Both community activists and elected officials in the Quad Cities say the fight for police reform isn't over, following the guilty verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd.
Founder of The Village of a Thousand Elders Pastor P. Wonder Harris says the sense of relief he felt when the verdict was read was combined with surprise.
"Once I heard the verdict, I sat there just numb. It's like I could finally breathe," Pastor Harris says. "I remember Emmett Till and the cases before (where) it didn't matter what was presented. The jury was gonna make up their mind and say they're not guilty."
Athena Gilbraith with the Davenport NAACP says the fight for police reform is just getting started.
"We thought it may not go towards the arch of justice," she says. "Now we have to move onto legislation and get the George Floyd bill passed as well."
Among the requirements of body cameras and implicit bias training for police, the bill would limit qualified immunity in cases against officers and create a national registry that records police misconduct reports.
Pastor Harris says something else that needs to be worked on in police departments is recruitment practices.
"First of all, as they hire, to drill down on how does the new hire actually see people, because you can't train that, they have to see people as human beings," he says.
Sheriff Gerry Bustos says diverse recruitment has been a challenge in Rock Island County, and he hopes the guilty verdict means more conversation.
"I think what I would hope from this, we can use this perhaps as a reset, a new chance to start dialogue and be able to find common ground," Sheriff Bustos says.
Community activists in our area also say conversations between family and friends on anti-racism will help address police reform and discrimination.
"What white people need to do, to be quite frank, is they need to listen," Gilbraith says.