RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Even before last week's fatal police shooting, there was a lack of trust between the mostly black city of Baton Rouge and its mostly white law enforcement. That gap has widened after Alton Sterling's death at the hands of two officers. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Baton Rouge where police responded forcefully to protests, arresting some 200 people in the past week.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: The Triple S Mart in Baton Rouge has become a shrine and a gathering place for activists. It's where Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police just over a week ago. Standing in front of a large mural of Sterling at the convenience store, his son, 15-year-old Cameron Sterling, said he hoped his father's death would help bring people in the city together.
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CAMERON: My father was a good man. That was his sacrifice to show everyone what has been going on.
ALLEN: A police affidavit says Sterling was reaching for his gun when he was shot by officers. Sterling supporters believe the videos of the shooting show otherwise. The investigation is now in the hands, not of local prosecutors, but the federal government. And many in Baton Rouge believe that's for the best. The Triple S Mart is on the north side of the city, a mostly African-American neighborhood. It's a world apart from the upscale restaurants and lakeside homes south of an unofficial dividing line - Florida Avenue. Reverend Lee Wesley, the pastor of Community Bible Baptist Church, says there are, in effect, two Baton Rouge's.
LEE WESLEY: Southeast of Florida Boulevard you have the highest average income, the highest life - years of living - the highest education. North of Florida Boulevard is just the opposite - low life expectancy, lower education, more crime. So we are divided.
ALLEN: Concerns about police behavior toward the black community go back to at least Katrina when officers took a hard line against evacuees from New Orleans, allegedly to discourage them from settling here. Earlier this year, a white officer was videotaped repeatedly punching a black teenager in the head as other officers held him down. That officer was placed on administrative leave. Reverend Wesley works with Together Baton Rouge, an interfaith group working to bridge the gap between the black community and the police force.
WESLEY: First, there's a problem of fear on behalf of the police officers, fear for their lives, and in some cases justifiably so. On the part of the black community, there's a problem of mistrust.
ALLEN: Wesley and others say Baton Rouge needs to renew its commitment to community policing. Critics say a program begun under the previous chief stalled in recent years. State Representative Denise Marcelle says an officer committed to community policing would have known who Alton Sterling was.
DENISE MARCELLE: He was a guy that everybody called the CD man. He sat there and never really bothered anybody. And you would have approached him differently if you would have known him.
CARL DABADIE: We talk to our officers all the time about getting out of the cars and walking your neighborhoods and talking to people inside your neighborhoods.
ALLEN: Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie says the department still believes in community policing.
DABADIE: The other issue then is a lot of people don't want to be friends with the police either.
ALLEN: But there's a bigger problem the police department has to deal with - its poor history in recruiting and hiring minorities. Baton Rouge's police department has been under a federal consent decree for more than 30 years to improve its minority recruiting. Chief Dabadie says he's making progress adding more minorities to the force, but it's a struggle.
DABADIE: It is really hard to, if you don't have trust in the community, for that community to come be part of you. And that's the obstacle that we're fighting daily to get over.
ALLEN: On police relations with the black community, even Louisiana's governor conceded recently, we can do better. He says his administration is working on recommendations on how to begin building trust between law enforcement and the community. Greg Allen, NPR News, Baton Rouge.
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