By: Mars Johnson, Reporter
OMAHA, Neb. — The town hall topic was law enforcement, and Douglas County’s Chief Deputy Sheriff and Omaha’s Chief of Police answered questions from attendees.
A town hall at the Fabric Lab welcomed local community members’ questions and concerns.
An Attendee, Keiria Marsha, said “I wanted to get justice. I suffer from PTSD from what happened to me with the police, so being here today gave me the opportunity to tell my story–make awareness for other people who’ve dealt with a situation similar to mine.”
Keiria said the town hall was very informative, helped her release her feelings, and get a better understanding of how law enforcement works.
“But it didn’t give me clarity of what changes would be made for police brutality and for women who are in my community…What steps what processes we need to take besides filing a report?”
Omaha Chief of Police Todd Schmaderer, said “The next step forward is: how well can we work with the community and address the root causes of crime?”
Schmaderer used arresting chronic violent offenders as a focal point. He says he’s focused on shifting from a military approach to a guardian mentality where reducing violent crime is most important. Further, he advocated for Chief Deputy Wayne Hudson’s campaign to become Douglas County Sheriff.
In regards to the no-knock warrant that led to Amir Locke’s death, Schmaderer said, “He didn’t have anything to do with the warrant. He’s there–legal gun owner legally inside the house. I’m a legal gun owner, right? Somebody knocks on my door–kicks my door in without knocking or whatever. I’m gonna be upset about that as well. Okay, so we have to understand people’s actions. To me his actions seemed reasonable. That’s Mr. Locke’s.” He said he’s focused on warrants where law enforcement have to knock first.
About local no-knock warrants, a local woman said, “I like what you guys did say about checking to make sure the children are already at school. I like that. But there’s adults in those homes as well…We don’t know what really happened in that midst of everything, but we just know that somebody’s dead.”
Hudson said it’s difficult hiring minorities into law enforcement locally and nationwide. When it comes to no-knock warrants, he said those should only be used in extreme circumstances because of the high risk, and from 2020 to now, five out of 261 local warrants were no-knock.
Additionally, Hudson told town hall attendees that when asking a group of children, 40 of them Hispanic and 43 African-American, who wanted to be in law enforcement, only five raised their hands.
Hudson said, “We, as a community, we have to quit telling our kids and pushing our kids away from law enforcement.”
Another attendee asked about a local public school incident, “do you think it was appropriate that the school resource officer maced the children who were getting in a fight?”
Hudson responded with, “I don’t know the whole context of that. I wanna say, there’s a term out there: ‘awful, but lawful.’ It may look awful at times, some of the things we do ‘cause using force isn’t the prettiest thing, so it may look awful. More than likely it’s gonna be lawful. There’s using mace. It’s better to use mace than a baton.”
Towards the end of the town hall, Hudson handed out a plastic holder for people’s license and registration so they can avoid reaching into their glove departments when stopped by the police on the road. Hudson explained that law enforcement often sees someone leaning over but they don’t know what for.
A local man asks about what it means to serve and protect and is discouraged by the plastic holders distributed by Hudson.
The local man said, “this right here don’t make me feel comfortable at all” as he gestured up with the hand that was holding the plastic holder.
Hudson said serving is 98 percent of what law enforcement do, and all attendees had good questions.
Hudson said, “The community needs to hear from their law enforcement executives, and they need to be able to ask questions. They need to be able to interact with law enforcement executives, so that we kind of break that barrier down.”
“These are the conversations that we have to have with the community so we can have a better community and better law enforcement. Although I feel like we have a really good relationship, we could have a much better relationship if we work together,” he said.
The next town hall meeting on April 19 is a meet and greet with local politicians running for office and potential board members.
