Project Neighbors Applauds Porter County Sheriff’s Four Commitments

Project Neighbors Applauds Porter County Sheriff’s Four Commitments

As a long-time advocate for inclusion in Valparaiso and Porter County, Project Neighbors is pleased with the progressive measures suggested by Sheriff Reynolds in response to the Darryl Jackson incident. The joint statement of Mr. Jackson, Sheriff Reynolds and Mayor Costas avoids finger pointing and stresses ways to move forward in our desire to become an even more welcoming community.

In particular, Project Neighbors applauds the sheriff’s four commitments:

1. His department “will participate in a series of dialogues with Porter County citizens over the course of the next year.” These “quarterly events” will be “designed to foster constructive conversations about vital issues in our community.”

2. “We will also institute implicit bias training within our department and promote it across Porter County police departments.”

3. “I will continue to provide open access to all department policies and will annually post on the department’s website information about stops and arrests aggregated by demographics.

4. “I will convene a focus group annually to review policies and aggregated reports, with the purpose of making recommendations directly to me.

As a trusted, independent, citizen-led organization, free of political and organizational pressures, Project Neighbors is ideally positioned to observe and report on the Porter County Sheriff’s Department’s follow through on these commitments. We commit to doing so and will keep the residents of Porter County updated through the Valparaiso Human Relations Council, social media and the press.

We are eager to partner with the Porter County Sheriff’s Department, the city of Valparaiso, and all other parties who are dedicated to the goal of a more inclusive city and county. We are confident that, together, we can continue to strengthen and grow our communities.