Urban League of Arkansas President: Police Brutality ‘A Human Issue’

LITTLE ROCK – In a recent interview, the President of the Urban League of the State of Arkansas (Little Rock, AK), is passionate about tackling the issue of police brutality.

In the wake of a recent video of three police officers violently subduing a suspect, the Urban League released a statement that condemns the actions of the officers, while complimenting the quick response of agencies looking into it.

Scott Hamilton, who has been President of the Urban League for two years, said, “This is a human issue. And from the Urban League’s perspective, we look at the issues that affect our society for all folks."

“There’s not just a single group or a small group of folks that we are concerned about. We’re concerned about people across the board. It doesn’t matter, you know, what race, background or what have you. We are about making sure there’s a level of quality of life, an expectation of certain things that people can go about their day-to-day life able to enjoy. And one of those certainly is engagement with our law enforcement.”

Hamilton was a member of a 2020 task force that reviewed the state’s police officers. He believes that now is the time to review some of the task force’s recommendations, and see if there are others that can also be considered.

“The intent of that task force was to figure out how do we improve trust and engagement opportunities with law enforcement. Making sure that those engagements come out in a good fashion, if you will. Some of the recommendations were more training. We wanted to make sure our law enforcement officers are trained well in terms of when they engage with a suspect or someone that they need to apprehend.

“Also, we talked a lot about mental health, not only for citizens, but also in our officers, making sure that our officers can get good, welfare checks. Making sure they’re okay. On a daily basis, they deal with some pretty tough issues. We want to make sure that an officer goes in on a daily basis in a good frame of mind,” he said.

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