Conway’s Diversity Advisory Council discussed diversity in community relationships including community diversity efforts like the Community Crisis Response Team, the HALO program, the Child Safety Fair and more Thursday, Nov. 10.
Andrew Johnson, a lieutenant at the Conway Police Department, talked about the police department’s Community Crisis Response Team, a group working to respond to calls the police department receives when people are having a mental health crisis.
Johnson said the team has answered 114 calls since they started in October, with 80 of those calls being in response to specific mental health needs and the remaining 30 calls being people needing other forms of help not exclusive to mental health.
Johnson said 34 of the calls were involving minorities, which is 30% of the team’s total calls.
“That’s a significantly higher number of minorities than the demographics of our city. We’ve had an opportunity to reach out to and make an impact with minorities within the community,” Johnson said.
Shelia Isby, a Conway City Council member, said diversity within the Conway City Council is extremely important.
“I came on the council 24 years ago and the makeup of our council was very different,” Isby said. Isby said the council was made up of seven white men and she was the only woman on the council.
“I truly believe that people need to see individuals that look like them and I think that’s what Conway is becoming more of,” Isby said.
Isby said the council now has four male council members and 4 female council members, with two African American council members.
Charles Finkenbinder, the city attorney for Conway, talked about the HALO program, which helps enforce school bus safety laws.
HALO stands for Helping All Little Ones. Finkenbinder said the program started once he realized Conway had a school bus passing problem.
Finkenbinder said it is illegal to pass a school bus that is stopped to pick up or unload children and has activated its overhead flashing red lights. But two years ago, in the first semester of the school year, that law was violated 12 to 15 times every week, he said.
Finkenbinder said this year, since implementing the HALO program, the city has had zero school bus passing violations since school started.
“Kids that ride these school buses are from all backgrounds, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, they’re from all socioeconomic backgrounds, rich, poor … our goal is to put a crossing guard at every crosswalk,” Finkenbinder said.
Lacey Kanipe, a public information officer for the Conway Police Department, talked about how the Child Safety Fair benefits the community and promotes diversity in the community.
Kanipe said the Child Safety Fair invites children and families across Faulkner County to come to learn about local resources that pertain to “safety, health and education” and provide them with “educational resources via informative seminars, demonstrations and handouts.”
“We invited agencies like Carter’s Crew, which is dedicated to serving at-risk youth. Their mission is to empower and educate the most vulnerable youth in our communities,” Kanipe said.
Kanipe said they also invited Paloma Community Services, a Hispanic nonprofit organization that focuses on growing the Hispanic community by highlighting their heritage, culture and traditions and supporting the Hispanic community by providing education and various resources.
A question from a member of the Conway community was submitted to the council about how the council plans to support members of the LGBTQ+ community, specifically after the recent Conway School Board actions regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
Shawanna Rodgers, the diversity and economic development coordinator for Conway, said the Diversity Advisory Council was formed during a time of “social unrest” after George Floyd’s death and was focused on race relations.
“We’ll kind of gauge that as we go along and at some point we do plan to look at other things, but at this time, that’s the primary focus of the council,” Rodgers said.