In the wake of last year’s highlight on police killings of black men throughout the United States and last week’s news of a white police officer from Seattle arresting a 70-year-old black man for carrying a golf club, the students of the African American and Caribbean Heritage Club of Olympic College met with Bremerton Police Chief Steven Strachan last week.

I feel the meeting was very successful. I found there is a lack of wanting to communicate with the police department in any form. What we have to get to is the root of each side’s issues with one another and have straight, clear-cut conversation without political and media influences. I respect Chief Strachan for sitting and listening to us as students on how change can come about.

We don’t want what is happening in Seattle and across the nation to happen in Bremerton, The problem is people think that Ferguson or Cleveland can’t happen in a small community like Bremerton, but it can happen. The question is how do we stop it from happening? That is what this meeting was all about.

Drayton Jackson, African American and Caribbean Heritage Club president, Bremerton