Montgomery County’s sixth annual Dialogue on Race (DOR) was held Saturday, Jan. 20 at Christiansburg Middle School. Over 30 people from the county and nearby communities attended the day-long seminar and workshops that included an impressive host of speakers, including the chiefs of both the Blacksburg and Christiansburg Police Departments.
Dr. Wornie Reed, a steering committee member for the DOR and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech, addressed the group concerning local law enforcement issues. Reed was armed with an arsenal of carefully collected data from both the Blacksburg and Christiansburg Police Departments.
“The purpose is to eliminate racial profiling in Montgomery County,” Reed told the crowd. “We also seek to have police personnel resemble the racial make-up of the county.”
In addition, Reed said that his law enforcement focus group seeks to improve police/community relations.
“There was a feeling on the part of minorities that racial profiling was an issue here and that police departments did not reflect the racial make-up of Montgomery County, so the local police departments agreed to work with us to see if racial profiling was really going on.”
Reed said it took his focus group more than a year to put data together compiling statistics from every traffic related arrest in Montgomery County and the result was that Blacks were stopped more often than Whites for all offenses in all jurisdictions of the county. Traffic stops and other kinds of vehicular violations were both closely evaluated.
“We are just beginning to analyze the data,” Reed explained. “The police chiefs asked us to dig deeper.”
Reed and his focus group will continue to work with law enforcement to dig deeper, but some improvements have occurred over the last two years, according to Reed.
Chief Anthony Wilson of the Blacksburg Police Department (BPD) said that one of his departments’ first missions was to try to understand why more Blacks were not being recruited to the force.
“What were the barriers to getting into law enforcement?” Wilson asked himself and his team.
As a result, the BPD increased its presence in the local high school so that officers could become mentors who would positively influence students.
“We would grow our own police officers,” Wilson said. “We also helped to set up a scholarship for young African American high school students funded by New River Community College (NRCC).” The Books to Badges Program (part of Access to College Education (ACCE) at NRCC), provides two free years of education for law enforcement candidates who meet the criteria. In turn, students provide 80 or more hours of community service.
Over 300 hundred young people signed up for the program last week in the county, according to Wilson, who is now working to establish volunteer-manned study halls for students.
Annie Whitaker, Director of Human Resources for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), addressed the issue of diversity hiring initiatives within the school system. She reported that African Americans made up 10 % of all new hires, a 5 % increase from 2016.
Black students from Christiansburg High School were interviewed and asked why it was important to hire people who looked like them. Several students said that diversity created understanding and understanding promoted learning.
Penny Franklin, a steering committee member and DOR founding member, ended the morning session by saying: “As you’ve heard and seen, for the last five years we’ve been doing some real work here. We wanted to be proactive, ahead of the curve if problems came up.”
The DOR is currently broken up into five primary focus groups that meet in Montgomery County on a regular basis. Citizens who would like like to learn more about the valuable paradigm presented by this program may contact Franklin at onlyonepenny@gmail.com.
