Burlington County Forum Explores Police, Community Interactions

BURLINGTON COUNTY, NJ — Local officials and law enforcement agencies discussed interactions between police and community members, and the role public officials can play in community relations during a recent forum.

Burlington County's new Minority and Equality Rights Task Force held its first public forum on Oct. 29, and it centered on the issue of Police Interactions with the Minority Communities. It was held virtually.

“All police departments approach community policing in different ways,” said Burlington City Police Chief John Fine, who said it begins with the selection of officers. “We want good officers who grew up here and didn’t grow up here. That mix makes the department better.”

Police they need to be able to identify the needs of the people in the town. Communication with local officials also helps, as does communication between the police, the town and civic groups.

“Before each march, we meet with the town’s police chief about what their officers do,” South Jersey activist Boaz Matlack said. “We want to know if their officers get out of their cars and speak with the people they police. If they don’t do that, if they just sit in their cars all day, they don’t really represent their community. What we’ve found in Burlington County is that people know their police officers by name. They talk with police, and members of the community understand how they can connect with police.”

“It’s important to be out talking to people,” said Moorestown Mayor Nicole Gillespie, who is a member of the task force. “Our job as elected officials is to find out what’s happening, to talk to residents about their experiences.”

She had the chance to do just that during a Black Lives Matter rally in Moorestown over the summer. Read more here: Peaceful Protest In Moorestown Honors George Floyd

“One of our key roles is to be between residents and law enforcement, and to understand what’s happening on both sides to the best of our ability,” Gillespie said.

She also said officials can play a role when members of the community have an issue with the local police.

“Our township manager oversees the police department, but all of us have a role to play,” Gillespie said. “I have a good relationship with the chief and our township manager. Your elected officials are there to advocate for you. They should know what’s going on.”

Anyone who has an issue with police can also go to the department and file a complaint, Fine said. Reports can be filed confidentially, and they can also be filed on behalf of someone else.

If they don’t feel comfortable filing a complaint with the police department where the officer works, they can also go to a different town’s police department, the county prosecutor, or the Attorney General with their complaint.

The NAACP also has a complaint form residents can fill out, according to Southern Burlington County NAACP President Crystal Charley-Sibley.

The hope is that residents don’t have complaints to file about police officers in the first place, of course. The Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office recently centralized its implicit bias training, so that the training is the same for police departments across the county.

Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, according to the Kirwan Institute of Ohio State University. They can be favorable or unfavorable, but they are involuntary and are often developed from a young age through a person’s own experiences.

The training includes use-of-force and de-escalation training. Putting it in one location gives everyone the same training and the same understanding, Evesham Police Chief Christopher Chew said.

“There is not one chief I saw who wasn’t begging for this,” Chew said, adding that “New Jersey has the strictest standards on accountability.”

Sibley said it’s important to track the behavior of officers after training, to recognize that disparities do still exist, and to do something to change that.

This was the first in a series of forums that will be hosted by the task force. The group is charged with devising ways the county can combat systemic racism and support equality for all, no matter race, color, gender, nationality, religion or sexual orientation. Read more here: Burlington County Establishes Civil Rights Task Force