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Ferguson: Community Conversation Key To Easing Tensions In Sacramento

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Months after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the city's police chief announced his resignation on Wednesday.

In a culmination of hours of interviews with community leaders on a very sensitive topic, the state of race relations in Sacramento is a difficult, complex conversation thrust into the spotlight in the aftermath of nationwide protests.

Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri.

Eric Garner, New York City.

Two names and places synonymous with the rekindled national conversation on police force and race relations.

CBS13's Nick Janes spoke with some of the key players shaping the dialogue in Sacramento—police Chief Sam Somers, local pastor and community leader Les Simmons, and activist and youth mentor Berry Accius.

Simmons traveled to Ferguson, and Accius marched on the night of the grand jury's decision not to indict the officer who shot and killed Brown.

We dug deeper to find out how Sacramento is being changed by events thousands of miles away.

Somers believes in the aftermath is an opportunity.

"You wanna have relationships and you want to start community engagement well before you have an incident," he said. "You just can't force yourself on the community—it's something you have to work in partnership with."

He says the Sacramento Police Department prioritized community outreach years before Ferguson, and is promising even more engagement now with people like Pastor Simmons.

The South Sacramento pastor is part of the Cops with Clergy program, a partnership of police and the city's faith-based community. Simmons says experiencing tensions in Ferguson firsthand showed him how different Sacramento's dynamic is.

"It certainly has awakened the conscious level of everyday people," he said.

Simmons says a foundation of trust between Sacramento's community and its police was already laid in years past. From what he's seen in recent months at community forums and elsewhere, he believes that willingness to work together is stronger now, using the metaphor of building a bridge while walking on it at the same time.

"We have crossed that road and we're continuing to cross it. We're going further on our side and they're going further on their side," he said.

To others in the community, the lessons of Ferguson are much bigger than Sacramento. Months after a Martin Luther King Day march, activist Accius invited CBS13 to the Sojourner Truth Museum.

"We have a lot to discuss and a little bit of time," he said.

The roundtable of activists is focused on what they say is the real issue—an entire justice system they believe is discriminatory and needs rebuilding.

They say the deaths of Brown and Garner forced and awakening, especially among black youth—a stronger sense of need for introspection, a stronger sense of the need for introspection, of celebrating black culture and large-scale change.

"I hope that people really understand there is something we need to do about it, or you're gonna eventually have a race war," he said. "I believe a lot more people have woken up to the big elephant in the room, the sleeping giant, that racism still exists."

As for police, everyone in the room says there's been a time where they felt unfairly targeted, whether it was in Sacramento or elsewhere. They say they don't see much difference between Sacramento Police or any other department.

Chief Somers says he wants to make clear that there is a big difference from one police department to the next.

"We have open ears and an open mind," he said.

He says Sacramento Police is at the forefront of the most advanced diversity training the nation, including an immersion program that sends academy recruits out into the community to learn about a culture or ethnicity.

At Mayor Kevin Johnson's request, the chief updated the Sacramento City Council in January on his plans for body cameras, more diversity on the force, and new racial sensitivity training.

"There's been studies out there that shows everybody in society has some kind of bias, so whether it's in a business sector or government sector you need to be aware of those biases that you may have, that you may not be aware you have," Somers said.

As you're probably beginning to understand, the question of whether Sacramento could have a situation like Ferguson is difficult to answer.

It's something Simmons has wrestled with ever since being htere.

"And you ask yourself the question, wow, are we really exempt from this in Sacramento?" he said. "And when I ask that question to myself or close friends, they say, no: we have made some real key connections."

The chief struck a similar chord of hope.

"What you're looking for is that moment of pause, where people will stop and say, hey, I know they have it," Somers said.

One sign of progress, perhaps, is that everybody we talked to did agree on one thing—the need to talk. The hope in Sacramento is all the outrage will turn into an honest and open conversation for lasting progress.

"We need to no longer shy away from the conversation," Accius said.

"Thankfully that crisis wasn't here, but we have more people talking about it, so that we can get more people to the table to have an understanding," Somers said.

"We've been having it for some years here but not stopping, that in the next five years we are still having a conversation," Simmons said.

And in the end, Simmons says it has to be more than just talk—we as a community have to go through the tough conversations that lead to understanding and change.

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