The new acting Union County prosecutor promised Elizabeth residents at a meeting Thursday that her office will fix the city police department that has been mired in controversy since an investigation revealed last month that the former police director James Cosgrove had used racist and sexist slurs against his employees.

Acting Prosecutor Jennifer Davenport discussed her office’s review of internal affairs complaints and pledged to look into residents’ concerns about racism and racial disparity in the department.

“There’s not a day that goes by that this is not the number one topic we are discussing, and the thing that we’re working on,” Davenport told the group of about 35 at the African American Cultural Center Thursday. “But it has only been a few weeks. We are doing that deep dive, but it is going to take us some time to see what the process is and what we want to change.”

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal named Davenport the acting prosecutor April 26, days after the prosecutor’s office took over the city’s internal affairs investigations. Both decisions followed NJ Advance Media’s report that the prosecutor’s office had substantiated complaints Cosgrove had used the n-word and c-word to refer to staff.

Grewal called on Cosgrove to resign — since only Cosgrove’s political ally, Mayor Chris Bollwage, had the power to fire him. Cosgrove resigned a week ago, and the city hasn’t commented on how or when he’ll be replaced.

While Cosgrove’s derogatory language did come up Thursday, most of the questions posed to Davenport were about increasing community policing, providing transparency and making sure officers who break rules are held accountable.

Community leader Salaam Ismial, who led the event, also cited racial disparity in the department and data compiled by NJ Advance Media in The Force Report that showed an African-American person is more than 70 percent more likely to have force used against them by an officer compared to a white person.

“If that’s not systemic racism, to the belly, to the core, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Davenport said that in addition to reviewing internal affairs files, her office is looking at any way to make the department better.

“[We’re] taking a look at the workplace culture, doing an audit there of the police department and taking a look and making sure there’s sexual harassment training, that there’s implicit bias training,” she said.

Davenport and her counsel, Joe Walsh, told the group that the office was reviewing all pending internal affairs investigations, and would consider looking at closed cases if those who filed complaints felt they were treated unfairly.

“If you are not getting the answers you want in your internal affairs investigations in Elizabeth Police Department, you come down to our office to have it done in person or you fill out a form and then we go ahead and look to see what’s going on, and we do this with every municipality,” said Vincent G. Gagliardi, chief of investigations in the prosecutor’s office.

Davenport said anyone not willing to go to the prosecutor’s office can contact the Attorney General’s Office and make similar complaints.

Activist Tormel Pittman told Davenport that he has concerns about Elizabeth police officers’ honesty. He believes they are actually contributing to street violence by allegedly misleading witnesses, telling them that a friend or witness has already “snitched” on them, in order to get them talking. Whether it’s true or not, the label sticks, he said.

“They get out on the streets, they get labeled a snitch, and now somebody’s getting killed. That’s how serious that is,” Pittman said, to a smattering of applause. “The overseeing has to go beyond body cameras.”

James Carey, chairman of Elizabeth’s Resistance Movement Organization, praised African-American Detective Darin Williamson and said there aren’t many community-minded officers like him in Elizabeth.

“In the black community, there’s a natural distrust when it comes to the police," Carey said. “When you talk about community policing, we need people who interact with the citizens.”

Elsewhere in the city, Make the Road New Jersey, an organization that aims to empower Latino and working class communities, hosted another forum on policing in Elizabeth attended by approximately 100 people.

PACKED house tonight at our community forum on policing in @CityofElizabeth.



After the resignation of the police director bc of racist & misogynistic behavior,



We are talking about what it takes to build real community safety in our city. pic.twitter.com/h3yVKnTQjr — Make the Road New Jersey 🦋 (@MaketheRoadNJ) May 17, 2019

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.