Different Views in Richmond on Policing After Tragedy in Dallas

I met up with Richmond police Sgt. Ernest Loucas at the end of a disturbing week. Police in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis had each shot and killed a black man, with video of the events going viral. Then at the end of the week a sniper targeting white cops had shot five Dallas police officers dead. Loucas looked exhausted. He said he’d been dealing with a migraine and was hoping to leave his shift early. The 42-year-old black sergeant said he was still feeling saddened and confused by the events of the past day.

Loucas wore a black band across the shield on his uniform in honor of the fallen officers in Dallas.

“It was such an impactful moment in time and history, we felt it was necessary to lower the flags and wear the black bands in honor of those officers who were there to simply do their jobs,” he said.

The night before, he’d been on duty when he started getting text messages and phone calls about the shooting of 14 police officers in Dallas. After his shift, he went home. As he watched the news, he began to realize that this tragedy was going to make his job a lot more difficult.

“I guess the trust [of police] has somewhat eroded,” he said. “But here in the city of Richmond we’re doing our very best to maintain that level of trust that we’ve spent a long time building.”

Richmond’s police department has been at the forefront of a national movement toward community policing. That has meant assigning officers to specific beats, addressing crime as a public health crisis, and hiring and training a diverse pool of officers.

As a defensive tactics instructor for the Richmond Police Department, it is Loucas' job to help with that training. He equips officers with handcuffing techniques and control holds -- which he says are all ways to avoid using lethal force. So, when he watches videos of police shootings, like those that occurred last week in Baton Rogue and Minnesota, he said he looks at them through a different lens than the rest of us.

“Quite frankly, I’m looking for mistakes that the officers may have made in their tactics to learn from them,” Loucas said.

In the decade since he joined the city’s police force, Loucas said he’s seen how positive community police relations can help keep officers safe and help them fight crime. But he also said just putting on the uniform and driving around in a marked vehicle makes him a target in some neighborhoods.

“There are people that don’t necessarily care for the police profession,” he said. “It may not necessarily be the officer, because I haven’t done anything personally to anyone. But because I wear the uniform I am on the other side of the fence, and therefore I’m that guy.”

Across town at Richmond's City Hall, Police Chief Allwyn Brown addressed a crowd of about 50 local residents, faith leaders and politicians gathered in front of City Hall to protest police violence.

Trying to shore up trust in his community, Brown told the small crowd that the legacy of police in America is negative, but his department is trying to change that.

"We are proud of the gains that we've made, but that's just today, right?" he said. "We are proud of the relationships that we've built up, but all relationships are based on trust and trust is fragile. And trust is an easy thing to break, so we don't take it lightly."

A local pastor led the group in prayers. And as the sun set, local resident and community activist Tamisha Walker joined others making their way back toward the parking lot. Walker said even after all the speeches and prayers at this gathering, she’s still disappointed that in a city of over 100,000 residents -- more than 30 percent of whom are African-American -- so few people showed up. And she said she's frustrated that the speakers, from faith leaders to politicians, didn’t really get to the point.

“I heard a lot of language around like we can do better,” she said. “And when I hear 'we,' I would like to know who is the 'we' 'cause the reality is all our lives people in dark bodies in this country have been told that we could do better. And we still get killed in the streets.”

Walker said the killing of five police officers in Dallas was tragic, and that nobody should have to lose their lives in that way.

“But the other thing is that, you know, they signed up for a risky job," she said. "Like they said, they risk their lives every day for their communities. I don’t sign up to be killed in my car at a traffic stop. I don’t sign up for that.”

While Richmond’s police force is unusual in its community policing efforts, Walker said, her community still can’t afford to be silent or complacent. And as a black woman and a mother to two boys, she said it’s her challenge to keep this conversation alive.