Chief Kerr Putney Talks CMPD Progress

CHARLOTTE, NC — Wednesday marks one year since the deadly officer-involved shooting of Keith Scott.

The Police Foundation’s review of CMPD’s response to the protests and riots that followed found the department did act appropriately. It also gave 35 recommendations for improving police-community relations.

WCCB sat down with Chief Kerr Putney today to talk about his department’s progress over the past year.

“We’ve got work to do,” says Putney. “We’ve got a checkered past, and an ugly history, that we have to account for, we’ve got to acknowledge. But we also have to have a public that’s willing to give us an opportunity to move beyond that history.”

Putney has been working, seemingly non-stop, over the last year to improve his department’s relationship with the community it serves. A relationship that was strained, by events both local and national, before the Keith Scott shooting.

“This was in the ground,” says Chief Putney. “This was racist laws that law enforcement was enforcing for decades.”

Protesters called out CMPD for a lack of transparency during demonstrations and riots last September.

Putney says his department has taken steps to improve that.

“We can never prevent a narrative from spiraling,” he continues. “But we can be more proactive in mitigating it.”

CMPD has been given a list of recommendations from the Citizen’s Review Board in the wake of the Scott shooting, several of which Putney says he is looking to implement.

The department has been working with some of the protesters, getting a little tough love to build communication and empathy with, and in, the community.

The department is also expanding the use of social media to get information out more quickly. And reviewing more than 12,000 hours of body-cam video; video the Chief says will be available to the public as soon as the law allows.

“There are a lot of outcomes that are positive,” says Putney. “A lot of changes that are positive, that are going to create a future for this city and this organization that we can look back on, I think, with pride.”