Police try to overcome mistrust in Fort Worth's Stop Six

FORT WORTH – After grand jury decisions on police shootings triggered protests nationwide, we sought opinion in one of Fort Worth's poorest neighborhoods, where crime is high, and trust in authority is low.

We started with a simple question: Do you trust police?

Two women in their 20s shook their heads no.

"They got the power. They got the badge," said Omega Bennett. "They think they can do anything."

We asked it at the Rosedale Store, on the corner of Amanda and Rosedale.

"Do you trust police?"

"Hell, no," said a young man coming out to see why we were there.

"No," Toliver Moore said emphatically. Then, he spelled it out. "N-O. No. No."

A customer in his 50s joined in.

"They'll jump us first because we're minority, I guess," he said.

Adam Ali runs the market and adjoining restaurant.

"Yes, I trust the police," he said. "Every time I call, they come."

The store windows are laced with bars. It is sandwiched between vacant shops that appear to have been closed long ago.

This is Stop Six in southeast Fort Worth. It's one of the neighborhoods targeted last week in a half-million dollar federal grant program to cut gun and gang crime.

News 8's Jim Douglas returned to a neighborhood he's covered for decades in Tarrant County to ask a simple question to residents: Do you trust the police?

In the parking lot, young men in their 20s and 30s stop by. Some in blue. Others in red.

"I'm blood," one said.

"I'm crip," said another.

They hug each other and laugh.

Roshawn Moore walks up. A few days ago, his 80-year-old grandma made the news when she got wounded in a drive-by shooting.

"They just rolled by, shooting up the house," he said.

Was it a crips and bloods thing?

"No, they're crips," he said. "Just like I am."

News 8's Jim Douglas covered shootings and crack raids here nearly 30 years ago. Maybe businesses were open then. But the aging, little strip center is mostly boarded up now. One young woman says it depresses her.

A faded sign hangs from a leaning pole: "Boot repairs while you wait."

You could wait a long time for anything to be repaired.... Trust. Hope.

Not everyone's waiting.

"I start school in January," said 27-year-old Davitia Wiggins. "Going to TCC community college. Finish off my basics, so I can get somewhere I'd rather be."

She wants to be a teacher. Wiggins lit into the young men for all the gang talk with a camera rolling.

"That's going to be the biggest factor y'all got," she told them. "When y'all get on there and act like they already make us look."

As we stood in the parking lot, a 17-year-old rushed out of the store to return car keys Johnny Johnson had left inside. Johnson looks to be in his 50s or 60s.

He thanked the teen, then got in his face like a drill sergeant.

"You go back to school," he told him. "Get your education. Not for nobody but you. Not your brother, your sister, your mamma. Nobody. You're the one who's got to live this life."

The teen dropped his head.

Johnson said he used to own a store across the street. It's a vacant lot now.

A 31-year-old man named Roderick Williams told us he used to play quarterback in school, but got arrested for car jacking when he was 14. He said he served five years in prison, got out, and started a janitorial business.

Toliver Moore said he went to prison twice. He now says he's the best barber around.

"All this old gang-banging stuff, leave it alone," he said, preaching. "It's over. All this is done. That's the 80s. This is the 2000s. We're on to bigger and better things."

It was just one hour on one corner of a city of nearly a million people with about 1,500 cops. Fort Worth police have launched innovative programs to build trust where there is so much mistrust.

It's working for some.