Nov 29, 2016
We’re not just anywhere USA. We’re in the midst of a metropolis (Gretna Part 2)
I spend part of my time as an on-air correspondent for the National Geographic television show, Explorer. Last week, my story aired about policing in Gretna. This is Part 2 of a written series I am publishing to provide more background information and perspective that could not fit into the episode. Part 1 is here. Part 3 is here.
“You are and island of safety in a sea of chaos.”
This is what professor of at Louisiana State University’s School of Public Health, Dr. Peter Scharf, had to say to a District 1 community meeting in Gretna. Dr. Scharf is not a native of the area. He’s a New Yorker, and he has the deli references and accent to prove it. He helped draft the 1994 Crime Bill. He supports “Broken Windows Policing” for the most part. And he is a paid consultant of the Gretna Police Department.
Dr. Scharf and his associate Sonita Singh (a doctoral student at Tulane University) raced through dozens of slides before a room of perhaps 70 residents, the city council, the mayor, the deputy police chief, and the police chief. Their message was largely one of a half-time coach whose team is up by two touchdowns but who doesn’t want the players to get complacent and has some notes on a few fumbles and a near interception.
According to the slides, Gretna was doing a great job. In fact the entire District 1 meeting was a pep rally celebrating increased property values and festival attendance and bike clubs. Gretna was on the come up, in large part due to its police department.
They explained to the assembled public that yes, Gretna had a high arrest rate, but that was because of its geographic context. It sits next to much higher crime towns and parishes whose criminals pass through regularly. Its police are part of multi-city task forces and arrest a significant number of non residents. What I didn’t expect was how direct these experts would be with the public on the issue of race. They acknowledged that they need to study more a look into the disproportionality of the high arrest rates and basically asked if the town was over-policing or over-arresting black people.
Given the heightened public scrutiny over Gretna’s arrest rate, I expected residents in the audience to have a volley of questions about the numbers. They did not. Mostly people talked about cracks in their sidewalks and snakes in their yards. The police chief joked about how many residents have his cell phone number and call him personally when they are in trouble. Perhaps this was a District with a low arrest rate? Perhaps the people getting arrested were too busy to attend this public meeting? Whatever the reason, the lack of outrage in the room complicated the picture of this town.
“You need to look at that, because we’re not just anywhere USA, we’re in the midst of a metropolis. Okay?”
I remembered years ago being at CNN, about to go on air, and in the Green Room was former President George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer. I did not like the man. I knew before I ever saw him in person that someone who could sell an unjust war could not be a “good person.” I expected him to be as bad a person as the foreign policy he promoted, but instead, I found Ari Fleischer to be a nice guy. A funny guy. A real person and a pleasure to interact with backstage.
I channeled my own version of Ari Fleischer when I met the mayor of Gretna at the end of the District 1 meeting.
“Oh my sister’s name is Belinda! We’re going to have a great chat,” I said to Gretna Mayor Belinda Constant. At that early point in our interaction, we were both all smiles and eager to chat. Then I started asking questions.
I asked her how she explained the high percentage of fine-based city revenue. She condescended that I should look at the numbers. I explained that I had and in fact was citing numbers from her budget that very moment. She evaded. I asked about the high proportion of black people caught in the dragnet of policing and fines. She sharply denied any racial component and stressed how successful Gretna was. I agreed there was much success but asked if that success had not come at a price paid excessively and only by parts of Gretna, namely the black part. She got angry. The men around her were not amused.
I cannot say that my conversation-cum-confrontation with the mayor resulted in any “gotcha” moments or admissions of guilt. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, after all. But in her response I would see the same heat and denial of the angry businesswoman who accosted us on the street.
She never once acknowledged the factual information I presented. In fact, all of her responses began with “You need to…” as if I hadn’t already. My favorite: “You need to look at that, because we’re not just anywhere USA, we’re in the midst of a metropolis. Okay?”
I get it. No one wants to be mayor of a racist, over-policing, over-fining city. I expect some defensiveness, but there was something more troubling about her reaction: a lack of curiosity. The mayor was blind even to the possibility that some members of Gretna’s community weren’t nearly as excited about the city’s “success” as others. Those community members are black.
Romans, Chapter 12; Verse 14: Bless them which persecute you.
Bishop Brown was our window into Black Gretna, and he assured us, and showed us that people were not as happy as the Gretna marketing materials would have you believe. He called it a Bible Study, but it felt more like a revival. In the packed pews of Fischer Community Church on Landry Ave, just under The High Rise, I felt the pain of the people who had paid for Gretna’s great success story.
Bishop Brown used the Bible to channel that pain, building a call-and-response sermon out of the Book of Romans, Chapter 12, Verses 14–21 which say, in part, to be kind to one’s enemy and leave revenge to the Lord.
It was a strange message to hear in an era of #BlackLivesMatter marches and road blockages and defiant assertions of human value. But it wasn’t as simple as “turn the other cheek.” The Bishop railed beautifully against a policing approach that burdened his congregation more than most. Yet he also spoke of the need for compassion toward police, especially in their own times of loss such as the killings of officers in Dallas, Texas and down the road in Baton Rouge.
In between songs and syncopated claps, the Bishop offered his own version of “The Talk” that black parents give their black boys about police interactions. His version went something like this: Be respectful. Address the officer by name. You will be surprised at how that can change the interaction, because now they see that you see that they are people. Speak calmly. Etc.
Was he telling his congregation to just accept the system as it is and dressing it up in hymns and scripture? Seeing it that way would be like seeing Gretna’s police as willing agents of racism. It wasn’t that simple. Because at the end of this emotional rally combined with Bible study, Bishop Brown urged his church’s members to share their stories of Gretna police interactions with us. He pointed to the camera in the room. He pointed to me. And people came forward.
And what I heard was both frustrating and heartbreaking.
Necessarily, the version of the piece that aired on NatGeo was going to be much shorter than my actual experience there. Still it pained me to see the story of Big Ive cut. Big Ive was a gentle giant of a man who joined us in the church to “testify” in a sense about his experience with the Gretna police.
He told me of his 2014 encounter in which he was pulled over for no immediately apparent reason. The officer issued him a ticket for the license plate frame that came with the new car he was driving, claiming it blocked the plate. Don Brown Ford had sold the car that way, and Big Ive didn’t understand why he was being punished, but he was, to the tune of $150. Technically, the entire license plate number was visible, he said, but part of the 2014 date was covered.
I asked if he had tried to argue in court, and he had, but the court insisted he pay for having an obstructed license plate anyway.
“Did you consider encouraging the police to head on down to the dealership and give them tickets for issuing all these illegal license plate frames?” I asked, thinking myself pretty damn clever. And you know what he said in response?
He said, “I paid the ticket and left, you know, to keep the peace. I went ahead and paid it and just let bygones be bygones. This is my first time ever having a chance to talk about it.” And tears welled up in his eyes. This victim of the system felt it was his responsibility to “keep the peace” while the people who get paid to do just that wouldn’t.
I was the first person he shared it with. I’m not from Gretna or New Orleans or Louisiana. I have no power other than that of story, and that’s probably why he trusted me with something that should never have been a secret.
What does it say about the state of affairs in a community, when the chief of police proudly references his open door, the number of residents who have his cell phone number and who call even when they are outside of his jurisdiction? But a resident who felt wronged by that police force never went to the chief, didn’t have the cell phone number to call, and instead told a man with a camera from New York his story, a story that he carries every day and that poisons his perception of those whose job is to protect him?
I will conclude this series with one final entry. Meanwhile, hug someone you love, call on the president (not the rapey one) to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, and find out who your local politicians are. I’m sure you’ve used Google to find a deal on electronics. Do the same for our democracy.
