Fort Wayne City Council receives hundreds of requests to 'defund' FWPD

City council members have received hundreds of requests to defund the Fort Wayne Police Department following recent protests that escalated into tear gas and vandalism.

Robbery and other charges.

Fort wayne city council members have received hundreds of requests to defund the police department after recent protests escalated into tear gas and vandalism.

Fox 55's jeremy masukevich is live now downtown after speaking to city council members and police today jeremy how do city council members plan to put the concerns of the community as ease?

Hunter, councilman geoff paddock tells me there is work that needs to be done on both sides to ease tensions that have risen during protests over the past few weeks.while they are eager to mend the relationship between law enforcement and the community in fort wayne they don't think defunding the police department is the answer.

3 nat geoff 25:25over the last three or four days city council members have been deluged with emails, phone calls, and text messages i've probably received over 200.

Fort wayne city councilman geoff paddock says he understands the frustration of community members who feel police were out of line when they deployed tear gas on protesters.lower third: geoff paddock, fort wayne city councilman 5th district sot geoff 29:55a lot of this that happened just over the past few days was very new to some of us.

And ive been in fort wayne a long time, i don't think ive ever seen a situation quite like this.but he doesn't think defunding is the answer.sot geoff 28:40it is an orchestrated effort obviously and i know these folks feel very strongly about it but i will not support efforts as a city councilman to defund the police department.

After conversations with police chief steve reed, paddock believes additional training for officers will help in preventing further conflict.

Sot geoff 28:50the way to go here is to make sure we are doing it better, doing it smarter, and that we are working on sensitive training of our officers that you can never really have too much of sgt.

Sofia rosales-scatena says fwpd is focused on rebuilding trust between the community and police officers.

She says they're looking for more ways to engage with the community in a positive way moving forward.sot sofia 36:00 everyone will always react different to different things.

So it is almost impossible to have this one size fits all plan in place for every police department, in every situation.

We rely on our training experience and if things fail at some level then we have to reassess 'hey what works and what doesn't.'

Paddock hopes that having city leaders focused on the same goal will prevent the destruction of businesses and relationships in the future.

Sot geoff 32:00there is a lot of work that we can do together.

We want to heal the wounds of the community.

I think mayor henry, police chief reed, the city council members and i are going to continue to do that over the next few weeks.

Now the fort wayne city council has invited police chief reed to be a part of their meeting tomorrow night.

Paddock hopes the city council and fwpd will be able to organize a public forum to hear the concerns of the community in response to protests that got out of hand.

For now reporting live in fort wayne, jeremy masukevich, fox 55 news