State of Black Arlington event addresses community policing, guns in schools, health disparities

Health and safety were the focus of Thursday’s second annual State of Black Arlington. The event, hosted by the mayor’s Black Advisory Council, discussed relationships between law enforcement and Black residents, as well as the link between physical and mental health. It incorporated work done by the city’s Unity Council — including reports in 2021 and 2023 — that looked at relationship-building between law enforcement and residents and eliminating barriers to health care that minority communities face. “We saw that health, public safety and a number of other topics were on the top of the agenda of things that were disparity points for all sorts of communities,” Xavier Egan, advisory council co-chair, said. “We decided to take up that same challenge and make sure that we were giving the community access to those resources in those very spaces.” Police Chief Al Jones, who took the helm of the agency in 2021, said the department has focused on relationship-building, transparency and officer training. That transparency, he said, applies both internally and externally. Jones said he has prioritized releasing footage from body-worn cameras after officer-involved shootings. There have been four reported this year. “Whether we have a good or bad shooting, and...