When it comes to how safe people feel in our community, Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood says, “People’s perception becomes their reality.”

While Chapel Hill and Orange County are, overall, safe places to live and work, recent local events such as the shooting of three Muslim college students have left many unsettled.

Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue says the shooting opened his eyes to segments of the population who don’t feel connected to law enforcement.

“We learned very clearly there, where we thought we had just about every portion of our community served, a significant portion of our community -area Muslims- didn’t feel real connected to law enforcement or a broader array of services,” says Blue.

Additionally, national protests sparked by the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Missouri have many questioning the role police play when called to intervene.

Blue says it’s important to build community relationships before tragedy strikes.

“I think it’s something you have to stay at all the time and be finding ways to be together and communicate and build relationships so you’re not exchanging business cards on the day of a crisis,” says Blue. “When you really need to draw on those relationships is not the time to form them.”

Blackwood agrees and says his deputies are piloting a program to meet residents in local fire stations as a way to build trust in the community.

“We’re stating to embrace the idea of, if one of our officers needs to talk with someone in a community that’s not close to our office, and it can’t be held on the telephone, we’re asking them to meet us at the fire station,” says Blackwood. “The citizen learns a little about what that fire station stands for, they feel comfortable walking across that threshold, and they’re likely to come back if they need something.”

Orange County Justice United Member Stephanie Perry said in order to build trust throughout the community police and residents need to address their implicit biases.

“We have got to get back to a place where we are humanizing people versus de-humanizing people, and we have got to get to a place where we are relying less and less on weapons of destruction and more on tools that foster love and humanity between us,” says Perry. “I know that sounds idealistic, but it’s really not.”

Blue and Blackwood say confronting bias is a continuous process for their officers.

“Your own confrontation of your bias is a unique and personal journey, yet we all have a responsibility for that reflection and analysis,” says Blue. “When in you’re in positions of some authority or public responsibility, the expectation that your journey is moving along at a faster pace is a reasonable one to have, because it should, to meet that community expectation that you are well on your way.”

You can listen to the full discussion from the 2015 WCHL forum panel on safety and tolerance here.

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