This street saw a stabbing, then a police shooting. Leaders want to know what could help.

Community leaders will gather Thursday night near a Gaithersburg bus stop where police fatally shot a man, in hopes of talking with residents about ways to stem the violence.

Elliott Powers, a 46-year-old man from Rockville, was killed July 12. Officers from both the Montgomery County Police Department and the Gaithersburg Police Department fired at Powers, who they say was armed and “racked the slide on the handgun” before he “raised the handgun he was holding in the direction of an officer.”

The day before, a man was stabbed near the same stretch of Lost Knife Road.

Amar Mukunda, who recently won the Democratic primary for the District 39 state Senate seat, responded by organizing a community walk in the area. It will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Wendy’s restaurant off Lost Knife Road.

He wants public officials to learn what’s driving the violence — and to hear from residents, commuters and business owners about what could help.

“No. 1, we have to deal with the systemic issues, and No. 2, police-community relationships are always, always, always going to be strained whenever there’s an officer-involved shooting,” Mukunda told The Banner. “Whether that shooting was justified or not remains to be determined.”

He added that people “deserve accountability and transparency whenever there’s an officer-involved shooting.”

Members of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division are probing the shooting, and have so far released few new details. Their preliminary findings noted that officers “spoke with the man for several minutes before multiple officers fired their service weapons, striking the man.”

Without more information, some Black community leaders said they distrust police accounts.

“Police violence has to stop,” said Tiffany Kelly, a longtime local activist who ran for Gaithersburg mayor last year. “We will never normalize this.”

The officers were outfitted with body-worn cameras, and the footage is generally released within 20 days of a shooting, according to the attorney general’s office.

Ahead of that, Kelly and others are calling for increased transparency. They want to know if the officers were appropriately trained.

“We want to make sure that if there was any violation of protocol and policy of either of these police departments, that these law enforcement officers are going to be held accountable,” said Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, a leader with Racial Justice NOW!

Sankara-Jabar said the issue is larger than one police shooting.

“Gaithersburg, Germantown, Montgomery Village — that whole area has been suffering from violent crime,” she said. “We’re not talking about violent crime from the perspective of, ‘Oh, we need more police. Let’s lock them up.’

“No, we want to deal with root cause issues. There’s been systemic, systemic disinvestment in these areas,” she said.

Challenges

Sunday’s incident was the second on-duty police shooting near Montgomery Village Plaza this year. In March, Montgomery County Police wounded a Germantown man after officers said he shot at an officer during a chase.

Council member Dawn Luedtke, whose district includes Montgomery Village, said county officials are working to improve public safety, as well as expand access to more recreation opportunities for young people in the area.

“We’re trying to figure out that balance there of how to make best use of what is needed by the community and what resources we do have, and how to marry those up together,” she said.

Still, she acknowledged that the community deals with frustrating challenges in the area around where Powers died and another man was stabbed.

“There are people who come to that area who don’t live there and who have no respect for the people who are living there and who just want to be able to be safe and be able to go to that shopping center and be able to catch the bus and be able to live in their apartments in peace,” Luedtke said.

The county should join with the Gaithersburg City Council to form a task force of community leaders, elected officials and researchers focused on stopping the violence, Sankara-Jabar said.

Mukunda said people who are struggling in the neighborhood need to see that public officials care about them.

“As we start to improve those relationships, we can then help to start getting them connected to substance abuse counseling, the things that will help transform their circumstances,” he said. “The relationships that we’re going to build with folks are critical, and this is the first step in doing that.”