Video: CPD Overview Committee

by Victoria Bailey

COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI)—Relationships with police can be touchy in some communities. To avoid that, Columbus is hoping a committee of residents and city leaders will help.
Build, Repair, and Communicate; those are the topics brought up in today’s meeting here at the municipal complex.
The Columbus Overview Committee is designed to generate a good and healthy working relationship between police and residents.

Two committees were created in December of 2015 in Columbus. One to over see issues with the deadly officer involved shooting of Ricky Ball and the other to help improve police relationships in the community.

The CPD Overview Committee met for the first time Thursday since it was formed last year.

Now, they’re ready to start discussing issues.

Chairman Steven James say,”is not to interfere with the police department or to tell the police department what to do but just to be a buffer between the police department and the community. We have a very good community and a very good police department. We’re going to be like the liaison between the officers and the community.”

The committee is made up of appointed community members from each ward, officers, and the mayor.
They got to work right away, suggesting new body cameras for officers.
The cameras would be better quality and automatically turn on if it is near another officer’s working body cam.

Assistant Police Chief Fred Shelton believes the committee will be effective.

Assistant Police Chief Fred Shelton says, “we appreciate the support of the citizen of Columbus and we’re your police officer. We want to be your friend but we’re going to take care of business. If there’s an issue come and discuss it with us so we can reason through it and solve it and become a tight solid community and move forward.”

Officers were selected to serve on the committee.

Chairman Pastor Steven James hopes this now active group can show Friendly City police in a new light.

James says,”we want to make sure we highlight all the wonderful things our police officers are doing cause we do have some wonderful police officers we know sometimes things happen in communities but we need our police officers. So we just want to make sure our communities are safe as well as our police officers are safe.”
The Committee will meet the first Thursday of every month at 11:00 at the Municipal Complex.