Five Gainesville Police officers and eight Hispanic-Latino residents turned their chairs to face each other as they discussed relations between the two communities Tuesday night.
GPD organized the town hall meeting to discuss individual experiences of both Hispanic-Latino residents and officers when interacting with each other and how to make the relationship between the two stronger in the future, said GPD Capt. Jorge Campos.
He said GPD has wanted to hold the meeting for a while and wants Hispanic-Latino residents to feel comfortable coming to officers for help.
“One community we haven’t reached out to a lot are the Hispanics,” he said. “A lot of crime is committed against Hispanics.”
Campos said he wants members of the community to know they can approach officers, though he understands some may not come from countries where they would feel comfortable contacting authorities.
“We’re all human beings, and we look through a lens of what we know,” he said. “We fill what we don’t know with experiences.”
Moisés Moreno-Rivera, a UF graduate student studying police brutality, said he understands concerns from both sides.
He said he has seen brutality from officers in Mexico when he was there one summer, and he has a brother who works as a police officer in California.
To help build trust with residents, GPD has started using the Chicago Police Department’s procedural justice training program, said Officer Lynn Valdes.
In this program, officers are taught to explain everything they do — from moving their hands to their belt to shifting their posture — after stopping a person.
Going forward, GPD plans to hold meetings with the Hispanic-Latino community every three to four months. Campos said GPD wants to start meeting with other communities as well.
“We’ll start out slow and then build from there,” Campos said.
