Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): The city of Ferguson, with a population of 21,000, is more than two-thirds African-American, but just three of its 53 police officers are black. It’s a factor in other communities across the country as well.
And we explore the issue Tracie Keesee, the co-founder of the UCLA Center for Policing Equity. She’s also a 25-year veteran of the Denver Police Department. And Commander Malik Aziz, chairman of the national black police association. He is deputy chief of the Dallas Police Department and has 23 years experience in law enforcement.
Tracie Keesee, let me start with you. And I do want to start with a question about today’s news, because there’s still a lot of confusion and even anger over the issue of when the officer involved in the shooting was named and the release of the video of Michael Brown.
What’s your reaction to that today?
TRACIE KEESEE, UCLA Center for Policing Equity: Well, I think there is a couple of things going on here.
First of all, if you want to have the trust of the community, transparency is always going to be key. And the faster you can get information out to the community is going to be helpful.
I think, in addition to that, you have to balance the safety of the officer at the time, before we knew his name, to make sure that they were safe, and he was receiving threats. But I think you also have to that balance, but I think you also have to be mindful of the community that you serve and that they really deserve to hear who is involved in what and what’s going on with in the investigation.
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