By Margaret Hopper
In response to the panel discussion given at Miller Library on February 24, Silver City Police Chief Ed Reynolds agreed to answer some questions about the subject of race relations and law enforcement. He first said he was unaware of the meeting and was sure that Silver Police had not been contacted, but that citizens could call his office for information. He is often out in the community, but any message left on his phone would be answered shortly.
One of the ideas brought up in the Miller Library discussion was that the citizen/law officer relationships in communities seemed to be dying out, and that a reason for that was related to having federal regulations and funds enter the scene. As the panelist put it, the rules changed when the federals came, and their focus seemed to be on awarding points to officers who wrote citations and who made arrests. It wasn't always that way.
Reynold's response was that the federal influence was not such a factor in Silver City. Local officers were to meet performance standards; the system expected productivity, but there was no quota system.