A roundtable of political, spiritual and law enforcement leaders agreed Monday that Baton Rouge leaders need to define which problems are hampering relationships between the police and the community, though the group did not move forward with any steps to reach that goal aside from agreeing to continue conversations.

The meeting, called by Metro Council members Tara Wicker and Trae Welch, covered topics including police policy changes, residency requirements for police officers and possible future town halls and initiatives to make citizens more active in police policy. But Metro Councilwoman Donna Collins-Lewis voiced her frustration with incessant meetings and discussions, saying she had seen the process repeat itself with no results.

"We seem to end up at the same spot over and over and over and over," Collins-Lewis said.

The leaders at the meeting said they hoped to find a way to incorporate all of the ideas and plans for action in the community into one, unified plan and direction.

The meeting was also the first time that the Baton Rouge Police Department has taken a stance on proposed residency requirements that would force all new department hires starting in 2017 to live within the parish. BRPD Deputy Chief David Hamilton and BRPD Union leader C. Bryan Taylor strongly opposed the residency rules, which the Metro Council is expected to vote on Wednesday. Hamilton said BRPD is 52 officers short of their allotment as of Aug. 1, and District Attorney Hillar Moore pointed out the high call volume and short staffing levels that officers are working under. Hamilton said the passion that a potential applicant has to become a police officer should outweigh where he or she lives.

"I have lived in Ascension Parish my entire life, and I couldn't imagine someone telling me I couldn't be a Baton Rouge Police officer because I lived a few hundred yards past the jurisdictional lines," Hamilton said.

Forty-five percent of BRPD's 656-member force lives outside of the parish, while the remaining 55 percent spread between city limits, unincorporated areas, Baker, Central and Zachary. Some council members advocating for residency ordinance say police officers would better understand the culture of the areas they police if they lived closer to them.

But data that Councilman Joel Boé has compiled shows that most of the police officers who reside outside of the parish still are within 27.5 miles of downtown, which is the distance from downtown to the farthest point in the parish's northeastern corner.

Boé's data shows that police officers who live in Livingston, Ascension, West Baton Rouge and other surrounding parishes could be just as close, if not closer to downtown, than those who reside within the parish.

Others at the meeting said politicians pushing for residency requirements might be tackling the wrong issue.

While proponents have billed them as a way to improve relationships between police officers and the communities they serve, Assistant District Attorney William Jorden said the issue is more about whether police are willing to spend time getting to know the people in the communities they patrol, regardless of where they live.

Jorden wondered whether residency requirements could prompt changes in police attitudes or behavior.

"You cannot legislate somebody's heart," said the Rev. Joe Connelly of Wesley United Methodist Church.

Collins-Lewis, Wicker and Metro Councilwoman Erika Green pointed out BRPD's long-standing problem with not having enough black officers, which has put the department under a decades-long consent decree from the Department of Justice. Wicker said most people agree that the makeup of the police department should reflect the community, but disagree on how to make that happen.

"We need to be able to say that and people not be offended by it," Collins-Lewis said. "We need to be able to say that's one of the issues we want to see in our community, more African American men and women on the police department and not be offended by it."

Wicker steered the conversation to community policing, and asked BRPD to explain how community policing is supposed to work within the department. Hamilton said every officer should be a "community police officer" who knows the people they patrol, but they are often too busy to spend time meeting people when they have to respond to call after call.

Taylor, with the BRPD union, said community policing does still exist in Baton Rouge. He pointed to relationships between police officers -- himself included -- who patrol housing authorities and the residents who live there.

"I couldn't tell you how many times I've played basketball, how many times I've thrown a football, how many times I've down countless things," Taylor said. "But guess what? When it comes out in the media, that's not sexy. That's not what they want to see."

Moore said one way to get everyone on the same page could be a Department of Justice program called SPIRIT, which is meant to help identify race and ethnicity based flare-ups and to find ways to prevent problems before they arise. Moore also said that recent policing issues in Baton Rouge should make the city competitive for a number of grants for programs that could help to identify and fix problems.

Connelly pointed to a citizen-group in Raleigh, North Carolina, that researches and helps pitch example policies to lawmakers that could put in place in Baton Rouge. But Metro Councilman John Delgado warned that citizens should not assume they know the difficulties of being a police officer and that citizen-led initiatives might not be the only answer.

"We need to be very cautious about interjecting our civilian viewpoint and our personal viewpoints on people who wear a badge and swear an oath to protect and serve our community," Delgado said.