Dozens of Lawrence community members gathered Saturday morning to brainstorm solutions to barriers between the community and police. Their comments boiled down to one overarching message: We’re all humans, and we need to treat each other as such.

The meeting was the second part of a workshop hosted by the Lawrence Police Department and facilitated by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Several dozen community members gathered at Lawrence High School last weekend, too, for the first part of the workshop that aims to “improve trust and develop partnerships between police and community members.”

People last week voiced concerns ranging from how officers could show more compassion and preparedness in crises to making downtown feel safer. They identified several key barriers, and the top one identified was “A sense of them vs. us.”

This week’s session was intended to identify solutions to those barriers. Participants — including many returning from last week as well as many joining the conversation — were numbered off into five groups to brainstorm, then returned as a full group to discuss their proposed solutions.

Community members, including several who are involved in law enforcement, said they believe more communication and engagement will lead to better outcomes and more trust. Other common themes included more training, more community involvement and more transparency.

Improving transparency can be as simple as LPD sharing the department’s demographic data, one group suggested.

“A lot of people say that they want the police department to reflect the community they live in, but they don’t actually know what the police department looks like,” one participant said. “From my experience working with the police department, I’ve seen a wide variety of people, and I think it’s good for the police department to show that side of them.”

Some participants suggested creating a step in police policymaking to involve the community in that process.

Some said people should check their own biases, such as in regards to people who are unhoused.

“At the end of the day, this is an ‘us’ problem,” Andrew Dalager said. “If we feel unsafe because someone was sitting on the corner — just sitting on the corner … maybe the issue is not that the police aren’t doing enough. Maybe we have biases that need to be managed.”

Dalager’s group suggested that actual data, and comparisons to other communities that are similar to Lawrence, could be helpful to see crime versus perceptions that people have.

And just because someone is saying something or they look different from you doesn’t mean there’s an emergency problem there, Jack Dolan said.

Dolan said his group thought police should remember their code of ethics, and that they’re here to serve all people — “regardless of if this mental health crisis is happening in a house in west Lawrence, if it’s somebody traveling through town, or with somebody that lives in one of the parks, that we’re all people, and address those situations with the same dignity and respect every time you go to one.”

And that sentiment should apply in all directions. “Treat people as people,” Dolan summarized.

Several other topics were included in the conversation, among them:

• Some in attendance were not aware that there is already a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council that aims to bring numerous perspectives to the table to discuss and resolve issues in the Douglas County criminal legal system. One group said they thought the CJCC should be better publicized and more accessible.

(The CJCC’s next meeting is to discuss the group’s bylaws. That’s set for 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 13 at the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center or via Zoom at this link. Future meetings will be listed at this link.)

• Another suggestion was for LPD to try to separate the department from national narratives and be transparent about what’s actually happening in Lawrence.

One group said people should be aware of the social media they’re consuming, as algorithms tend to show more polarizing content based on the posts you interact with — “rage bait,” Aris Grady said her generation calls one-sided posts that aim to elicit emotional responses.

“It’s extremely important to have self-accountability for the type of social media experience you curate, and acknowledge both sides of an argument,” she said. “When you use facts and do your best to take inherent bias out of the situation, you are better able to find solutions that don’t further polarize the situation.”

• One suggestion to potentially help LPD with both hiring and with engaging in the community was to create a pathway for high school students who are interested to start learning about a law enforcement career as part of their curriculum or as an internship.

• A suggestion to improve inclusivity was that LPD’s Blue Santa program, which provides Christmas gifts for kids at no cost to their families, could include people who don’t celebrate Christmas.

Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart said at the end of the meeting that he wanted the community to hold him accountable for the department to accomplish some of these tasks over the next six months, and if they don’t, to reach out to local news reporters.

“We’re going to implement ideas from this, and I don’t want you to feel like your time was wasted,” Lockhart said.

He said as an example that he loved the idea for the community to be involved in department policymaking.

“Let’s see how that works,” he said.

The DOJ facilitators will also provide a report about the sessions.

One of the facilitators said another question people had raised was regarding mental health statistics for Lawrence. She said the DOJ’s report will include that data.

Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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