About 20 people attended the first formal Peoria Black Lives Matter meeting yesterday at the Carver Center. Peoria Public Radio’s Tanya Koonce reports the meeting included the Peoria Police Department:
There were handouts including a primer on the 21st Century Policing Policy and its six pillars. The assistant police chief and a captain attended with police officer Dan Duncan, known for his mantra: comply and complain.
Duncan encourages people approached by police to comply and then if treated inappropriately file a formal complaint. He’s worked on that effort with Lafelda Jones. Jones led yesterday’s meeting and says it’s important for the various Black Lives Matter groups come together.
“Hopefully with the publicity of what’s going on today, those people will reach out to me, I’ll have an opportunity to reach out to some of them and say look, ‘let’s go to One World, let’s have coffee, let’s all meet together, let’s come together to be one. One cohesive group.”
One of the 21st Century Policing Policy pillars is Building Trust. Jones says the policy offers potential solutions.
“What we want to do is make sure our police department is implementing those as best they can in timely manner and what we can do as individuals in the interim while they do that.”
Jones says they’ll work with Officer Duncan and the police department to create fliers and pocket cards detailing what to do when pulled over by a police officer.
Jones says they also want to address personal responsibility for behavior. She says working to eliminate black on black crime needs to be inclusive in their efforts. Of the 16 homicides in Peoria last year, 14 of them were African American boys and men killed at the hands of other African Americans.