- Wheelan Presley Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT has been supporting Quad City families since 1889.

Now providing livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service at their chapel in Rock Island.

- The lasting impact of Derek Chauvin's close to home.

And everyone pitching in for flood protection in "The Cities."

(upbeat music) - Everyone has an idea of the best way to solve the annual flood problem in Davenport and now is the time for you to speak up.

We'll talk about that in a moment, but first, justice served.

The conviction on three felony counts of former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, in the death of George Floyd would be a watershed moment for policing in America.

It could lead to better treatment of minority suspects.

It could help weed out bad cops and help keep good officers.

Or it may do none of that.

It may have been an unusual conviction of an officer caught on video tape and nothing more, nothing less.

We talked with the head of the Davenport NAACP, Michael Guster.

- Is this a watershed moment that some people think it is or are we reading too much into these verdicts?

- I don't think so.

I believe it is a watershed moment, simply because you don't have very many verdicts where we've had jurors to come back and convict white policemans for the death of a black person in this country.

I think when you look at it and you review that moment of that tape for 9 minutes and 22 seconds, I don't think that anyone can look at it and come to any other conclusion.

- Well, and- - When you look, go ahead.

- I apologize and one would totally agree with that and that's why I wonder, is it that video tape that made all the difference in the world?

- Absolutely because you know many other times there has been a video tape available, but it has not been very explicit and it has taken this moment, this time for accountability to take place and so we can't sit back and allow these type of actions to continue to fester in our country and police departments all around the country has to be accountable for these type of actions.

- In Illinois, they enacted major changes in law enforcement.

Training, reporting, cash bail changes, changes in choke holds.

That's Illinois, what do you want to see Iowa do?

- I think in Iowa, we've done some similar things.

I know they haven't banned choke hold, but they have did some things where they've banned contact to the head, neck and spine, but there are other things they can do.

We need to ban no knock warrants, we need to ban choke holds.

We need to institute legislative law that covers cash bail changes in this state and so those are the kind of things that we do over here in Iowa that would just make it much, much better for ours as a whole.

- And once again, we're talking about the video tape that was used as evidence.

I mean a lot of people are calling for every police department to have body cameras on their officers that are operated at all times.

- Body cams are so vital, so important.

I believe it's just something that we've got to mandate all around the country that all officers have these body cams, vest cams on whenever they are interacting with the public.

As you know, the narrative that the Minnesota Police Department out right after the death of George Floyd was completely different from what the video tape showed us.

So video tape can tell us and show us what the truth is and so we have to revisit these policies and things and make sure that they are something that is a requirement versus something that is an option.

- You know this so well is that minority groups have told young black males and I guess young black females, as well, what to do if there's a traffic stop because they're afraid of being treated differently or how to interact with police because of the fear of being treated differently.

Is that still ongoing?

- Absolutely.

It must continue to go on.

I'll tell you that I have a 17-year-old grandson, an 18-year-old grandson and I am just terrified in terms of when they go out because of this simple reason of driving and so I think our police departments have got to afford our black children's respect and we got to learn how to deescalate as opposed to escalation.

And then we've got to be able to collect date on police encounters to ensure safety for our communities.

It's just a must, but we put our hands on the steering wheel and hey, we get our information out, whatever identification we need and put it on the dash so that we don't have to make any sudden moves because that's just almost turns into a deadly situation for black men.

- And I ask you that because I wonder if you now really help educate people by saying if you're a bystander, to get your camera out, to get your phone out, to record the instance because everyone's got a phone now with cameras and I'm just wondering is that now the new next step?

The new normal?

- I think that's vital.

I think it's important that we capture these stops, especially when you see excessive force that's being used by policemans wherever they may be and my hat's off to this young lady here that would not be moved.

She stood her ground and taped the man that was breathing and all of a sudden 9 minutes and 22 seconds later, he is lifeless and so we've got to do these kind of things to help, not only to help, but to hold the police departments and law enforcement accountable for their actions.

It's very important.

- As you know, all it takes is one instance for such a terrible, terrible thing to happen and then to spark protests and anger within the community.

All it would take is one instance in Davenport.

So I ask you, what is the relationship between the NAACP and Davenport Police?

Is it improving?

Are there areas you see that needs more improvement?

- I think there's room for improvement always, but we have a good relationship with both the police chief and Davenport, as well as Bettendorf and sheriff personnel, as well as members of the state police that are assigned to this area and I don't wanna get ahead of the announcement, but we will be probably real soon having a news conference to alert the public how we are working on policies, training, accountability, funding, recruitment and hiring practices, youth programming and community outreach, some things that we're doing to be proactive in the Davenport Bettendorf community, so as to maybe protrude from having incidents like this to happen in our community.

- Because as you know, in Davenport, there was an ongoing survey and a data search by St. Ambrose University that was looking into Davenport policing and particular targeting certain groups of people in certain neighborhoods and whether or not that really was effective in lowering the crime rate in those neighborhoods.

Is that an ongoing approach that you want to see?

- That's something that we're going to incorporate into this new task force for lack of a better word with Davenport police chief.

We're trying to include the Bettendorf police chief.

I don't think he's quite on board, but we'll continue to work and incorporate that into our MOU and we've got more information to come and I just don't wanna get ahead of where we are at with DCAP and the racial profiling.

But we will be doing that.

That's something I think that it's going to happen, yes.

- We are of the same generation and you're seeing, like you said, you have children and now you have grandchildren.

You have been through an awful lot and it's pretty much okay.

Things are getting better, just wait, things'll get better.

This generation seems to be saying, "No, enough is enough, let's get this fixed now."

- Absolutely.

Well, let me just tell you when you look at the makeup of these protests, when you look at these young people, they are saying that we're not gonna put up with what the status quo.

This generation is so likely and so more likely to oppose racism and work for change.

When you look at the protests in Minnesota and around the country, the majority of it is white protestors that are joining the forces with us because they know that this is wrong, that they know that we should be working together for a better America.

This is not a black problem, it's an American problem and it's a problem that we have here in Davenport and so I just applaud these young people and what they are doing and continue to do.

- 'Cause you saw some of that this summer.

I think back to the efforts that ended and Vanderveer Park and the large coming together of all types of people and how many young people and how many parents brought their children to such an event?

- Absolutely.

You see that and people wanna know what they can do, how they can help, how they can get involved and the change in terms of what we are seeing is just phenomenal and I mean I just applaud that and we have, when you look at it, we have got more people that want the right change as opposed to people that wanna stay the status quo in this country and we just gotta step above the freight and continue to do those things that are right, those things that make America, make Davenport, that makes our better for every member in this community.

- The president of the NAACP, Michael Guster.

In a moment, coming up with solutions for when the Mississippi freely flows out of its banks.

But first, Laura Adams has us looking forward as we head into May, already ready to go "Out and About."

- [Laura] This is "Out and About" through May 4th.

"On With the Show" is a virtual trip through the 73-year history of Quad City Music Guild streaming through the 18th.

The 2021 Geneseo Art Walk takes place April 17th, celebrating the local art community.

The Church Basement Ladies in "You Smell Barn" continues to entertain on the Cira 21 stage through May 15th.

Plus Recycle the Runway will virtually support Dress for Success Quad Cities on the 22nd.

Kane Brown, Chris Lane and Russell Dickerson perform at the TaxSlayer Center the 22nd, while Ribco hosts "The Pink Floyd Experiment" April 23rd and 24th.

Tomfoolery on Tremont presents comedy April 25th at eight, while Tammy Pescatelli brings the laugh at Rhythm City Casino in the 29th or enjoy Wednesday night of live comedy at Open Mic Night at the Gypsy Highway.

Join WQPT for a special online screening of Ken Burns' "Hemingway" April 27th at 6:30, followed by a Q and A with Hemingway biographer Mary Deerborn.

Ballet Quad Cities present "Alice in Wonderland" at the Outing Club April 30th and May 1st.

The Quad City Area Craft and Vendor Spring Show is coming May 1st at the Golden Leaf Banquet Center, while the Black Box Theatre presents "Love, Loss and What I Wore" April 22nd through May 1st at the Downtown Moline Theater.

Plus, auditions for Playcrafters Barn Theater take place for "Princeton's Rage," April 17th and 18th.

For more information, visit wqpt.org.

- Thanks, Laura.

The Bucktown Revue has been itching to get audiences back into its theater for its monthly programs.

Thanks, COVID.

In the meantime, "The Review" tuned up their banjo, guitar and fiddle to bring us their rendition of "Eels in the Sink."

- One, two, one, two, three, four.

(bluegrass music) - Bucktown Revue, "Eels in the Sink."

Davenport is learning to live with the floods, but could it do better?

The city is in the process of developing a plan that could help the city better co-exist with the mighty Mississippi River and that plan is now looking for your input.

We talked with Davenport's Assistant Public Works Director, Clay Merritt.

So, Clay what do you hope that this flood study of 2021 actually accomplishes, because, I mean, I looked of parts of it.

It's really very comprehensive.

- It is.

So in the end, our desired goal is by probably mid to end of the fall of this year, probably sometime around October, we're gonna have a fully completed finalized report to present to the city council and mayor that in the end will provide recommendations for flood mitigation strategy moving forward.

Should the city council and mayor approve that document, then we as city staff will move forward into implementation of those various projects.

- Davenport has seen flooding since well before 65, you take 65, you take 93 and then you take all of the ones since then, including 2019 and it's like haven't we studied this enough?

- There have been some studies in the past.

I know in the end, probably not to the degree that we're looking at now or if we've done that, we probably haven't done that, you know, in the recent past.

So this is looking forward, kind of the direction that we got from the community and we got from our elected officials was to take a look at our entire riverfront, because in the end your interactions with the river will vary greatly, depending on where you are in this city and what river stage you're in.

So if you're in the East Village, you know, you're affected at a much higher river level stage than if you're on the west end of Davenport or if you're in the residential homes that are located along Blackhawk Creek.

So everyone interacts with it differently, so there is different mitigation strategies regardless of where you are.

They're not a one size fits all solution across the board.

And so what we require is an in-dept analysis and some recommendations from an engineering firm who's used to doing this and that's what we're in the process of doing.

- Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the philosophy of Davenport over the last few years is protect what you can and let the river flow where it wants.

Is that being drastically changed by this?

I mean, there's been major changes in the garden edition, you know, the buildings at our downtown that are new are pretty well flood ready, I guess I would say, even the ballpark is better protected than ever before.

- And that's part of the conversation that we're trying to have with the community is, you know, when 2019 happened, a lot of times some people say, you know, we should be protecting up to a higher level or a higher standard and that should be across the city.

Some people say it should be in certain areas and then other people within the community think that if we can just refine what we're doing now and just make operational changes and make some capital improvements along the way, that that'll be good.

So that's part of this conversation.

I would say if people are interested in partaking or partaking in part of this conversation, that's where we're in our second round of public engagement and that's kind of where you referenced it.

There's some pretty in-depth recommended projects from our consultant and it's to gage the level of interest from the city or from our community on what those projects look like.

Because we have them kind of broken up into three main sections.

One is to protect to as what we're calling incremental projects, protect the river stage 18 to 22, 23 foot level.

Those still cost a lot of money, but in the compares, it's smaller compared to the larger scale things and that would protect you or provide protection, some level of protection for the types of floods that we typically see.

The second bucket is what we call the 100-year event, which is we're calling River Stage 24.

Technically, it's 23.6, but we kind of round it up, so that 100-year event.

So everyone's like, "Well, what does a 100-year even mean?"

It just means that statistically, you have a 1% chance in any given year of reaching that flood level and right now that's on 23.6.

So that's almost, not quite a foot, but almost to the level of what we experienced in 2019.

And then secondly, if you're looking for, some of the community have called for this, have called for a full-on flood wall for instance or some form of flood barrier protection system.

In that case, you should probably look to FEMA in terms of looking for specifications of what your minimum standard should be and theirs is built to a 100-year event plus three additional feet.

So that's where you get that River Stage 27.

And so part of this portion of our study is having the communication or having a conversation with the community about what river stage levels and what types of strategies they're looking for.

Are they looking for us to continue doing the thing we've been doing, but making incremental improvements along the way, or are they looking for something much more transformational in nature?

- And for those who don't remember, flood stage is 15 feet.

Anything over 15 feet and it flows out of the Mississippi River in downtown Davenport.

We saw what a 23-foot crest looks like in 2019.

We have no idea what a 27-foot crest in reality would look like.

I know you have to plotted out on how it would affect.

A lot of the plans that you have that are options include things such as park berms, which would be just kind of natural walls of, I guess it would be mud, grass, a bunch of different ingredients.

Also the thought of raising things such as River Drive to a certain level to act as a natural barrier, as well.

And then as you mentioned, either a large or a segmented flood wall would be another possibility.

One of the things is that the community is down river, and you know where I'm going with this, that they gave Davenport so much credit is because you didn't push the problem down river and you may have made other down river communities feel less of an impact because Davenport did accept some of that water.

- So, yeah, that's some of the, if you go through the engagement feet.

I would actually recommend, located on our website, there's about a 30, 32-minute video that our consultant put together that kind of walks you through this process.

I would say if you can watch it, it's very informational and it's very educational, especially the first like 10 to 15 minutes before they actually start walking through those projects, because then you can see kind of some context.

You can see the history of what those river gage levels look like over time and you can see that in the last 20 years, we've experienced more intense events, longer duration of events and some of our higher, our river levels we've seen have happened in that 20 years.

So we know that's happening.

We know it's happening more often and so that's kind of what level is the city looking to provide some level of mitigation to as part of that and that either comes in the form of, we kind of have four main things, but it's not everything.

One is repairs or improvements to the storm sewer system, basically that already let out into the Mississippi, basically the river can then come back up the other way, so it's improving those things.

Oftentimes, River Drive has water on it.

I'll just use the second of River Drive and Marquette as an example.

We closed sections of that off, not because river is coming overland onto the road, it's because it's coming up from the storm sewer system.

So you can make those fixes and those repairs to help kind of mitigate maybe closing that road off instead of river stage, I'm just gonna throw something out there.

At about 14, 15, 16, maybe you could wait for River Stage 20 before you have to shut that particular section of road down.

As you said, there's other ideas, too.

Road raises, so you eliminate the water getting onto the road by just simply raising it a couple feet.

In certain areas you could put earth and berm systems up.

And some form of flood wall and that doesn't necessarily have to mean from one end of the city to the other end of the city.

It can be very segmentalized, it can be specialized.

It doesn't have to be, unless the community wants it to, it can be as tall as it needs to be, depending on what that level of height we're trying to protect to.

- How could somebody comment?

'Cause you're right.

I mean, if you look at the video, it's really a great explanation of where we have been and all the options of where we can go.

What kind of input do you want from the public?

- We're kind of just, one, we're interested, we have quite, as you mentioned, we've had quite a few recommendations out there, we call them alternatives.

We're interested in what the community's thoughts are on those alternatives and you can actually go through the online survey.

We also have physical surveys available at all of our libraries that you can pick up if you don't want to do the online version.

But we're interested to see your thoughts on some of those ideas.

Likewise, we're also interested to see what your priorities are in terms of what you're looking for the city to protect.

Once again, if you're looking for those more incremental projects, looking like okay, let's continue doing what we've been doing, but do it better and putting some capital expenses towards that, those are the lower dollar figure ranges.

If you're looking for the large-scale transformational projects, so let's say you want to protect to 100-foot, excuse me, a 100-year event plus maybe some more free board, you're looking for something that's more of those physical barriers, so you're talking your earth and berms, you're talking some level of flood wall and while they may be what people want, we also want to make sure we provide as much information as possible to the public because those options do come with a price tag and they are substantially higher in cost than for some of the other options on the incremental side.

- Daventport's Assistant Public Works Director, Clay Merritt.

More details on the city's plan can be found on the city's website.

That's davenportiowa.com.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device and streaming on your computer, thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about the issues on "The Cities."

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Wheelan Presley Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

Now providing live stream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service at their chapel in Rock Island.