Local leaders react to Dallas officer shootings

Here at home, local leaders responded Friday to the Dallas officer shootings

They called for the community to open the channels of dialogue. During the meeting emotions ran high.

“They don’t understand what hundreds of years of oppression can do,” Joe Harmon said.

Harmon talked about the white population. He said retaliation isn’t the answer.

“I totally get it. I totally get why people are so upset, people who don’t have a voice and they’ve been discriminated against for 250 years,” Harmon said.

Harmon asked Henry Allen, with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to help white people understand what blacks are going through.

“I struggle with that internally. I don’t want people to get hurt but I empathize with people that don’t have a voice,” said Harmon.

Members of the community also said it comes down to needing to understand one another.

Orian Flournoy is a pastor at a local Baptist church. He responded to Harmon as well, and fears people are stereotyping the black community as angry and ignorant.

“We are loving folks. We are respectable folks,” said Flournoy.

He believes the issues stem from both sides.

“Shame on the police officers that carried out their part of it and shame on the young man who carried out this part of it,” said Flournoy.

The leaders on the panel expressed their sadness.

“There was some wet eyes in my department,” said Fountain Police Department Chief Christopher Herberer.

“They put their lives on the line every day and expect to lose them,” said Henry Allen.

All called for a change here in Southern Colorado.

“You set very high standards for the law enforcement departments and you recruit people to those standards,” Mayor John Suthers said.

“Within a few weeks the Colorado Springs Police Department is going to step up with body-worn cameras for our police officers. By October everyone in uniform will have a camera,” Police Chief Pete Carey said.

Police chiefs and the sheriff also expressed they don’t see any threats to any protests or any large events.