South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg admitted he had failed to bring more black police officers into his city’s police force in two terms as mayor.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow challenged Buttigieg on his inability to diversify the police department of South Bend on Thursday during the second round of the first Democratic debate. An officer-involved shooting of a black man has roiled South Bend and has pulled Buttigieg off the campaign trail and back to his city.
Buttigieg has struggled to build inroads to the black community in South Bend. Maddow asked Buttigieg why, after two terms as mayor, the South Bend police force is 6% black when the South Bend community is 26% black.
“I couldn’t get it done,” Buttigieg began. “My community is in anguish right now because of an officer-involved shooting. A black man, Eric Logan, killed by a white officer.”
“I am not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back. The officer said he was attacked with a knife, but he didn’t have his body camera on,” Buttigieg continued. “It’s a mess, and we are hurting. I could walk you through all the things that we have done as a community. All the steps that we took from bias training to deescalation, but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan.”
“Until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time, not just from what happened in the past but from what is happening around the country in the present.”
