Clymer on Unity Meetings: It's Time to Act

McCracken County Judge Executive Craig Clymer says its "time for action" following recent racial unity meetings.

Clymer previously held three meetings on race relations within the community. The original intention of the meetings was to investigate if there was a racism problem within our local law enforcement agencies. Although Clymer says ultimately there isn't a racism problem within the law enforcement agencies, the meetings did reveal that there is a level of distrust between the black community and law enforcement. 

"There was not as good a relationship between the black community and law enforcement as I think we could have. We shifted to that. We certainly don't have systemic racism and nobody could really point to any presence of racist conduct." Clymer continued, "There was a rather in-depth discussion of programs, policies, and procedures that both the Sheriff and Chief of Police have to address that." 

Some of those law enforcement programs, policies, and procedures include pre-hiring, body camera reviews, and in-depth interviews.

Clymer says they spent four hours in each of the three meetings hearing everyone's viewpoint on the issue, and didn't feel a need to continue the meetings.

He said, "We learned what we think are good action items to do going forward. We don't need to meet and discuss anymore, we need to get busy."

According to Clymer, moving forward, the focus will not only be on building relationships between the law enforcement community and the black community, but the entire community.

"It was pretty much unanimously agreed upon that a good way to proceed is just to try to treat everybody fairly. Try to build some relationships." Clymer said, "White folks need to show black folks that we accept you, we don't judge you based on your skin color. Black people to white people as well. It's just a matter of we're all people."

Clymer says we can make a major contribution to our community by making small steps toward being inclusive of all people, all races, and all beliefs.

In closing, Clymer reiterated that it's time to act.

"When you talk about something you talk through it, you decide what the problem is, how do we address it, and how are we going to go forward from here. If we just continue to talk we're not acting. It's time to get out and put our action to work. We've talked enough, lets start getting out, getting busy, and put our words to work," Clymer said.