Austin Police Continue Mending Fences With Black Community After Teacher's Violent Arrest [VIDEO]

AUSTIN, TX -- Since dashcam video of the violent arrest of schoolteacher Breaion King emerged, police have focused outreach efforts to build bridges of understanding with the city's African American population.

Those outreach efforts are particularly acute in East Austin, where many of the city's minorities reside.

"There are so many wonderful things that are happening in this community where we’re number one on so many lists, but that wonderfulness is not being shared by everyone in our community," Mayor Steve Adler in a gathering on Saturday, as reported by Time Warner Cable News.

Adler spoke before a panel organized by the city’s African American Quality of Life Commission that examines myriad challenges facing the city's African American residents. Topping the list of challenges: Excessive police force, as illustrated dramatically by the Breaion King arrest video that send shock waves throughout the city.

The Austin American-Statesman newspaper secured the year-old footage just recently after a formal request for its release. Its emergence has heightened tensions between police and Austin's African American community that has already seen an unarmed black teenager, David Joseph, killed this year by police and another young African American tourist suing the city of Austin after being roughed up by cops.

Video of the latter incident also came to light, raising the ire of an already frustrated African American community who have long complained of police overreach.

• The video of the incident involving the tourist can be seen here. Warning: the video contains strong imagery and is laced with profanity.

The video showing a police officer forcing King from her car before throwing her to the ground during what began as a routine traffic stop has been hard to defend, even among top brass at the cop shop: "We have a review process where we look at all officers' use of force incidents, and in our opinion that system failed," Austin Police Departments officer Brian Manley, who serves as the APD's chief of staff, told panel members.

Previously, APD Chief Art Acevedo issued a public apology for the bad arrest.

Manley sought to assure those gathered that the questionable actions of a few police officers abusing their authority does not reflect the standard to which police as a whole adhere, Time Warner Cable quoted Manley as telling panel members.

The goal, he said, is "...to continue to have these discussions and to always work with the citizens in the community and the involved leaders toward solutions," Manley said.

But mounting frustration also was heard at the gathering: "If people don't start seeing the actual results from the conversations, if we don't start seeing tangible effects from these conversations, then people start losing faith in the system," Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition, said. "People start losing faith in our officials."

Read the full story at Time Warner Cable News >>