Edgecombe deputies learn to recognize, deal with their own biases

The Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office is providing training to all 140 employees so they can better recognize their own biases and improve the way they communicate and deal with others.

"We don’t want our officers, or our staff in general, to treat people different just because they don’t look like us, just because they didn’t vote the way we like, just because they’re a different class," Sheriff Cleveland Atkinson said. "We want everybody to be treated the same."

After George’s Floyd’s death in police custody in Minnesota last year and the racial tensions that followed, distrust in law enforcement grew across the country. Atkinson said the key to moving forward from that is to have tough and honest conversations.

"Talking is a skill, and so, you have to work on that talking skill," he said. "Here at the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office, we’re trying to train our people how to greet people, how to say nice things to people."

The implicit bias training is offered through Onyx Talent Solutions and taught by owner Unber Ahmad, an industrial-organizational psychologist.

"The goal is to have people [walk] out with a better understanding that your perceptions don’t always match your reality and that your perceptions don’t always match someone else’s perceptions," Ahmad said.

After the eight-hour course, she said, she hopes deputies will recognize that everyone is an individual who shouldn’t be treated as representative members of any group.

Chief Deputy Gene Harrell said he walked away from training on Tuesday already thinking in a new way.

"You could hear people gasping in the back of the room like, 'Ah, I never thought of that,'" Harrell said.

"It makes me proud to be a part of the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office," he added. "We’re not perfect, but we are doing what’s needed to head in the right direction and continue to provide the services that we do in an unbiased manner."

"Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t," Atkinson said, "We want to get it right every day."