A panel of Lake Charles policemen took questions from the public during a forum held at the Lake Charles Civic Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday to promote unity.

The event, “A Call for Unity and Understanding,” was sponsored by the Lake Charles Police Department, Impact Lake Charles Americorps and the Lake Charles Mayor’s Youth Partnership. The event also involved roundtable discussions on a variety of topics.

“One thing about Martin Luther King, he wanted us to be safe in everything he did,” said LCPD Lt. T.J. Bell, who was one of the moderators of the event. “I think right now with what’s going on around the country, I think it would be great to bridge a trust to show the community that we are a trusting people, call us when you need us. I think that’s what Martin Luther King would want us to do because he would want us to work with each other.”

“Dialogue is always important,” said Darol King, who attended the event at the invitation of a friend. “Rev. Martin Luther King was a catalyst for getting races together to dialogue. So, I think it’s appropriate and it’s needed. We need to come together and talk about our differences. A lot of times I think we’ll find out that we’re not so different as we may think.”

The panel answered questions such as how officers decide to use force, how officers should react when a subject reaches into their pockets, whether it is legal to video officers making an arrest, why officers use lethal force and why they don’t fire warning shots or shoot for lower extremities.

Officers don’t fire warning shots because they could “go anywhere,” Lt. Kirk Carroll said. When asked whether officers fire “to kill or wound,” Caroll said the purpose of an officer firing upon a subject is to “stop a threat.” Police are trained to fire “until the threat is no longer a threat,” he said.

People have the “freedom of speech” to video officers making arrest, Capt. Arnold Bellow said, but advised those doing so to make sure they did not obstruct the officers.

King said that while didn’t agree with all the answers the police gave about use of lethal force, he learned some things about how officers are trained to respond in “some of the scenarios, the split-second decisions they have to make.”

“Through talking with them more extensively, I got a better outlook on things,” King said. “We all have to have a respect for authority; We all have to. And I think if parents modeled that more to their children, maybe we wouldn’t have the confrontational attitudes that we do have when we encounter not only policemen, people of authority, period — teachers, pastors.”

After the forum, Bell said that he does not believe that Lake Charles has the same level of distrust as other areas of the country.

“I think we’ve been pretty blessed in Lake Charles,” Bell said. “We’ve got a great police chief in Don Dixon who believes that we have to respect the people and show the people that you are working for them and not working against them. A lot of the things that happened around the country, that was 20 to 30 years that had been boiling and I think that’s why we have panels like this to try to stop something like that.

“You don’t wait and have a panel after it happens, you’ve got to be proactive.”

Lake Charles Councilwoman Luvertha August, who attended the event, made a similar comment.

“I kind of think that we have a very progressive police department,” she said. “I’ve been working with them since I was elected. They are very good to work with, they are proactive in their way of thinking. Situations that are going on in other communities, they already have taken steps to not have that happen here.’

(MGNonline)