By Kayli Reese
“I refuse to hate” is the theme of A Community United, a new local movement aiming to tackle the tough topic of how best to bridge the gap between the Iowa City community and its police officers.
The second meeting of the movement was held at the University of Iowa Police Department on Sunday. Over the course of an hour, community members discussed the best way to spread the word on their ideas and goals.
Many different people from the community attended the meeting, including police officers, Black Lives Matter supporters, UI residence assistants, and a UI Student Government representative.
Alton Poole, the UI police communications outreach specialist, said he invited others, such as city officials and other various community leaders, who chose not to attend.
Iowa City community member Elisa Creekmur started Community United with her husband, Paul, and UI police Officer Jackie Anderson. She said she personally feels a strong need to create awareness between Iowa City and the police before any significant trouble occurs between the two groups.
“We need to come together to avoid becoming part of the headlines,” she said.
Creekmur has worked as a dispatcher and is familiar with officers in the Iowa City area. While Iowa City has some of the best cops around, she said, the situation still is not perfect.
“Everyone wants to be treated with respect,” she said. “Everyone just wants to get home to their loved ones at the end of the day.”
Anderson said she sees the need to broaden the view of not viewing any party as the enemy in this discussion. As an officer, she said, she doesn’t like the recent negativity affiliated with the job, but she chose and loves the position she holds in the community.
“I can take my uniform off at the end of the day,” she said. “If you’re a minority, you can’t take that off.”
UI police Officer Gabby Blanchard-Shreck proposed better educating community members on the inner workings of the police force by providing a class in which the community can come see how police officers operate, she said. Community United is planning on furthering the idea of the class at its next meeting. With the class, Blanchard-Shreck said, both parties will have a transparent view of the issues needed to be looked into.
Poole said Community United also should identify the best groups and individuals who can help spread the movement’s message throughout Iowa City.
With similar discussions and groups he’s been a part of in the past, he said, a lot of talk was given but with no resulting action. Community United instead will come up with ways to bring about interaction between the community and officers and on ways to overcome their differences, he said.
An important part of bridging this gap, Poole said, is to make people aware of any issues that may be present but not explicitly clear. Learning vicariously through others’ experiences can really open people’s eyes to a tense situation they may not have considered much before, he said.
“As Martin Luther King said, ‘There are a lot of good white people,’ ” Poole said. “ ‘You just need to wake them up.’ ”
