When Thomas Warren started with the Omaha Police Department, he said, it dealt with a number of isms: racism, sexism, nepotism and cronyism.
During his time with police force and his time as chief -- from 2004 to 2008 -- OPD became much more representative of the community it served. But in 1983 when Warren was hired, the relationship between the police and and community was intense, he said.
“Not only the relationship between the African-American community and the police, but even internally within the Omaha Police Department," he said on NET News' Speaking of Nebraska on Thursday. "Race relations were strained."
Warren, now the president and CEO of Urban League Nebraska, a civil rights advocacy group, was Omaha’s first black police chief. He attributes the some of the change to become more diverse to federal hiring mandates, adding, at the time, Omaha had one of the more diverse police forces in the country.
"It was important to have those different voices and the input from those different perspectives because it reflected the community," he said. "We were much more effective at delivering services because we had those diverse thoughts, inputs and ideas."
The conversations regarding racial injustice and police treatment of minorities in the United States, however, is one that is far from over, especially after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police in May last year.
To learn more about policing and the Black experience in the state, watch Speaking of Nebraska Thursday night at 7 p.m. CT on NET Television or listen Friday night at 6:30 p.m. CT on NET Radio.
"I, myself as just an individual, was very tired of seeing my community, over time, be abused and be murdered senselessly," said Kiara Williams, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student who started her own community activism group, Change Now LNK.
Going forward, community activists like Williams want to maintain relationships with state lawmakers and local police departments to advocate for new policy "that's going to help uplift marginalized communities, especially the Black community," Williams said. A number of bills were proposed in the Nebraska Legislature regarding policing earlier this year.