we can definitely do better. And as far as ‘the war,’ it may seem that way, but I can speak from a Pomona standpoint. There is no war,” Terrell said, before continuing to answer questions about everything from traffic stops to police training and background checks.

The 2-hour meeting encapsulated long-simmering tensions between Black and Brown communities with police, exacerbated by decades of highly public, nationwide incidences of police brutality — from the beating of Rodney King Jr. to the killings of Tyisha Miller, Breonna Taylor, Tyre Nichols, and many more.

For Chará Swodeck, this meeting was one of many she hopes will promote a badly needed dialogue aimed at promoting reconciliation and healing between local Black residents and police.

The Alliance, or “four A’s” as Swodeck calls it, was first organized in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The recent meeting in Pomona came just days after the release of a video depicting the fatal beating of Nichols by five Memphis police officers now facing murder charges. Those officers, who have since been fired, pleaded not guilty to charges Friday.

While Terrell decried Nichols’ death — calling the accused officers “beasts” — he encouraged attendees to assess departments and officers on an individual basis.

Not all agreed with that guidance.

Phelisha Licerio, who trekked from her home in Eastvale out to the Pomona meeting, explained later that she felt the onus was more on civilians than police officers to be accountable for behavior.

“I feel like there wasn’t a discussion from the officer around the systemic issues that occur,” Licerio said. “Unfortunately, you know, when it comes to what happened in Memphis and other places, or even with George Floyd, Eric Garner … when someone is emboldened enough to just kill a person in front of a bunch of people, it is a systemic issue.”

Likewise, Garey Lett, a decadeslong resident of Pomona, said he supports local police and “would move to another country” if police were abolished, but feels there are underlying systemic issues with American policing.

“I do think that they hire people with the propensity to judge people based on ethnicity, especially Black. Because when you look at the formation of policing, where it stemmed from, you know, in our country, it really comes out of slavery,” Lett said. “I think that is still kind of built-in. But here again, I know that they are not having classes on how to mistreat Black folk or Latino people.”

Swodeck hopes the dialogue facilitated by the Alliance can be productive in building trust between community members and the police. As Swodeck explained, there is a collective pain experienced after police brutality gains widespread national attention.

“Even though it happened in Memphis, Tennessee, with Mr. Nichols, it still hit home for me, knowing that my brother and my nephew are right up the street,” said Swodeck, who has family in the city. “My family is in Athens and Jackson and Nashville and Chattanooga. You know, this is not far-fetched.”

Elsewhere in Southern California, protests sprung up in Hollywood, Venice, Anaheim and downtown Los Angeles, among other places, following the release of the violent Memphis video. After the video came out, LAPD Community Safety Partnership Bureau Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides said she was directly contacted by community members. One person even called at “five in the morning” asking what “the next move” was, she said.

“People were afraid, people were sad, people were angry. But we all knew how everyone felt because we all sit at the table and have the communication and discussions on how to prevent things like this from happening,” Tingirides said. “And we had discussions from the community saying, ‘Wow, LAPD has come a long way,’ and some community members saying ‘We know, you know, that wouldn’t happen here in our organization.'”

But LAPD still shoots and kills Black people at a rate higher than almost any other ethnic group in Los Angeles, far out of proportion to the size of their community.

Only Hispanic residents face a greater rate of violent encounters with LAPD officers, and even then they are the subjects of shootings and other uses of force at a rate higher than their population.

In 2021, Black people were involved in nearly 20% of the incidents in which LAPD officers fired their guns during an encounter, whether they were hit or not. That’s despite Black Los Angeles residents making up just 8% of the city’s residents.

Hispanic people were involved in 65% of police shootings while making up just 47% of the city’s population.

Those numbers come from LAPD’s annual audit of its use-of-force incidents.

For years, LAPD leaders have insisted the department has changed, and the CSP is part of that effort. Today, the department describes itself as a modern police force embracing reform and diversity in its ranks.

The CSP program is a hallmark of LAPD’s attempts to shift from a boots-on-the-ground, quasi-militaristic law enforcement agency to one focused on talking with residents to solve quality-of-life issues.

The partnership embeds officers for a five-year term in affordable housing communities across East and South Los Angeles, including in Watts, Boyle Heights and Ramona Gardens, according to Tingirides. These “sites” have “high crime rates,” heavily Black and Brown populations, and a historic mistrust of the police, according to Tingirides.

For the officers in these areas, Tingirides said the primary focus is on connection and relationship-building through walking the beat, going to community events, and getting to know the locals personally.

While CSP officers are armed and functionally equivalent to any other LAPD officer, those on patrol don’t have time to focus on relationship-building because they are constantly going “from radio call to radio call,” Tingirides said.

Ultimately, Tingirides said the goal is “to not need a CSP Bureau” and for all of LAPD police culture to be rooted in CSP’s principles.

“Everything within the LAPD breathes transparency,” Tingirides said. “CSP is transparency. It’s relationship building — internally and externally, out into the community. It’s listening. It’s truth and reconciliation. And it’s allowing unarmed response, like intervention workers, to be part of this public safety approach and model. And it is the future of policing.”

Tingirides did not have any data on how the partnership’s effect on the use of force or deadly encounters with police and civilians. She said, anecdotally, that LAPD has found success with the program.

“We have found that the relationships that we have in these communities help us deescalate, to diffuse views, and have less chances of us having physical contact or getting into a use of force,” Tingirides said.

The LAPD audit also showed the rate at which Black people in Los Angeles continue to be subject to what critics would describe as overpolicing: While shootings get much of the focus, Black people were also stopped and detained at far higher rates than every ethnic group except Hispanics.

Despite their smaller numbers, Black people were subject to 26% of LAPD’s field detentions in 2021, compared to 50% for Hispanic people and 16% for White people.

An audit of traffic stops from 2019 showed the problem with this kind of policing, and illustrated many of the frustrations Black and Hispanic communities have with LAPD’s conduct.

That year, from stops initiated by officers for minor traffic or vehicle equipment violations — say, a driver ran a red light or they had a broken taillight — Black people were subjected to 27% of stops, while Hispanic people made up 47% of stops.

Yet these groups were not being arrested at higher rates than White people who were also stopped. And officers were not finding what they were looking for — guns and drugs — at a higher rate than White people who were stopped for the same reasons at lower rates.

From those stops of Black and Hispanic drivers, LAPD officers found guns and drugs just 2% of the time. Arrest rates for drivers showed a similar trend: Black and Hispanic drivers were arrested about 2% of the time. But when White drivers were stopped, officers arrested them 13% of the time.

The statistics reflect a glaring reality: White people in Los Angeles were being stopped after officers suspected them of actually committing crimes. But Black and Hispanic people were being stopped for, essentially, a simple suspicion that they might have guns and drugs.

Since that audit, LAPD has shifted and banned the types of stops officers were initiating for crime suppression reasons alone.

And LAPD now requires officers to state why they’re stopping someone while their body cameras are recording the encounter.

James Nelson, who grew up in Watts and is an organizer with the local social justice group Dignity and Power Now, said he doesn’t feel the CSP partnership is an effective method to address the lack of trust between police and marginalized communities.

“To me, it’s them just being opportunists on the hurt and the suffering of a community. And their solution to it is more officers, this task force, that task force — it’s always about (upping) their numbers,” Nelson said. “Offer folks in these communities services, real jobs, you know, just real help.”

Fellow organizer Helen Jones, who also grew up in Watts, echoed Nelson and called for “transparency” rather than additional policing.

“Until we put different alternatives in the communities, we’re going to get the same,” Jones said. “It’s shoot first, and ask questions later. And that’s what needs to stop. And we need transparency. But other than that, it will be no trust until that happens.”

For Jones, Tyre Nichols was another in a long list of names before and after George Floyd’s murder, including her own son John Horton, who she said died in 2009 at the hands of L.A. County Sheriff’s Department deputies while in custody at Men’s Central Jail, although authorities ruled his death an apparent suicide.

“It is happening in every city, it is happening in every state, it’s just most stuff is not caught on camera,” Jones said. “And we know it all to be true because we know so many families, so many mothers are hurting and will be traumatized — and will be going through this trauma for the rest of their lives. Because I’m living with it. And I’ve been living with it for 14 years. And believe me, this just didn’t just start with John.”

Albert Corado, an organizer with the Los Angeles-based group Peoples’ City Council, has a similar connection to what he described as police violence. His sister, 27-year-old Mely Corado, died after police shot her during their pursuit of another person almost five years ago. No officers were charged in her death, and the Los Angeles Police Commission later ruled the officers acted within department policy.

“My sister was shot and killed at the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s in 2018. After that happened, I kind of got involved with the local activist scene and have been fighting for police abolition,” Corado said.

Corado said he was deeply saddened by the Nichols video, but felt the national and local statements — from President Joe Biden to the LAPD, which described his killing as “repugnant” — would not substantively change policing.

“To me, Tyre Nichols, that’s going to make a big splash. But ultimately, the only people who learn any lessons from that are the activists and the organizers, and obviously, the families of these people,” Corado said. “And to (police), maybe they took the hit for a few weeks on a PR level. But ultimately, they’re the ones that end up with more money, and ultimately, more support from their most ardent supporters. “

In Corado’s view, to promote public safety, government funding should be directed toward local enrichment — think community centers and creating jobs, instead of a greater police presence. Corado said he feels this is relevant given that crime has risen, despite increases in LAPD’s funding.

The Peoples’ Budget Los Angeles coalition, led by the local chapter of Black Lives Matter, calls for “drastic changes to L.A.’s budget, including a new approach to public safety and substantial investments in Black and Brown communities,” according to its website.

Alongside his organizing work, Corado said he attended protests after the Nichols video’s release, as well as a vigil for the 29-year-old from Sacramento.

At the vigil, Corado reflected and realized that “the fact that he has to know who Nichols is” indicates a larger struggle still unfolding nationally and locally. He pointed to the death of Keenan Anderson — who suffered a cardiac arrest following a traffic stop in Venice on Jan. 3 after officers Tasered him six times in less than a minute — as a recent example close to home.

“People took to the streets and started this conversation, but then we didn’t really get anything from what we were asking for from police,” Corado said of the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. “If George Floyd, or even if you know, Eric Garner, or Trayvon Martin, any of those (deaths) had actually changed anything, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.”