Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 13, 1991 TAG: 9102130622
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Task force members aired those observations in a meeting Tuesday with Chief M. David Hooper.
While Hooper seemed surprised at some of the comments, he also was receptive and pledged to investigate the allegations.
Remarks by task force members during the 1 1/2-hour session represent only what members have heard from the public so far, not the panel's final conclusions.
Members say their questions to Hooper reflect public dissatisfaction not just from the black community - whose complaints led to the task force's creation last year - but from other segments of the city as well.
"Chief, this is what we're saying," the Rev. Alfred Prunty told Hooper. "You might not think so, but the people of Roanoke are bringing this to us because they think it's abusive."
In perhaps the most pointed exchange, panel leader Melinda J. Payne, recruiting and training manager for the Roanoke Times & World-News, asked Hooper to address "a perception, right now, that it's a racist department."
Hooper responded: "I don't think that it is, and I don't think there's evidence to support that. That's not to say people can't have an opinion."
He added that "most officers would be very much offended, personally, by that statement."
Since the task force was formed last October at the suggestion of Mayor Noel Taylor, the 21-member panel has focused on the Police Department. The Roanoke NAACP accused police last summer of using excessive force in dealing with blacks, which in turn has led to questions about minority recruiting in the nearly all-white department.
Hooper has met with the task force twice before to answer questions, but Tuesday's session was the most blunt.
Task force member Will Claytor, owner of Family Home Realty, asked Hooper to respond to what he considers a "widely held perception that some of your police officers have a Rambo-type personality that seems to be acquired through their training."
Hooper said he has received some isolated complaints of that nature, but was not aware of any "widely held" perceptions.
But as Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell pointed out, that kind of perception can be based on something less serious than a physical confrontation. Sometimes, he said, it comes from a simple case of bad manners.
"There's just not the common courtesy on the street" by police officers, Caldwell said. "They may do the job, but there's no `Yes ma'am' or `No sir.'"
Caldwell mentioned a comment by a police lieutenant at a task force meeting last month. When asked about complaints that police seldom smile, the officer responded that police would "look pretty silly" if they went around smiling all the time.
"If one of your lieutenants is articulating that idea, how can you make sure that that attitude is not going down to the lower officers who deal with the public?" Caldwell asked.
"We're talking about perceptions," he added. "And a statement like that is one indication that maybe there's some truth to it."
While denying that his department is racist, Hooper appeared receptive to other complaints.
"I don't think we're by any means perfect," he said at one point. Later in the meeting, as the complaints grew, he told task force members: "This is helpful to me because now I can go back and look at it . . . and deal with it."
Another task force member voiced concerns about the way police treat students. She recounted a recent incident in a convenience store, where she said a police officer reportedly approached a crowd of teen-agers and told them that all of them would end up arrested sooner or later.
Hooper said he had no knowledge of the incident and would have taken quick action had he known.
"Let me tell you and the rest of the city of Roanoke that if that happens, I need to know it within 24 hours, not two or three months later," he said.
Although minority recruiting has been discussed by the panel before, it came up again Tuesday.
Task force member Brenda Powell pressed Hooper for details, while questioning his past statements that young blacks are not "indoctrinated" to become police officers, and that blacks may be failing health tests to become police because the food they eat leads to high blood pressure.
"Tell me one thing that you hope to do" to improve minority recruiting, said Powell, vice president of the Roanoke NAACP chapter.
Hooper responded that the department is planning a "number of things," including the formation of an internal group composed of police, city personnel and human resources officials, and a community member who is a former government official.
"We're trying to develop a plan that will get us to the grass roots and hopefully get us to the local applicants," Hooper said.
"I would like to reassure you and to affirm that there is no sinister, diabolical plot or a conspiracy to deny anyone access to the Police Department," he said.
But in response to another question, Hooper said that the city personnel department has the "basic responsibility" for recruiting. He added that internal efforts in the Police Department have been beefed up in the past eight months.
However, task force members have found a more active approach to minority recruiting in their interviews at the city Sheriff's Department and Fire Department and in the Lynchburg Police Deparment.
"They don't sit back and wait on personnel to bring the applications in," Claytor said. "They're successful because they're aggressively approaching the problem."
While most of the comments at the meeting focused on complaints about police, another topic of discussion was about how to better promote the positive aspects of the department.
Hooper has not advocated a hard-sell public relations approach to his department, which he acknowledged sometimes keeps the public from hearing about the "good news" within the department.
"It's real and it's sincere," he said. "But we have not packaged that and presented it to the public in a way that the public knows it."
As for the training that police receive in dealing with the public, Hooper said: "Based on what I've heard here today, it's obviously not enough."
by CNB