“We’re your best friend when you need us and your worst enemy when we stop you.”

That’s the battle local police face as they try to keep the Shenango Valley safe, Southwest Mercer County Regional Police Chief Riley Smoot said.

Recent complaints about how police do their jobs — especially along the high crime, predominantly black Farrell hillside — prompted the local chapter of the NAACP to host an event Saturday with the Shenango Valley’s police chiefs and Mercer County District Attorney Robert G. Kochems at Valley Baptist Church in Farrell.

George Footman, president of the Mercer County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the session was held to give people a better idea of what issues face local police and what processes are involved if someone has a complaint.

Smoot — whose department covers Farrell, Wheatland, West Middlesex and Shenango Township — emphasized that police are people too.

“When we take the shirt off, we bleed the same way,” he said.

His job is to balance the needs of the communities Southwest serves, which include both rural and urban areas, and work within a $2.1 million budget.

Imagine the responsibilities expected of a minister and “triple … quadruple it … no, times it by 100” and you get an idea of what’s expected of him, he said.

“I wish it were simple; it isn’t,” he said.

A cop’s job isn’t for the soft or weak-hearted, Smoot said, and most who work locally paid for their own education — one of the reasons Southwest “can’t get a black police officer,” Smoot said.

Southwest’s police work in a tough area, be it the federally-designated Weed-and-Seed high drug and crime area or Shenango Township, with miles of rural roads and township officials who question every penny spent on police protection. They don’t have time to profile and do the best they can, said Smoot.

“You can’t profile when your community is what it is,” he said.

When police pull someone over they see “heads bobbing around” and not much else.

“When they stop a car, they don’t know who it is,” Smoot said.

Because traffic stops are among the most dangerous activities police do, they are approached with caution and a procedure is followed. If police encounter resistance, cops will step up to diffuse the situation, Smoot said.