Everything old is new again
16th March 2020 · 0 Comments
The “Stop and Frisk” policy employed by New York police torpedoed Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Bloomberg apologized for supporting the discriminatory tactic but couldn’t overcome the criticism of other contenders for the Democratic nomination. His apology failed and his campaign folded.
Putting the spotlight on “stop and frisk,” which is just racial profiling by another name, touched off a national debate over the deadly consequences of the practice and what can be done to stop the violence between young Black men and the police.
Benjamin Franklin’s sage advice that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is an appropriate guiding principle for eliminating racial profiling and the violence it sparks. Police are here to protect and serve, not to kill or disrupt the lives of Black people.
Self-defense is the right of all people, police and citizens, alike, but the prevalent excessive use of force by police and the killing of young Black men by police is unacceptable, as is the feeble excuse cops use, “I feared for my life.” Really? You feared for your life while you’re the one with a weapon? You feared for your life when you thought a young man was holding a gun that turned out to be a cell phone? You feared for your life or did you just fear the young Black man?
White cops don’t seem to be fearful when they arrest gun-toting white male murderers. Sanford police didn’t fear for their lives when they brought George Michael Zimmerman in for questioning after he killed Trayvon Martin, a young unarmed Black teen. The South Carolina police didn’t fear for their lives when they arrested Dylann Roof, an armed to the hilt white youth, who killed nine people in a church who invited him to their Bible study. As a matter of fact, police took Roof to get a hamburger before booking him.
In 2016, Black men between the ages of 18 and 44 were 3.2 times as likely as white men of the same age group to be killed by a police officer. Although Black men make up only six percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for one-third of the unarmed individuals killed by police in 2016. Police killed 1,099 people in 2019, Black people were 24 percent of those killed, despite being only 13 percent of the population. About one in 1000 Black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to news reports.
The prevalence of violent incidences involving young Black men and police has also become a major problem. Young Black men are fighting back, shooting back, or running from cops to avoid a confrontation because they don’t trust the police and/or they fear for their lives.
These violent encounters have been increasingly viewed as a public health issue, largely because of their negative emotional and physical health effects.
In “Preventing Violent Encounters Between Police and Young Black Men: A Comparative Case Study,” by Rhonda Jones-Webb, Collin Calvert, and Sonya S. Brady, of the University of Minnesota, the academicians conclude that future violence prevention efforts must incorporate policies, programs, and practices that explicitly address violent encounters between police and young Black men.
While the study is informative and offers great recommendations, it reminds us that everything old is new again.
Incidences between Black men and the police are as old as the post-Reconstruction era and Robert Charles and as new as the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in 2016, Stephon Clark and Botham Shem Jean in 2018, and Miles Hall in 2019.
Also old is the remedy to this killing epidemic and violence between police and young Black men. Many heralded community policing and building relationships on trust between the Black community and the police as viable solutions.
Community policing started in 1967, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a Blue Ribbon committee to study the apparent distrust with the police by many community members, especially along racial lines. The resulting report, the “President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice” suggested the development of a new type of police officer which would act as a community liaison and work to build bridges between law enforcement and minority populations.
Yet, the trend of violence against young Black men at the hands of police continued nationwide and in New Orleans. From 2013-2019, the New Orleans Police Department killed 12 people.
On July 24, 2012, the City of New Orleans, the NOPD, and the United States Department of Justice entered a Consent Decree, which was, at that time, the nation’s most expansive.
The Consent Decree required the NOPD to provide collection and analysis of community engagement including the number and variety of community partnerships, and partnerships with youth.
NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson’s goal of deepening community engagement was outlined in the “NOPD Strategic Plan: A Collaborative Model for Success 2019-2021.” The first strategy listed was the delivery of youth support programs.
The report showed that the NOPD partnered with 77 organizations including community groups, youth partnerships, school partnerships, advocate groups and others.
Of particular note was an event entitled “What’s Going On?” in which The New Orleans branch of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and the Black Organization of Police partnered to host a community-police dialogue concerning the relationship between the police, the community and the Black male.
However, the NOPD fell short of several of its goals. In “Path to Reform Report to Judge Morgan On NOPD Progress Under the Consent Decree” by Loyola University New Orleans School of Law, the authors reported that the plan for community engagement was not implemented, the community problem solving approach was not fully implemented, and there was an uneven quality of district meetings, among other deficiencies.
But let’s be honest, the core problem which causes violent incidences between the police and young Black men is racial profiling.
It’s about how the police, white police, especially, view young Black men. The Guardian newspaper quoted one young Black man who said, “It’s like we’re seen as animals.” His perception may be valid. Ferguson Policeman Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Michael Brown in Missouri, testified “…He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon….”
It’s clear to many Blacks on the receiving end of disparate treatment that slavery era stereotypes, formed when Blacks were constitutionally three-fifths human, still exist today because of the social and psychological conditioning that still occurs in segregated white communities, including the penchant for racial profiling.
The case of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. illustrates this fact. Gates was arrested in 2009 at his Cambridge, Mass. home by local police officer Sgt. James Crowley, who was responding to a 9-1-1 caller’s report of a man breaking and entering the residence. Even after he showed his identification, Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct.
An Office of Independent Police Monitor report showed that white cops used force more often than their Black counterparts: In 2018, white male officers accounted for 15 more UOF (Use of Force) incidents than all other officers combined, though they make up less than 50 percent of NOPD.
White male officers use 1.5 times the force of Black male officers. These statistics are nearly identical to 2017’s data.
The studies around police and violent incidents with young Black men is an indicator that everything old may but still be useful but that something entirely new is also needed.
Here’s a few suggestions: Encourage cops to buy affordable homes and live in low-income neighborhoods; conduct psychological screenings of police recruits for racial bias and psychological treatments for people afflicted with racial hatred; provide monthly anti-racism training sessions; hold focus groups with police to determine their attitudes about young Black men and focus groups comprised solely of young Black men from the community, those in juvenile detention facilities, and those who are newly incarcerated to gauge their perceptions of the police. Then use the collected data to create that new type of police officer as community liaison that was called for back in 1967.
It’s true that everything old is new again and that what goes around comes around, but for Karma’s sake, we think new approaches to old problems and brutal honesty are needed to decrease violence between young Black men and the police.
This article originally published in the March 16, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
