The Force Report is a continuing investigation of police use of force in New Jersey. Read more from the series or search your local police department and officers in the full the database.

One by one, residents got up and asked village and law enforcement leaders some version of the same question: Do we have a problem with racial profiling in policing?

They were looking for a “yes” or “no.”

What they got, again and again, was “we can do better.”

That small disconnect was the source of deep tension at the South Orange village’s Board of Trustees meeting Monday, where for nearly four hours, residents, through tears and anger, pleaded with leaders to fix what they believe is a deepening problem of racial bias in local policing.

“Legitimacy comes with honesty and candor," said Khalil Muhammad, a resident and professor of race, history and public policy at Harvard University. “We’ve not really heard any accounting of a problem."

The meeting was spurred by the Force Report, an NJ Advance Media investigation that found widespread issues with how police track and use force in the state of New Jersey. The investigation found that a black person in South Orange is more than nine times more likely to be the subject of police force than a white person, and that 100 percent of the juveniles who police used force on from 2012 to 2016 were black.

By the end of the meeting, each member of the board of trustees acknowledged a problem with racial bias, though most were careful not to pin it directly on local policing, and pledged reform.

“In this town, we have racism, flat out, blatant racism that needs to be called out for what it is,” said Village President Sheena Collum. “We see this in our schools, in our housing policy, in education. It is so beyond just South Orange and everyone should be pissed off.”

About 60 people attended a meeting in South Orange to address police use of force.

The meeting began with a two-hour, 33-slide presentation from South Orange Police Chief Kyle Kroll, where he reviewed each use of force by police, noted diversity in hiring new officers, presented new data from 2017 and 2018 and outlined both executed and planned training for officers on topics like deescalation and implicit bias.

He noted that the number of use-of-force incidents by his officers had dropped from a high of 19 in 2012 (this number is three incidents higher than data provided to NJ Advance Media) to 7 in 2018, but said the department can and will do better.

“I am as committed to this town just as much as any of you," he said. "This town goes down, we all go down. I care. … I want my legacy to be that I left this place better.”

Kroll, as he has in the past, acknowledged that implicit bias is a problem that every department faces and highlighted an annual training he built around helping his officers understand that their actions can be dictated by subconscious prejudice they bring to every public interaction.

“You have to focus on conduct, not the individual,” he said. “You have to be able to question yourself.”

But the meeting took a sharp turn when opened to public comment. More than a dozen residents, most of whom were black, told stories where they said they were racially profiled by police and accused leaders of not acknowledging their experiences.

"Really nothing that you’ve said tonight convinces me that you recognize the disproportionate risk you are placing on my son, on my husband and on my family, said Anita Gundanna. “Whole numbers or occasions of uses of force may change, they may go up or down, but the racial disproportionality in use of force remains, no matter how the encounter with police was initiated.”

Many also said they felt the police were trying to defend their practices, instead of listening to community concerns.

“The thing I did not hear you say is we have a problem and here is how we’re going to fix it,” said Bobby Brown, a resident and former professional football player. “We can take the data and run it through as many explanations as we want, but until we say we have a problem ... the problem is going to remain.”

The Board of Trustees pledged to have more meetings on the subject, to make data available to the public on a regular basis, consider creating a community board that would monitor policing and voted to place a request for volunteers to assist efforts on their website.

Kroll said he would be open to all efforts presented and pledged to work with volunteers who came to the table with “reasonable” solutions. He also asked that residents don’t look solely at data for answers, because it often doesn’t provide crucial context.

“Data alone never tells the full story,” he said.

Deborah Davis Ford, the sole African American on the Board of Trustees, disagreed, but said she didn’t need the data to tell a story she knows well.

“Stats tell us the story. But we don’t need the stats to tell us our personal experiences,” she said. “The implicit bias is systemic. I’ve experienced it all my life.”

Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.

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