Elgin forum tackles tough issues on race, diversity, policing

Blacks, whites and Hispanics come from different life experiences and need to empathize with one another, a forum of political, religious and police leaders concluded Thursday.

About 40 people met at First Baptist Church of Elgin for a discussion called "Convening Communities for Collaboration." The meeting was organized by the Love Elgin pastors group.

Elgin Mayor David Kaptain said about interethnic relations: "I don't have a good feeling here. I go to a store and the man who runs the store is from Pakistan, and he says he doesn't feel safe. People at the library say young children come there and ask, 'What's going to happen to me if my parents get deported?'"

In the wake of police shootings of black men, Black Lives Matter protests and the slayings of police officers - 63 of whom have been shot to death this year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund - much of the talk centered around relations between minority groups and the police.

"Not a day goes by when I don't have to deal with racism," said the Rev. Bob Whitt, who is also a community outreach worker for the Elgin Police Department. Whitt, who is black, said he recently walked into a store and a white woman, seeing his skin color, immediately shifted her purse away from him.

"Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be," said Judson University President Gene Crume, who is white.

"Become close-knit friends with someone who is not like you," the Rev. Tiffany Henderson, who is also a lawyer. "We can't love our neighbors as ourselves if we don't even really know who our neighbor is."

Henderson, who is black, pointed to a 2014 Gallup survey that asked whether people thought that blacks have as good a chance as whites do to be hired for a job. Seventy-four percent of white people said "yes." Sixty percent of black people said "no."

On the police side, Streamwood police Sgt. Dino Heckermann, who is white, said officers are under great stress in part because "they're taught from Day One at the academy to control everything and trust no one." They spend all day "dealing with other people's tragedies." And on top of all that, he said, now "the uniform is a target."

Heckermann urged everyone to ride along in a police patrol car "so you'll be able to humanize the badge."

Elgin Police Chief Jeff Swoboda took that a step further.

"Find one person to take a test to become a police officer," Swoboda, who is white, told the diverse crowd. Police departments, he said, need a broader ethnic mix of members.

John Fuder, founder of Heart for the City and of Pray for Chicago, who is white, said he watched police in action in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods and concluded it was a Christlike profession - one person offering to lay down his life for another.

"I was deeply struck by their willingness to lay down their lives where bullets fly and people die," he said.