Racial breakdown
A year-to-year comparison of the Chattanooga Police Department’s sworn officers for the June fiscal year:Race - 2014 - 2015Caucasian - 78% - 78%African-American - 18% - 18%Hispanic - 18% - 18%Asian - 0.7% - 0.6%American Indian - 0.7% - 1.2%The Chattanooga Police Department’s sworn officers are 78 percent white and 18 percent black, according to police records. The city of Chattanooga, however, is about 58 percent white and about 35 percent black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A blur of flying footballs, Frisbees and basketballs filled the night air in the hot gym in East Chattanooga.
Three dozen kids dashed around the floor, shouting, laughing and dodging rogue balls. Sleeping bags, suitcases and pillows were piled high next to the gym door behind a table where parents lined up to register their kids for the trip.
Danny Jones wandered through the fray, shaking hands, answering questions and cracking jokes. This was his idea - to take a group of kids, mostly black, mostly from inner-city neighborhoods, to a Christian summer camp in Missouri.
They planned to start the 12-hour drive to camp around 2 a.m., when the kids were worn out. At 11:20 p.m., Jones hollered for everyone to take a seat and the chaos quieted as about 40 kids lined the bleachers. Jones stood in front of the group.
"For those who don't know, I'm Sgt. Jones," he said.
He's a cop, a white cop, and the purpose of the weeklong trip to camp was two-fold. First, Jones, a devout Christian, wanted to introduce the kids to Christ, get them out of their normal environments and into cabins on a lake at Kids Across America, a camp tailored specifically for urban youth. He wanted to give them hope for a different path.
And second, he wanted build trust, to show that a white cop and a black kid can move beyond the narrative that has shaped today's police forces and inner cities, a painful, deep divide that regularly ends in death and dismay. He, two other cops and a few other adults committed to mentor the kids, spending the week at camp, as well, checking on the kids at regular intervals between activities.
Jones called a roll, checking names off his clipboard as he found each kid in the bleachers.
"Leo? Where's Leo at?" he scanned the room. "Xavier? No one's seen Xavier yet?"
"Meaty?"
Cam Chambers, 15, jumped to his feet halfway up the bleachers and ran to the gym floor. He slung an arm around Jones' shoulder and peered at the clipboard, shaking his head at Jones' use of his nickname. Did it really say "Meaty" on the clipboard?
"Get out of here," Jones said in feigned exasperation. "Yes, that's what it says."
They laughed and Chambers untangled from Jones' shoulders, took his seat again. Jones has thrown that nickname around ever since he overheard Chambers' mother use it during a visit once. But Chambers sometimes calls Jones by his middle name, Benjamin, so he figures it evens out.
They've known each other for a year, since Jones showed up at the Avondale Recreation Center in 2015 and asked if anyone wanted to go to camp. Chambers and Jones went with a small group of kids last year, the first time Jones took a group to Kids Across America.
"And we've been close ever since," Chambers said. "It's like a father-son relationship to be honest. He's crazy though. He's real strict, but it's OK."
Chambers is at Jones' house six days a week, loves the beef stroganoff that Jones' wife cooks, and sometimes gets annoyed when Jones pesters him about school work. A rising junior at Ooltewah High School, Chambers lives with his aunt, who took legal guardianship a couple of years ago, after Chambers spent six months in a group home and another 10 months living with his sister because his mother wasn't caring for him.
Life's been better since he moved in with his aunt, Chambers said, and since he met Jones and his wife.
"I think together we've got that bond," he said. "It's unexplainable, really."
* * *
Fifty teenage boys circled the center of a basketball court at Kids Across America under a thick, humid Missouri sky. A counselor in the middle of the group started to shout a rhythmic chant.
"Fellows in the house break it down like woah," he began. "When sin says do it, M-O-G say no. Mark 12:30 is my life's decree, so I'ma let the world see Christ in me."
The teenagers repeated the chant, learning it as they shouted it over and over, getting louder each time, until the group was swaying, jumping with sweaty intensity.
"HEY, FELLOWS!" a counselor called.
"Wo-what, wo-what what?" the group chanted back.
"HEY, FELLOWS!"
"Woah, woah."
Chambers was in the mix, chanting but not jumping, and so were 16-year-old Dai'Sean Thomas and 15-year-old Jesse Cowley. All three are being mentored by Jones. After a few minutes of chanting, the group breaks up with a smattering of applause and the kids split for their next activities.
The campers at Kids Across America chant a lot - at dinner, after breakfast, during lessons - always positive, Christian messages. Camp staff blast Christian rap music through the cafeteria during meals. Kids are encouraged to ring a bell in the center of camp if they become saved, and everyone across camp stops what they're doing to celebrate when the bell tolls.
Tucked along a lake outside of Golden, Mo., just north of the Arkansas border, Kids Across America is unique not only because it caters to inner-city youth, but also because the camp offers a parallel experience for adult mentors.
Adult mentors bring kids to camp, and while the kids have camp, the adults do, too. They spend much of their time apart but interact at scheduled times throughout the week, sometimes eating meals together or holding group devotionals. The idea is for camp to spark a relationship that lasts well beyond the week in Missouri.
It's a model Kids Across America has used for decades, but as tension between police and citizens - especially black, inner-city citizens - has risen in the last couple of years, camp leaders hope to recruit more police officers to bring kids to camp.
"Most of these kids come out of the womb hating cops," said Corie Wilkins, a counselor who grew up in Chicago's Southside. "I've been told since I was 8 that a police officer will kill you. To always say 'yes, sir' or 'no, sir.' [These kids] see their cousins, friends pulled out of cars, thrown on the pavement - all it takes is one good cop to make them say not all are bad."
Camp leaders call it the "Friendship Soul-ution," and they want to take what Jones is doing and spread it across the nation, said Maurice Montgomery, who formerly worked as a police officer in Arkansas and is leading the program. Jones and other officers do it on their own time; the program isn't officially tied to the Chattanooga Police Department.
The goal, Montgomery said, isn't necessarily to solve the systematic problems that have gripped the nation's attention, but to change the way one child sees one police officer.
"I want to build a relationship with you so that you have a connection with law enforcement, and you know you can trust law enforcement - or, at least you can trust me, in law enforcement," he said. "Being a police officer and a black man, I've been on both sides of the fence. These things have been going on in our country for years. We don't know if it is going to stop. But this is healing. Even in the midst of all the turmoil, there can be healing that happens."
* * *
Around Christmas last year, Jones was working his regular beat when a gang member ran from him and other officers. They followed the man into a house, where Jones came face to face with a familiar teenager - a wide-eyed Cowley.
"The only thing I had to say was, 'Jesse, outside. Now,'" Jones said.
"He got out there and I said, 'Jesse, listen, you know I love you,'" Jones said. '"I know this isn't where you live, but he ran into this house. You have to make better choices of who you are around and what you are doing.'"
This could have been bad, Jones told the teenager. It was a good conversation, the kind of talk Jones couldn't have without understanding each kid and their circumstances.
"If I don't get to know them and their background, to know the who, what, when, where and how of them, then I can't really pour into them and be able to help them through," he said.
Cowley's life already has been touched by violence. One of his friends, 20-year-old Jordan Clark, was shot and killed in August 2015.
Clark's mother, Satedra Smith, has been involved in anti-violence advocacy since Clark was killed. While Jones' kids were still at camp in Missouri, Smith sat on a panel in Chattanooga for a discussion about race, poverty and policing at Westside Baptist Church on July 28.
About 20 demonstrators marched through Alton Park before the discussion, holding signs that read "Black Lives Matter," "Stop Black on Black Crime" and "All Lives Matter."
As national attention on race and policing has swelled - especially regarding police shootings of unarmed black men - conversations on those tensions have become more frequent in Chattanooga, as well.
The Chattanooga Police Department's sworn officers are 78 percent white and 18 percent black, according to police records. The city of Chattanooga, however, is about 58 percent white and about 35 percent black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The police department has been trying to increase its number of minority officers since at least 1998, with no success - the percentage of black officers at the department has hovered at around 20 percent, give or take, for two decades, according to newspaper records.
And the city has seen its share of racially charged incidents in recent years.
In October 2014, police used pepper spray to disperse a crowd of mostly black people who gathered outside Erlanger hospital after a man was killed. In December 2015, police shot and killed 24-year-old Javario Eagle, a black man who police say pointed a gun at officers. And in early July, a white sheriff's deputy threw a handcuffed black man to the ground after, according to the deputy, the man spat blood in his face.
In each incident, some citizens questioned police use of force.
A few hours before Jones' kids left for the start of camp, Black Lives Matter protesters blocked downtown streets, shouting, "No justice. No peace. No racist police." A group of pro-police counter-protesters also showed up that evening, denying that police racially profile and offering support for law enforcement.
Two opposite sides, emblematic of a divided city.
But the tensions in Chattanooga haven't boiled over into the kind of large-scale protests and riots that other U.S. cities have experienced, and in the wake of attacks on law enforcement officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, many in the community have made a point to support police - dropping off pizza, cookies or thank-you cards at the department.
Eric Terry Sr., whose niece was shot and killed in Chattanooga in January, said his experience with homicide investigators has been positive as months have passed since his niece's death, and that in general, he hasn't run into trouble with Chattanooga police.
Once, years ago when he was in his 20s, he'd just bought a new car and was driving with his wife and child on a Sunday morning when a police officer pulled him over, but wouldn't say why.
"He pulled us over and only asked, 'Where are you going? Where do you work? Where have you been?'" Terry said. "The way he talked made me feel he was assuming things about me."
Terry wasn't cited for the stop, and he hasn't had any similar experiences since. But he does worry about his kids, especially his son, who is about to turn 18, stands 6-foot-4-inches tall and weighs 230 pounds. Terry tells him to be careful. Listen to police. If they say "get down on the ground," do it. Don't argue.
"I tell my kids: it's not what happens, it's how you respond," he said. "Every once in a while you'll find a situation where the person isn't doing anything and then all the sudden there is an issue. But I generally feel that for the most part people who are law-abiding citizens don't have issues, here [in Chattanooga]."
Jones and Chambers talked about police shootings and race after police officers were ambushed Dallas in early July.
Standing beside the pool at camp, Jones described the conversation. As they discussed the fallen officers in Dallas, Chambers brought it up - what about all the other guys that police officers have killed?
Jones was taken aback.
"At first it was like, 'I can't believe you said that,'" he said. "But I had to remember what he has been taught, where he is coming from. We had to talk through it."
He said the discussion ended positively.
"It ended not with agreeing to disagree, that's not the right word, but it ended with the ability for him to think through, to rationalize what is actually happening," he said.
At that moment, a swimsuit-clad Chambers ambled up behind Jones, holding a eight-inch-long coiled metal spring.
"Where'd you get that from?" Jones asked him.
"It was just sitting on a bench, and I was like, 'Oh wow, a giant spring,'" Chambers said.
They banter a bit.
"So what lies have you been telling [the newspaper?]" Jones asked.
"What?! What lies?" Chambers responded.
"That the beef stroganoff ain't no good," Jones said.
"WHAT?" Chambers doubled back. "I said it was good!"
"That [my wife] is crazier than me?"
Chambers shakes his head.
"Y'all are both crazy," Chambers said. "I ain't going to deny that one. Y'all are both crazy. But that beef stroganoff is delicious. Oh my."
Contact staff writer Shelly Bradbury at 423-757-6525 or sbradbury@timesfreepress.com with tips or story ideas. Follow @ShellyBradbury.