Gun Violence Forums

Women's Issues Network hosted a second forum Oct. 28th 2021

Our objective is to share and become educated in Clark County Law Enforcement Advisory Teams (CCLEAT) work. Through panel discussion and Q&A become educated on best practices on how to get there. We want to learn how we can support CELEAT in becoming a leader in these best practices. 

Our President Melinda B introduced several of our guests that evening as well as our guest moderator Cynthia R.

While we encourage you to watch the entire forum we have broken it up into smaller sections to make it easier to watch at your pace or look for a specific topic. 

Cynthia R refers to a previous conversation with Adam Banks, vice chair of CCLEAT. Adam spoke about the importance of balance and transparency. She pursues this topic by asking how they intend to pursue this? In addition to balance Cynthia asks what data sources they use and if they would share any of these sources with our audience. 

Janea, chair of CCLEAT, expresses how important it is to use a non partisan source when researching gun violence and police. She reminds us we need to always read the about page to learn how this data is collected and by whom. 

She shares the links from the source they are using at this time to do some of their research. 

click this link to see the data for Clark County Sheriffs Department 

click this link for Springfield Police Department 

Cynthia speaks about her experience on the campaign trail. A reoccurring theme she heard was the need to feel safe and the communities lack of trust in law enforcement that they would be there to help. 

Both chair, Janea Ivory and vice chair, Adam Banks responds to Cynthia's question in regards to what they would recommend for increasing trust in law enforcement. 

Our first question was shared in the chatroom. Steven asked, with trust and other structure municipalities, city commissioners, mayors and others have a major influence in dealing with complaints. 

We need to look at better ways to allow for that process to have trusted leaders who can be liaisons in these spaces as new ambassadors to have real real influence to giving people the confidence that their voices will be heard and that action will be taken. A precedence has to be set as we move into the future.   

One of our guest panelists, Kristine Woodworth, from Moms Demand Action speaks to us about then current legislation moving its way through out statehouse. She believes that it is intentional that these bills are difficult to track. Republicans have a super majority at our statehouse and often push legislation through at a phenomenal pace to keep us in the dark. Moms Demand Action however has a group of volunteers that work to track these bills and keep their volunteers informed as to when they can send testimony, when rallies are being hosted, and who you need to contact.

You can sign up for their alerts at https://momsdemandaction.org/

Cynthia asks Steven to address what is the traumatic impact of gun violence in our community? 

What is the impact of when we have injustice in policing in our community?

What is the impact when there is a loss of trust?

The issue of trust is a reoccurring theme throughout this forum. Sheriff Burchett has made it clear that she is trustworthy and attends different events to meet the community.

Cynthia begins by explaining many of us will not have the opportunity to get to know you Sheriff Burchett. How do we build trust more systemically and what is CCLEATs role in making that happen?

Steven Massie speaks to our audience about a personal experience he had with law enforcement before he begins to answer the questions posed to him.

Sheriff Burchett shared her appreciation of Police Chief Graf comments in the previous segment and stating that she was left thinking what more she could do before his comment. It is her belief that it is possible that CCLEAT can assist the sheriff's department with building trust within the community.  

There is interest within the chat of learning how they can keep up to date with this topic. WIN writes a quarterly newsletter that chair, Janea has offered to write an article to be included in order to help update some of the members in the community.