MMWA Better Together

Open and honest that's the conversation you can be part of tomorrow on Mid-Morning with Aundrea.

Death.

Vo direct.

Open and honest.éé that's the conversation you can be part of tomorrow on mid morning with aundrea.éé beginning at 9 am wednesday morning, wcbi's aundrea self sits down with columbus police chief fred shelton, starkville assistant chief henry stewart and state representatives kabir karriem - district 41 and cheikh taylor - house district 38 to talk about race, how we see each other, how we treat each other, and how we can do better together.éé in part one of the conversation, the panel talks about policing, trust and turning protests into policy.éé sot rep.

Kabir karriem when i got in the legislature, one of the things that i helped coauthor, was a bill to teach our children how to engage with law enforcement.

Aundrea self: mm-hmm .

Rep.

Kabir karreim: that law passed and also teaching them their constitutional rights.

Whereas some communities might not have the relationships in their community, but if you teach a child how to engage with law enforcement, that could save someone's life, on both ends.

Rep cheikh taylor i want to make sure that the onus is not completely on the citizen.

Our officers in law enforcement go through hundreds of hours of training.

Chief fred shelton: that's right.

Rep cheikh taylor: and are able to be certified, able to be taught different tactics to de-escalate.

But that person on the side of the road has no training at all.

And... but yet is expected to behave in a certain type of manner.

We have a policing problem in united states.

Chief fred shelton: first, we have to start with trust.

And again, what has to happen is, we have to service the people that we protect.

And again, when a relationship is broken and there are some things that go awry, we have to come to the table and talk about it.

So, one of the things that i think we... at this point, we should train the police officers better to communicate with the public, do some de-escalation techniques, as well as train the public on what they need to do and how they need to respond.

Asst chief henry stewart but one of the things that we want to make sure we do, continue to provide a credible service to the community.

No matter what the situation is, we got to continue to protect the citizens of starkville.

And we got to do it in the highest degree of accountability, and a degree of professionalism.

That's an edited version of the conversation you can see here tomorrow.éé that's mid morning with aundrea airing at 9:00 a.m.

On wcbi tv.éé first