MORGANTOWN – Perception versus reality.
What is true versus what people think is true – and who gets to decide?
It’s something Morgantown Police Chief Eric Powell has been thinking about a lot more recently as media requests have rolled in from near and far asking him to respond to social media images of MPD officers throwing (inert) smoke and firing chemical irritants at a large group of partying students on March 8.
He discussed the topic during a recent sit-down with the Morgantown Civilian Police Review and Advisory Board.
The perception, he said, is that the MPD showed up to a party and started using excessive force against students unnecessarily, making them feel unsafe.
“We had gotten done dealing with the third similar incident at a similar place where we had no incident. We told them the problem. They fixed it and we left,” he said. “This particular incident, we did the same approach. We did the same things. Only in this particular incident, our officers started getting bombarded with full bottles of alcohol and other items, almost striking them … The difference isn’t in our response. The difference is how they’re reacting to our response.”
The reality, Powell said, is that there were no arrests despite likely hundreds of examples of open containers, underage consumption, disorderly conduct and thrown items.
He said the MPD responded to multiple gatherings that day after the North High dispersal without issue.
“I think something to take to heart is we’re very tolerant as an agency, especially with students,” Powell said, explaining the example is illustrative of the community perception issues facing officers.
He called the situation “a circular argument.”
“So, if the police are the ones making you feel unsafe, then it would stand to reason I should not put so many police downtown, right; if they’re the ones causing the problem. Now, transversely, if I don’t put police downtown, it’s unsafe. That’s when it really is unsafe … It’s like a big circular argument that never ends.”
Board member Megan Gandy pushed back on the notion, asking Powell if he could understand why a stranger with a gun would make someone feel uncomfortable?
Powell ultimately said no, if that stranger is a Morgantown Police officer.
“I can’t recall a time when our officers actually shot their gun in the line of duty. Can you? Because if you can, and you can put it out there, then people here might have a reason to not trust the police here. But we don’t do that,” he said.
Gandy responded.
“But we live in a global society, right? And there’s no way to disconnect people’s opinions from the rest of the world, unfortunately. You do have a culture here, and obviously the use of force here is very different than the use of force [elsewhere],” she said.
Perception versus reality.
“But see, that’s not what’s promoted. What’s promoted is the global view. The global view doesn’t apply here, but there’s no voice saying the global view doesn’t apply here,” Powell shot back. “It’s just the way it is; police are not to be trusted, and that’s unfortunate because most of the time the police are the only ones standing between people that are out there wishing to do others harm and innocent people.”
