BUCKING THE SYSTEM: HERE ARE MY IMPRESSIONS OF TIME MAGAZINE'S STAGED EVENT

If it hadn't been for Lisa Lane, executive director of Southeast Missouri Weed and Seed Inc., I wouldn't have been allowed to attend the community event sponsored by Time magazine last week. During an interview with Time's Midwest bureau chief, Lisa mentioned me and asked if I had received an invitation to the meeting.

I hadn't.

Later that afternoon, I received a telephone message inviting me to the event. I quickly accepted, even though I knew in the back of my mind it couldn't go well.

It didn't.

I can't call the event Time sponsored Wednesday night a community meeting. Too many members of the community were not represented, and there was no real purpose for the meeting. Organizers didn't even care enough to hold the event in the residential area that was the primary topic of conversation.

It could have been held at the Salvation Army or Greater Dimensions Church or the former May Greene School, all of which are located in south Cape. Instead, it was held at the Show Me Center, that aesthetically-pleasing building so remote to anyone other than college students, sports enthusiasts and businesspeople.

The Show Me Center was not the logical choice for a community meeting, but it made perfect sense for what this was: a staged event whose purpose was to try and make Cape Girardeau look good. This game did nothing to improve relations with a group of residents who knew about the meeting and, more importantly, who knew that they were not invited.

The first person I saw when I walked into the Show Me Center was Greg Campbell, the person whose clash with the police resulted in a melee last summer. That gave me hope, because I figured if Greg had been invited that meant people were willing to put aside their personal feelings and maybe engage in a discussion that could be of benefit as this community tries to heal that wound.

I knew the melee was going to be the primary topic of discussion, even though the stated topic was community policing. My take on the situation was if we were going to talk about somebody, we should at least allow him to be in the room.

But Greg was there, I thought, so maybe it didn't matter that Time magazine was watching.

It did.

Greg had not been invited. He wasn't allowed to attend the meeting. He didn't get loud. He wasn't rude. He just smiled and walked away.

My hope went with him.

One of his sisters ironically, the one who happens to be studying criminal justice at the university also was turned away at the door later that evening.

How do you hold a community meeting that is by invitation only? To me, that's a paradox, and if it isn't, it should be. I understood the need for this to be more than a gripe session and that too large a crowd would have been unproductive.

However, I didn't see how limiting participation to just a couple of south Cape residents and talking about generalized improvements that probably wouldn't show any results until the next generation of police officers come on board was any more beneficial.

It needed to be something more than the Q&A with Police Chief Rick Hetzel and Mayor Al Spradling III that it turned out to be. The other panelists sat silently for most of the evening, and only two of them lived in or near the neighborhood being discussed.

And then there was the fact that our community police officers, Ike Hammonds and Rick Schmidt, were present but were never asked to give their opinions on whether they think they are making a difference. Panelist Charlie Herbst, our local community policing pioneer who is now on the reserve force, could talk about the history, but how can a group of people talk about the healing process without talking to the officers most directly responsible for it?

Chief Hetzel talked about the monthly community meetings being held to improve police relations with south Cape residents and some new initiatives he hopes will improve community relations. But it didn't take 10 minutes for the meeting to move from a general discussion about community policing to very specific questions about the Good Hope Street melee, racial profiling and distrust/dislike between black residents on the south side and everyone else in Cape Girardeau.

Those are all valid topics for discussion, but it's kind of pointless when the objects of those concerns don't have a voice.

To their credit, those who addressed the panel at the end of the event did so with conviction. They asked about the investigation and reports into the melee and conduct of police officers. They also told the panel -- more importantly, they told Time -- that south Cape residents are mostly law-abiding people just looking for a better day economically.

Even so, many of those attending the event left with an unsettling feeling that we had just dodged some kind of bullet. We also felt cheated, wondering why we wasted our time on discussions most of us had already heard.

Because Time magazine was here, that's why.

This whole event was staged, even though magazine officials and reporters said afterward it wasn't staged by them. They said they had expected more residents from the south side to attend the event. During the meeting, they encouraged people to be truthful and speak their mind rather than following someone's scripted version of life in Cape Girardeau.

When the Time representatives heard that Greg Campbell was not allowed in the room, they expressed anger and wanted to know who had turned him away.

With Time denying any involvement in the scripting of the event, it's not unreasonable to assume that there was another purpose behind the invitation-only format. Maybe organizers didn't know who to invite from the south side, or maybe they thought transportation would be an issue.

Or maybe organizers tried too hard to have leaders represented instead of concerns.

We can only hope that Time did enough legwork before and after the visit to get a true understanding of how well community policing is working in Cape Girardeau. I hope they don't malign our community before the nation and that some of the good things we have work themselves into the article.

I also hope that next time we have a community meeting, the invitations are sent to a broader spectrum of leaders so that more concerns, issues and, later, good feelings can be shared.

Tamara Zellars Buck is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian who also is involved in many community organizations.