Cheektowaga police get training aimed at avoiding Ferguson, Baltimore confrontations what about Depew, Lancaster, Amherst,

Why not Buffalo first then worry about what happens around the city. Seems like the city is not worried about it.

What a joke and a waste of taxpayers money. The cops should know how to handle this if it should come to riots in the town. You have this every forth of July in town park and the cops have know problem handling the problems. Its all political and a show for the black community.
One of those steps puts Cheektowaga in the unusual position of doing something no other local agency is doing – embarking on a top-to-bottom training initiative based on the notion that even the best police officers have “implicit” biases.

And yet, the town’s ultimate goal is no different than any other police agency – avoid being the country’s next racial battleground.

“People need to know our police departments are changing,” said the Rev. James A. Lewis III, pastor of Miracle Missions Full Gospel Church in Buffalo and a member of Buffalo Peacemakers, an anti-violence and gang intervention group.

If you talk to people like Lewis, who doubles as a police chaplain, you’ll learn that the events in Baltimore, Ferguson and New York have put local police agencies on guard.

More than ever, they are focusing on community policing and outreach, as well as diversity and sensitivity training, as ways of maintaining and improving their relationship with minority communities.

“I think, in general, law enforcement is on high alert," said Lana Benatovich, president of the National Federation of Just Communities of Western New York. “I think everyone recognizes the divide. There’s a lack of trust, and everyone is nervous.”

In Cheektowaga, the effort to avoid becoming the next Ferguson( worry about cheektowag and not the city) began in earnest in late March when police officials sat down with African-American leaders and others, some of them long-time critics, to talk about how police officers can better confront their personal biases. give me a break!