Protests against police brutality continue around the country in light of the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. El Dorado Police Chief Kenny Hickman said Tuesday he feels the EPD has had a culture of respect and responsibility ongoing for years.
“I told someone recently that if you want to talk about doing things within the police department where you treat persons properly, you’re several decades late, because we’ve been doing that,” he said. “Ricky Roberts (former EPD chief and current Union County Sheriff) was a big proponent of community policing, and it’s carried through my entire career. This department has been reforming and self-policing for years.”
Roberts said he bases his policing philosophy on the way he was raised.
“I was raised to respect everyone,” he said. “I expect officers who work with and for me to respect everyone they come into contact with. I won’t accept anything less!”
Hickman became the EPD chief last January, the same month El Dorado Mayor Veronica Smith-Creer took office. She said they have a good relationship and Hickman keeps the lines of communication open between them.
“I appreciate the relationship that he and I have about sharing what’s going on. If there are ever questions, if people have concerns about what’s going on at the PD, I can call him or send him a text and he always answers,” Smith-Creer said. “He and I are learning our positions together, and we’ve been met with a lot of things since we both got into these positions. 2020 has bombarded us.”
Hickman said when he took on the role of chief, he put two mandates in place for EPD officers in order to ensure they remembered the importance of respect for the community, as well as the responsibility they have to the community.
“One is mutual respect, and it begins with me. We treat each other with respect, and the intent is valuing the individual you’re dealing with, and you carry that out to all walks of life. … so that the way we treat subordinates reflects onto how our officers treat the community,” Hickman said. “The second is to ‘honor the badge,’ and that has to do with the boundaries that are in place. We work within the law. You have to realize that you’ve been given a sacred trust and your authority has already been defined. You’ve been given a trust and you have to respect that trust.”
He noted that chokeholds have been considered to be deadly force at the EPD for at least a decade, and officers receive training on positional asphyxiation, which is breathing difficulty caused by the position one is in.
“I have yet to meet any officer that didn’t readily condemn the Minneapolis incident. It was just horrible,” he said. “We’ve been active on making sure that we do things the right way and being a department the community can trust.”
Smith-Creer said both Hickman and Roberts have been good partners throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and that she agrees the department has good policies in place to keep the community as EPD officers’ priority.
“I think both of them are mindful of where the police departments need to be going, and I think they have been for a while,” she said. “Even before this whole national situation.”
Over the weekend, demonstrators gathered at the Union County Courthouse both against and in favor of the potential removal or relocation of the Confederate monument on the Courthouse grounds. There was an EPD presence, and some demonstrators said they were disappointed when officers did not intervene during an altercation that developed between the two sides.
Hickman said the altercation had already been broken up by the time an EPD officer on scene made his way to that area of the Square.
“An officer was actually in one of the local businesses and saw some people pushing. He got out, called for other officers, walked across the street, but by the time he got across the street, no one was pushing any more. There were members of each group holding each other back,” Hickman said. “It wasn’t a lot (of officers originally on scene) because that was kind of impromptu, I think it was announced Friday. … I think this was something people had organized on their own.”
Hickman said no police report was written since no arrests were made and officers did not end up intervening in the demonstrations.
“By the time he got there, they had basically corrected themselves,” Hickman said. “There was nothing to do, other than shutting down what was becoming a peaceful protest again, and what had been a peaceful protest.”
There was also an EPD presence at a demonstration in favor of the monument’s removal that was held Monday. Union County Sheriff’s deputies were also on scene Monday.
Later Monday night, a demonstrator reported seeing threats against them online. Hickman said while the department does monitor Facebook to the degree it can, without specific reports, it is hard to track everything that happens on the social network.
“We do monitor specific sites; we’ve actually gotten some warrants off of it. But unfortunately, it has become such a major 12-lane information highway that we cannot keep up with all of it,” he said. “Without specific complaints, we won’t always pull over on the side of that information highway. … I don’t think there’s enough officers in the state to keep up with everything that’s said on Facebook.”
Hickman said he is sad to see the community divided and hopes local residents will remember to treat one another with respect.
“I am concerned that there seems to be a tendency to insist that others agree. When you live in a community, you have to be willing to accept that not everyone agrees — that’s true in marriages, in any business relationship,” he said. “Some things get lost in the midst of deeply held beliefs, but you can’t just forfeit kindness.”