Alleged racial profiling was just one of the many topics students presented to Bakersfield Police Chief William Rector when he spoke Wednesday at Bakersfield College.

Rector, 44, was invited by Professor Ishmael Kimbrough to speak to all of his history classes in the Forum East building. Rector was formerly the assistant chief of police and became police chief six months ago after Eric Matlock retired.

One student asked the question, “When your officers go in a black neighborhood it’s deadly force, when they go in a white neighborhood, it’s negotiation. Why is that?”

Rector said he could not answer that question because he was not familiar with the particular situation but did say during the course of his talk that if people have a complaint about an issue with an officer, they should report it to the department immediately.

“Internal affairs (the part of the department that handles complaints against officers) answers directly to me,” he said. He also said that internal affairs has an average of 65 complaints a year.

Rector said that internal affairs is made up of five officers.

Other students gave examples of how they believed they were stopped by a police officer because they felt the officer was racially profiling them.

He said that the department tries to reach out in the community through the Police Activities League, D.A.R.E. and neighborhood watch programs.

“I want to know what the community’s wants and needs are from the police department,” said Rector.

“Our sole mission boils down to protect and to serve,” he said.

One way Rector said the police department tried to get input from the community was giving students at Bessie Owens school on East California Avenue a survey about what they fear the most. Rather then gangs or drug use, he said most of the elementary students answer was “stray dogs,” because of their height compared to that of the dogs.

Kimbrough said in an interview after the meeting that he hopes to invite other members of law enforcement to come and speak to the students of BC next semester.

“Our goal is to make it campuswide,” said Kimbrough. “Right now it’s not set, but I do have some commitment from law enforcement officials.”

He said that he was not surprised by some of the questions that were brought up.

“I was surprised by the civility actually, given in my classes students were a lot more emotional, but then again we talked about things and we got a bit of education so I was happy that they were thinking a lot more,” he said.

“It’s good to know how somebody in the agency feels about racial profiling and what he thinks about it,” said William McCulloch, 19, an arts/music major.

Scott Garcia, a 19-year-old music major, said that he did not address the D.A.R.E. program situation enough.

“He didn’t stay long enough on the subject of the D.A.R.E., cause obviously the D.A.R.E. programs don’t do anything cause there’s a high percentage of people who graduate through the D.A.R.E. program and then turn to drugs,” said Garcia.

Students were able to talk to Rector after the meeting.

Rector said in an interview that the class had a mixture of people that resembled the makeup of Bakersfield.

“I think the class is a diverse class., a cross-section of Bakersfield residents,” said Rector.

When asked if Rector thought there was a lot of racial tension in Bakersfield regarding the police department, he said, “No, I don’t. I think we’ve engaged in the community. We have more community involvement then we’ve ever had. There will be some questions regarding police practices and that’s normal,” he said.