Hartford — The festering mistrust of police in the wake of shooting deaths of unarmed minorities was aired at the state house Thursday as lawmakers considering police reforms hosted a three-hour forum on police-community relations.

"I'm a little bit distressed and less than confident that things will improve any time in the near future," said state Sen. Eric D. Coleman, D-Bloomfield, vice chairman of the Public Safety and Security Committee. "It's come to a point where those of us who represent minority communities cannot sit idly by and see, particularly our sons, put in the kind of jeopardy they are in."

Lawmakers are considering proposals to require police to wear body cameras, regulate the acquisition of military equipment and require appointment of prosecutors from outside districts to investigate police-involved shootings. 

Coleman said the bills have been met with opposition "at every step" and singled out the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, some of whose members sat in the audience.

"When the issue gets framed, perhaps wrongfully so, that you're either for the police or for the minority community, the police are going to win every time," Coleman said.

Longtime TV anchor Al Terzi moderated the forum, with a panel that included Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane, U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly; leaders from the NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities; New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman; and East Hartford's director of youth services.

The conversation grew tense at times as community advocates described racially charged police encounters and the fear felt by African American and Latino parents. Tanya Hughes, executive director of the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, said she tells young people to comply with police so that they can "live to complain about it" if they feel they are treated improperly.

State Rep. Charlie L. Stallworth, D-Bridgeport, speaking, he said, as a Baptist minister, said that he is not anti-police, but that he thought about it before wearing a hooded sweatshirt into a pharmacy recently "in case something goes wrong." He said he has instructed young people to put their hands up during a police encounter.

"It's almost like a slave agreeing with master so they not be killed," he said.

Kane, who as a front-line prosecutor in New London investigated police-involved shootings around the state, was cut off as he detailed his investigation of the shooting death of Aquan Salmon, a 14-year-old African American boy who was shot in the back by a white police officer in Hartford in 1999. Kane had found the shooting was justified under the state's law on use of excess force since the officer "reasonably believed that the use of deadly force was needed to protect him from the imminent use of deadly force."

"In some ways, it would have been easier to arrest the officer and try him before a jury," Kane said.

The failure of grand juries to indict police officers in the Eric Garner shooting in Staten Island, N.Y., and the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Mo., sparked protests nationwide.

"That is our problem," said state Sen. Edward A. Gomes, D-Bridgeport. "Every time we get one of these cases in court, they get acquitted."

Daly, the U.S. attorney, noted that although no criminal charges were brought in Ferguson, a civil investigation exposed a pattern of improper police conduct.

Daly said that prosecuting police brutality cases is difficult but that the U.S. attorney's office has taken on a number of cases, including one involving biased policing of Latinos in East Haven that resulted in a U.S. Department of Justice consent decree that lays out policies on recruiting, hiring, training and investigation of civilian complaints.

"I'm not exaggerating to say there's really been radical change within that department," Daly said. 

Though his police department was the subject of protests just a week ago concerning a white officer's treatment of a 15-year-old black girl, Esserman said New Haven, which requires all new officers to walk a beat for a year, has a successful community policing program and a recruitment policy that has made it "the most integrated police department in Connecticut."

"You can't expect a community to just embrace the color blue," Esserman said. "A PD has to bend over backward to make people feel welcome."

Esserman said also that police body cameras' "time has come," though other law enforcement representatives, including state police union present Andy Matthews and Kane, said cameras could have a chilling effect on people who want to share information with police.

"If you're going to put body cameras on police officers on the beat in inner cities, I would argue you are not going to improve police community relations," Matthews said. He estimated it would cost $800 to $1,000 per camera to equip each of the 754 troopers on patrol and another $1.1 million in data storage.

"How did we get to the point of making the comparison between lives and dollars," asked Stallworth. "How would you make the assumption people in inner cities would not want body cameras?"

Public safety vice chair Joe Verrengia, D-West Hartford, who recently retired after of 25 years on his city's police force, spoke of the media's role in police-community relations. He mentioned the shooting last week in Boston of Police Officer John Moynihan, who is recovering and was hailed as a hero by President Obama. Noting that police had shot and killed a suspect after Moynihan was shot in the face, Verrengia said he read an article about black community leaders who gathered at the shooting scene in Roxbury.

"They weren't there to pay respect to the officer but to see how long the victim had laid in the street," Verrengia said.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFlorin