ERIE -- Yvette Jennings had never heard of YouTube.

But last month, the 51-year-old black woman watched a video on the popular Web site that has changed her life -- and upended race relations in Pennsylvania's fourth-largest city.

For nearly eight minutes, Erie police Officer James Cousins II was captured on a cell phone camera mocking the death of Ms. Jennings' son, Rondale Jennings Sr., 31, who was shot in the head outside a local bar on March 28. The officer also imitated Ms. Jennings' response when she saw her son at the crime scene, and joked about using a Taser on a suspect in another incident.

At the time he was recorded, Officer Cousins, who is white, was off duty and drinking with friends at another bar.

"It was sickening. It was hurtful," Ms. Jennings said last week. "He described the exact moment when I saw my son's face."

Officer Cousins was suspended for 10 days without pay after the video surfaced. He wrote an apology to Ms. Jennings, and he is now on desk duty until he receives psychological testing.

Even though the officer didn't make any explicitly racial comments, his behavior appalled people in Erie's African-American community. Some leaders have demanded a stiffer punishment and an independent review of why Officer Cousins was allowed to accompany an internal affairs investigator to interview the person suspected of posting the video on the Internet.

The incident also has exposed simmering tensions between black residents, who make up nearly 15 percent of the city's population of about 100,000, and local government.

Of 167 Erie police officers, only three are black; three others retired last year. The city has no black firefighters. Erie County Common Pleas Court has no black judges. Two of seven City Council members are black.

"If it doesn't look like the community, it tends to look like an occupying force in our neighborhood," Andre Horton, president of the local branch of the NAACP, said of the police bureau.

His organization's national office has requested that the U.S. Justice Department undertake a broad investigation of Erie police and their interactions with the community. City Council also has started pushing for increased diversity training for officers and consideration of a citizen police review board.

Some community leaders in Erie and Pittsburgh are comparing the controversy over the Officer Cousins video to the furor that followed the death of black businessman Jonny Gammage during a traffic stop and confrontation with suburban police in Allegheny County in 1995.

Mr. Gammage's death sparked a series of protests, as well as the creation of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board and the signing of a consent decree between the Pittsburgh Police Bureau and the Justice Department.

Now, many Erie residents also are taking a hard look at the relationship between the black community and police.

"I think Erie has been engaged in racial discrimination for decades," said Gary W. Sykes, a retired professor of political science and criminal justice at Mercyhurst College in Erie. "[Black people] are excluded from most public offices. It's been a pattern for a long time."

City officials said they have consistently tried to increase the number of black people working in government, especially in its public safety agencies.

"We're just not getting the candidates," said Sgt. Ken Kensill, president of the Erie Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.

A civil service test for the fire bureau is coming up in July, and the city is pushing hard to find minority recruits -- even planning to place print advertisements in Pittsburgh. The police bureau will be following those efforts closely and may do the same thing, said Deputy Police Chief Randy Bowers.

Yet the talk of a civilian review panel for Erie police could create new tensions. City Council has asked the city solicitor to examine how review panels work in other cities, including Pittsburgh.

Sgt. Kensill said FOP members are suspicious of oversight by people who aren't familiar with police work.

"We don't like it," he said. "I have no clue where this is going to take us."

Still, he wants the union to be part of the process. Deputy Chief Bowers, who has a close relationship with Mr. Horton of the NAACP, also expressed interest.

"I think we need to move forward, and any opportunity to improve relations between police and the community would always be a welcome idea," the chief said.

Mayor Joe Sinnott did not respond to several interview requests last week. But City Council President Joseph Schember said the mayor, too, was willing to look at a review board.

"All of us realize the police force should reflect the face of the community, and it doesn't now," said Mr. Schember.

At the start of World War II, less than 1 percent of Erie's population was black.

Then came the great migration.

Thousands came to the banks of Lake Erie from the deep South -- many from Laurel, Miss. -- to escape Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation and to find good jobs in factories like the Erie Malleable Iron Co., the Hammermill Paper Co. and the General Electric locomotive plant, still the region's largest employer.

The adjustment was not easy. Mr. Horton's mother, who came from Laurel, headed the Erie NAACP in the 1970s and was part of a federal lawsuit that forced the police bureau to start hiring black officers.

Over the next several decades, the decline of manufacturing in the region hit the local black community especially hard.

In 2007, 14.5 percent of Erie County's total population lived below the poverty level, according to county health department statistics. At the same time, more than 34 percent of the African-American population was living in poverty.

Strains between the black community and police have persisted.

A 2002 study by Mercyhurst College found that 25 percent of traffic stops by Erie police involved black drivers, who only made up 12 percent of total drivers. Police also were far more likely to search a black driver's car.

The study helped to lead to a first round of diversity training for Erie police officers. Deputy Chief Bowers said some of that training is now given regularly.

In the wake of the YouTube video, Councilwoman Rubye Jenkins-Husband, who is black, thinks the city needs to focus more resources on diversity training.

"Our police officers work very hard. They put their lives on the line every day," she said. "Yet we have an obligation to address these concerns. We need some healing. People remain outraged."

Yvette Jennings brought her son, Rondale, to Erie from Cleveland when he was 14, hoping to get him away from the rough streets of her hometown.

He left school after 10th grade and jumped from job to job for several years. His encounters with the law resulted in convictions for drug possession, resisting arrest and carrying a firearm without a license.

But his mother said he tried to stay away from trouble.

"He was beautiful. You ask anyone walking up the street," said Ms. Jennings, who has six other children. "He didn't like any drama."

On March 28, she received a frantic call from her son's girlfriend about a shooting outside Bullpen, a bar on Hess Avenue on Erie's east side.

She spent several hours standing on a street corner near the bar, waiting to hear if her son had been killed. Eventually, an investigator lifted a sheet from the body. She saw her son's goatee.

"It hits you in your face," she said.

Police later arrested Michael Wright, of Braddock, in connection with Mr. Jennings' death. A judge has ordered Mr. Wright to stand trial on a homicide charge.

Ms. Jennings praised police for finding a suspect, calling investigators "wonderful."

"I can't base the whole on the actions of one," she said.

Yet she said that one, Officer Cousins, has heightened the pain of losing her son.

In the video, Officer Cousins seems visibly intoxicated as he imitates Mr. Jennings' shaking body. He also jokes about the bullet hole in the victim's forehead, claiming the body was lying under a malt liquor sign that said "take it to the head."

He told his friends, "One less drug dealer to deal with. Cool."

He also called Mr. Jennings a "turd," which some viewers interpreted to be a racial epithet.

By the time Ms. Jennings saw the video in mid-April, police were already trying to determine its origins. Inspector James DeDionisio and Officer Cousins went to the house of a man they thought shot the video and posted it on YouTube. That man could not be reached. But he previously told the Erie Times-News newspaper that Inspector DeDionisio threatened to charge him with violating federal wiretapping laws, and Officer Cousins begged him to remove it from the Internet.

The damage had already been done. The video was viewed thousands of times, and Officer Cousins' conduct became a national story, with CNN interviewing Ms. Jennings.

Inspector DeDionisio has been reassigned. Mr. Sinnott, the Erie mayor, said he would ask an outside organization to review how the police bureau conducts internal investigations.

Mr. Sykes, the retired professor, who has taught a course on internal affairs procedures, said it was highly unusual for an officer to help investigate when he is a subject of the investigation.

He said the bureau seemed more worried about blocking bad publicity than learning about an officer's troubling behavior.

"They should have been thankful this was captured so they knew they had an officer behaving this way and they could address it," he said.

Mr. Horton said he has received at least a dozen calls about past incidents of potential abuse by police since the video surfaced, and he's asked the callers to put their complaints in writing for the national office of the NAACP.

The constant media coverage has angered rank-and-file Erie police officers, said Sgt. Kensill of the FOP.

"Police are under a microscope," he said. Officer Cousins has admitted his mistake, and any further punishment would be unfair, he said. The officer could not be reached for comment.

Yet Ms. Jennings isn't satisfied with the officer's apology, calling it insincere.

"In every job, there are people that don't belong in the field. I feel like Officer Cousins is in the wrong field," she said. "He lacks the ethics and values to be an officer. I don't trust him."