We applaud the Richmond Police Department brass and Chief-to-be Alfred Durham for initiating and carrying out a confab with more than 150 people in response to the #Black- LivesMatter protests across the city.

We also applaud the scores of Richmond area young people who are actively committed to ensuring social justice is given more than lip service by public servants — accountable to the people — who hold elected and appointed offices.

The discussion held Tuesday night at the Richmond Police Training Academy on North Side underscores the divergent points of views held by the populace, many of which reflect generational fault lines as well as divisions based on experience and cultural expectations when it comes to law enforcement.

We hope the meeting was just a start, allowing the new chief and young and old community members to hear one another. Next comes the real dialogue, where issues and suggested solutions can be hashed out — all leading to further improved police-community relations.

We acknowledge that few Ferguson-like incidents have taken place in the city, thanks to many factors, including the police and the people. Yet, we believe the city, and the lives of its residents and visitors, would be enhanced by implementing many of the changes being advocated nationally.

We endorse five points:

1 – Body cameras for all police officers to record interactions with people.

2 – Anti-bias training for all officers by outside professionals — and not simply by department brass who have taken a short course themselves.

3–Continuous training on more effective/less confrontational handling of police-citizen situations, particularly those involving minorities, immigrants, the mentally ill and disabled people.

4 – Creating an independent citizen review panel to handle complaints lodged against officers for excessive force, brutality and other inappropriate actions.

5 – Requiring independent special prosecutors to handle any cases of police use of deadly force.

Let the conversations continue, but with action. We don’t need a Michael Brown, Eric Garner or Akai Gurley situation to arise in Richmond before we act.