U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with city, police and community leaders in Cincinnati today during the first stop on a multi-city tour discussing new and collaborative policing strategies.
From Ohio Public Radio station WVXU, Tana Weingartner reports.
Lynch picked Cincinnati to start her Community Policing Tour because of the success of the city’s historic collaborative policing agreement. The deal was hashed out following rioting in 2001 and is now seen as a model for other communities like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore. Lynch met with students at a local elementary school beforehand where she said the large number of students who said they’d like to be police officers is a testament to the city.
Then I asked them ‘why do you want to be a police officer?’ And they said things you would expect like “to stop bad people from hurting people” and “to protect the community” and one little boy, one of the smallest kids in the class said ‘because I want to be a peacemaker.’ And if that isn’t the best description of a law enforcement officer I’ve heard in a long time, I don’t know what is. (22 seconds)
Lynch announced she’ll hold similar meetings throughout the summer in Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Richmond, California, Seattle, and East Haven, Connecticut.