At the Unitarian Church in Davenport, community members came together for an informational rally to try to prevent another tragedy like the one in Ferguson, Missouri.
Michael Brown was an African-American teen from Ferguson who was shot and killed after an altercation with a white police officer.
About 20 people were at the rally, mostly filled with community members.
At the informational rally, some of the concerns brought up by the community members included more training for law enforcement officials, working with city leaders to reduce racial profiling, and educating the community on what their rights are as citizens.
“We need to be more progressive and it's more proactive rather than reactive. The most important thing to realize is that we are a community and we all need to work together to make this place happen,” said Cammie Pohl, co-coordinator of the event.
Davenport Police Chief Don Schaeffer was also at the informational rally.
“Ferguson has been a topic nationwide, and obviously we don't want anything like that to happen in Davenport so when I read about it in the paper I thought it would be a good thing to come to and listen,” said Schaeffer.
At times the conversation would shift from Ferguson to current issues closer to home, like police officers dealing with mental health patients on the streets. It caused some debate on what's really most important for the Quad Cities to focus on.
“I did not like how it kept going off on mental illness because I don't think that had to do with what happened in Ferguson, what happened to Michael Brown,” said Becky Brooke, one of the community members at the rally.
"I'm here because of my youngest, who I adopted from Ethiopia," Brooke said. "These kinds of things [like in Ferguson] just break my heart because I'm going to have to have the talk with her about how she may be racially profiled just because she's black."
On Monday, December 1, 2014, the city of Davenport and church leaders will hold a press conference at City Hall to discuss some of the safety concerns that have arisen since the Ferguson shooting. Mayor Gluba will be in attendance along with several other church and community leaders. The press conference starts at 10 a.m. at the Third Missionary Baptist Church in Davenport.