Many of 21-year-old Chris Robinson’s friends have a negative perception of police. In a recent interview, he said he can’t name one of his friends who would say, “’Oh, I don’t mind the police.’”

“I’m probably the only one and even I’m kind of borderline,” he said with a chuckle. “Yeah most of them don’t like the police because we haven’t received anything positive from them.”

Robinson is a Renton High School graduate and currently attends Highline Community College. He works with youth as a program manager at the non-profit organization CryOut!, a group that uses music, dance, visual arts and workshops to empower teens.

Although police in Renton seem to be a little bit more attune to the city’s diverse population, Robinson said he feels a situation like the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer is possible anywhere.

Others who work with youth also agree that Renton has the potential for such a case and more can be done to foster better relationships between the police and communities of color.

Robinson hasn’t encountered police behaving “overly aggressive” in Renton, but he has in Tukwila. He’s been pulled over for mistaken identity and watched a friend get rough treatment for “flipping off.”

“I feel like police officers are kind of like, not robots, but they’re kind of like always on the edge,” said Robinson. “And I don’t know if it’s because they’re always afraid, but they’re always this close . . .,” he said, indicating a tiny inch with his fingers. “You almost have to make them feel as comfortable as possible. This is definitely coming from a man of color because I don’t feel white people have to do that.”

Robinson has learned from observing his community and his parents how to behave around the police. He does fear for his safety around cops. His fear is built on how he was raised, he said, and history, the history of police brutality in the African- American community in general.

A lack of trust

“I think a fundamental issue that’s going on here is our young people, especially of color, they don’t trust the police,” said Celestine Ezinkwo.

He is the executive director of CryOut!. Ezinkwo has worked with kids in his program for six years in Renton.

In that time, Ezinkwo has only encountered two black and one Asian police officer and so sees the local police force as predominantly white. This stands in sharp contrast to the demographics of Renton, where more than half the population is people of color.

“So what that does is it creates an environment where these young people already have stereotypes of white cops being crooked cops,” he said.

Cases like Michael Brown’s and Trayvon Martin’s only compound youth’s fears, Ezinkwo said, and he’s troubled by the frequency of them.

“So the issue of Ferguson could very well happen in Renton just because of how things are set up,” he said.

Of Renton’s 113 commissioned police officers, seven are black, 12 are Asian and two are Hispanic. The demographics for the department’s non-commissioned staff isn’t any more diverse. There are 30 total, with 24 white staff, two black, two Asian and two Hispanic staff members.

Renton Police Chief Kevin Milosevich has said it remains a problem for many departments nationwide to hire officers of color for various reasons. Not a lot of people of color are pursuing jobs on the force and the pay isn’t competitive with other professions, he said.

Healing a disconnection

The lack of a more diverse array of officers seems to be creating a disconnect in the community. To Robinson, the Michael Brown case is important because “there were some ignorant people who thought racism was dead and prejudice was over.”

He thinks there is more that officers can do within the community to let people know that they care.

To Ezinkwo, it would be healthier if police officers interacted with kids in classrooms and community centers before they hit the streets. What he sees is a “situation where both sides think they’re fighting and they’re going to keep fighting, when the only interaction they have is out in the open streets, if we don’t engage in healthy interactions between the police and our young people.”

The only exception to this rule is Renton High School’s School Resource Officer Jeff Reynolds, Ezinkwo said.

School resource officers are police officers assigned to cover the high schools and be accessible to all feeder schools to the high schools. Currently, the school district and the city are working to place school resource officers at all high schools. All three African Americans interviewed for this story cited Reynolds’ work as an example of positive community engagement.

“Every student in Renton trusts Officer Reynolds because Officer Reynolds is there with them in their school,” said Ezinkwo. “Matter of fact, they don’t even think of him as an officer; they think of him as being there to balance things out.”

Officer Reynolds has a lot of credibility with the students because he “decided to go into the community and be a part of it versus just flying in,” Ezinkwo said.

Robinson remembers his days at Renton High and he considers Reynolds his friend. The officer acted cool, calm and collected, Robinson said. Even if the student was a bad kid, Reynolds didn’t treat them like a convict or an enemy, he said.

“So yeah when they (police) ask me to do something, I always do it out of fear,” said Robinson. “Officer Reynolds, if he asked me to do something, it’d be out of respect and because I do know that he has my best interest at heart, which is totally different from how I view other police officers in the world.”

Ezinkwo said he has kids in his program who have punched officers in the face because they got pulled over for just being black.

“They’re upset. So to me, if the police wants peace, they need to walk a peaceful road,” he said. “But if their training tells them the first thing you do is get big, you go crazy on the kid, the kid’s gonna go crazy back on you.

Training

Renton police officers do receive training specific to dealing with kids, according to Officer Robert Dreher, training coordinator for the department.

“We do conduct in-service training related to juveniles,” he said, in an email. “Much of this training is regarding the social and mental health services that can assist officers in finding a placement resource, treatment/mental health program, or other solution to an underlying causal factor of the juvenile’s behavior.”

Officers can also seek out voluntary youth-related training in addition to the in-service training that the receive. Topics for this type of training include dealing with mental health issues, suicidal subjects, violent youth, youth sexual exploitation and gangs, among other topics.

School Resource Officer Reynolds has many years of school and youth specific training, “including active shooter response, suicidal youth, school safety training, terrorist response training, crisis intervention, youth sexual exploitation and trafficking, gang awareness, at-risk youth, and the Cops and Kids program,” said Dreher.

Reynolds is also a Youth Critical Incident Team trainer.

A remedy

As a community advocate, Ezinkwo knows a lot of the officers in the neighborhood by name and he speaks to them when they come around to the Harambee Center, where CryOut! is located. Some of his students think he’s a sellout for speaking with the officers, but he reminds them that they’re just there to say “hi.”

He encourages healthy interaction between the two, but says kids are scared of the cops because they carry a powerful weapon, cops aren’t seen as rational and they’re viewed as racist.

“I think our youth have a hard time because of history and in order for history to be re-done, we need to get in a room and tell a different story,” Ezinkwo said. “We need to meet each other, we need to hear from each other’s hearts to trust each other.”

The Renton Youth Advocacy Center is making headway in that direction. Every year the Renton Police Department helps the center host its All-City Hoop Shoot. Police officers participate by cheering on the high school contestants and passing out prizes.

The event is to “let cops see that these are normal kids, just like a white kid; they’re the same and to let the kids know that cops, they’re not all bad,” said John Houston, RYAC executive director.

Houston supports the local police department and thinks that it is the most diverse department compared to the rest of City Hall. But, he said, more could be done to engage kids in the classroom and the community.

“I don’t know if Renton’s too big, but keeping a police officer in the same neighborhood, not always moving them to different areas of the city, so they get to know the kids,” Houston said, would be beneficial.

Police officers also stop by the center, which is located in Tiffany Park, to interact with students there.

Houston, who grew up in Renton, was taught at an early age that the police aren’t your friends. He observed those same ideas among the young people he supports at the center after the Michael Brown incident.

“It’s just that they feel the police are racist and there’s no hope for them,” he said.

He thinks getting police and children of color to interact at an early age will lessen the tension all the way around.

“That thought that I’m black, you’re picking on me, it’s there,” Houston said. “It’s been planted there and there’s a reason that it’s been planted there. There’s old systems and they’re on the way out, but there’s still some that are in place.”

There’s still some institutional racism in our society, but it’s dwindling Houston said.

“It’s slowly changing. I’m not going to say it’s better because I can’t say that to Michael Brown’s mom or Trayvon Martin’s mom that it’s getting better, but there’s definitely progress in certain areas.”

The Renton Police Department engages the community through various programs, including their Citizen’s Academy, Neighborhood Watch Program, the City of Renton’s Neighborhood Program and their Graffiti Abatement Program, among others.

NEXT: The Renton Reporter examines the police perspective on these issues.