At the Worth Heights Community Center in Fort Worth, people like the convenience of services in their neighborhood.
“It’s a refuge to mingle with other seniors and gather some information and so forth,” community center guest Bobby Jackson said.
They don't like the idea of having to travel to take care of business at Fort Worth City Hall.
“They want you to come downtown and when you go downtown you got to find a place to park,” community center guest Diana Menkins said. “Then you got to pay and if you don’t pay you get a ticket."
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That's part of the reason the Office of Police Oversight Monitor (OPOM) director Bonycle Sokunbi is bringing the office to the community in August.
“Taking it to the community removes one more of those barriers,” OPOM director Bonycle Sokunbi said. “I’m convenient. I’m in the location where people live. They can walk here and stop on their lunch break. The children can come in. Maybe the grandmother saw it and just wanted to sit down and talk about it instead of me only being in the city hall structure.”
Four different community centers will hold office hours for the police oversight monitor which some neighbors welcome.
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So that will be a convenience for each side of town and each community,” Menkins said. “They’ll have someone close in their neighborhood to go.”
“The citizen can come to us and we can help them complete the complaint form and we’ll file that on their behalf,” Sokunbi said. “It goes to internal affairs and internal affairs investigates it and we monitor it.”
Sokunbi added her office is for the betterment of the police and the community.
“I want to make sure they are getting fair discipline and fair shake and the training and things that they need,” Sokunbi said referring to police. “But I also want to make sure our community as a whole is being treated how they should be. It is a neutral position that is trying to listen to both sides and make sure we are operating harmoniously.”
