people together I can do that so I'm happy to if I can have her information or um if you'd like to send her give her mind and have her contact me I'm happy to put her in touch we also have an organization I just thought of that it's called families of color there's another thing that dynamic that's happening here in our midst and that is mixed families not not black not white not you know they're they're of all different ethnicities and yet it may be a white family that has adopted a black child or it may be as in my my case my kids are Latino and and African American so so mixed families is the new the new thing that's happening and they don't really have a place to to go but families of color I'll put them in touch with Shakita Yarbrough and we are at about time there are several polls here I thought I'd just run through that real fast we asked people what level are you willing to be involved to change to engage in change solidarity and to assist people with change in their lives we had 16 votes asked where do I sign up and then 10 votes said that they are a little involved but no one voted that they were not involved at all and then our next question was are you willing to volunteer in Longmont we gave cultivate got NGO as a place to volunteer 21 votes said they are very much willing and one vote said no we asked people how long you lived in Longmont the majority of people have been here for 10 years or more we asked you know have you ever witnessed racial discrimination and there are 20 people are sorry 19 votes that said they have and one post that they never have and then we asked how people educate yourself on racial issues and one person said they talk to person somebody firsthand knowledge two people voted that they volunteer for supportive organizations eight people voted to read books and three people voted that they use discussion groups so there's a little bit of feedback about what our community is saying as far as everybody else like I said we will work to get these questions to both Glenda and Mike and they will get back to us with their answers because there's some there's a lot of amazing questions here we just did not have time for and I'd like to thank everybody for being patient with us through these technical issues today everything has been recorded and will be up on Longmont Public Media's YouTube channel and we will take that feed and share it on the Longmont Leader and I I'm going to guess on the Longmont Chamber of Commerce's Facebook page so that will reach many many people that way I assume you can probably find that on Longmont Public Media's Facebook page as well but if you have any other questions feel free to send them to me at macy at longmontleader.com and that's M-A-C-I-E and I want to thank Glenda and Mike for you know having the courage to come sit with us today and to discuss some difficult topics and we greatly appreciate you and Liz thank you for moderating and I'm going to thank Scott and Longmont Public Media for taking the time to help organize all of this and the crew there at Longmont Leader who's behind the scenes helping out a little bit too um anybody else have anything you want to wrap up with? Great. Thank you. Thank you and thank you all too and I think we're finished.