The “Race” To Police Reform
I’d just located street parking next to one of my favorite restaurants
near the Grove neighborhood in St. Louis. Having arrived early,
which is typical for me, I decided to wait in my car for a few minutes
before heading in to enjoy some Spanish Tapas.
Then it happened. A navy blue Dodge Charger came to a screeching
halt near the rear of my rented Camaro. What turned out to be two
plainclothes police officers jumped out of their unmarked vehicle
and stopped a twenty-something-year-old black kid walking down
the sidewalk.
“Freeze boy!” one officer in khaki pants shouted as he drew his 9
mm handgun and pointed it right at the kid’s head. The cops
proceeded to place his hands in tight plastic, tie-like handcuffs
while they questioned him.
“Ouch, that hurts,” I could hear the boy yelp as I secretly videoed
the encounter from my car. I was still curious about what he had
done if anything.
This particular event is detailed in my book, Oreos and Pack of
Marlboro Lights. It’s a story that has unfortunately been shared by countless black men before.
As it turns out the kid was simply walking to the convenience
store to buy some cigarettes and a snack. He had no gun. He wasn’t
charged with a crime. He wasn’t even arrested. He was simply guilty of one
crime — fitting the “description” provided by a likely caller in the
neighborhood to a 911 operator:
Black, male and suspicious.
This incident reminded me of when my close friend Rick was pulled
over in Illinois a few years prior, ostensibly for speeding as was
common for him. The scenario was another familiar one.
“Can you please step out of your vehicle, sir?”
Rick, a college-educated banker and former college basketball
power forward was too scared to do anything other than comply.
They patted him down and then asked him to stand along the side
of the road as traffic sped by, with car after car watching Rick.
“Do we have permission to search your vehicle,” the harassment continued.
Rick, who knew better than to mouth off to cops reluctantly acquiesced. But now there were three cop cars on the side of the road and six white police officers.
Curious onlookers in vehicles continued to slow down on the freeway in an
attempt to ascertain what was happening. Three officers proceeded
to search Rick’s brand new Infinity. One brought out a toolset and removed the bucket seats from Rick’s car. Another thirty minutes had gone by as traffic had now backed up to get a courtside view of all the police lights and a six-foot-four black man standing with his head down in shame.
Of course, the cops came up empty again and left Rick on the side of
the road to re-assemble his car. I remember when I got the call
from Rick that night like it was yesterday. I had never heard the
normally macho Rick cry until then.
Of course, we know there are far worse black victims of police
harassment, abuse, and brutality. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor.
Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. The list is long. Really long.
We’ve tried better training and hiring initiatives. We’ve brought in
diversity professionals. We’ve had talk sessions. Community
meetings. We’ve promised to clean things up before. All to no avail.
The abuse and brutality continues unabated. So what’s the answer?
While I certainly have no definitive crystal ball prediction, frankly I believe we need to start first by addressing the systemic unconscious bias we suffer in this country, not just in police departments.
But there can be no doubt that in the meantime, the immediate issue of police abusing their power and racism within police departments needs to be radically confronted.
There have been calls to disband police departments in their
entirety. Defund them. There are calls to improve hiring and
training once again. There is a movement afoot to end qualified immunity for police officers.
And some, like a few good police officers I’ve spoken to in private, had nothing to offer in terms of solutions except, “there will always be bad cops and we need to leave it to police departments to fire them when something goes wrong.”
This same old “most cops are good” mantra leaves most of us
scratching our heads as we watched 57 cops in Buffalo, New York
resign from their task force in support of their pal who knocked
over and sent to a hospital an older man for no justified reason this
past week.
The offender was then cheered by a loud crowd of police
officers and their families. Some of these same people were the
ones who did nothing while the old man lay on the ground bleeding.
And all with the backdrop of a police department which initially tried to
cover up the incident, falsely claiming that the man “tripped.”
One bad apple? Or a club that seems more interested in protecting themselves.
Sure we can all agree that public safety is a critically important issue whether
it’s a response to a mass shooting in Las Vegas or a gay nightclub club in Orlando
Or a school massacre in Columbine
Or a cry for help at a country club-like fraternity party when someone is being gang-raped
Or when someone is breaking into your home.
Or when police learn of an armed group smuggling meth, heroin, and crack that’s destroying a community
Most people, black, brown and white, want someone to call during
these violent and horrific episodes that are all too common in this
country.
You aren’t going to call a social worker, a victim’s advocate or a
domestic violence expert when you’re a single female and someone just
broke into your house.
As a teacher, you would prefer not to have a sociologist to show up when kids are being murdered by a lone gunman.
A rabbi doesn’t want a mental health advocate to show up when their
synagogue is being bombed.
A pastor doesn’t want a community member to stop arsonists from
burning his church with a predominantly black congregation to the ground.
We don’t need a good speaker and regular at Toastmasters trying to
stop a mass drug dealer from spreading heroin and meth.
Let’s face it, there are instances when we need an armed police
force, or whatever you want to call them. And yet that very same law enforcement group we so desperately need to call on during these moments of extreme distress are failing black and other communities of color with their pervasive abuse.
It’s not just a few bad cops. It’s also all of the cops who stand by silently when they know their colleagues are up to no good. It is all the police chiefs who claim sorrow but make no real changes.
I recall a happy hour in St. Louis ten years ago when an off duty cop
kept dropping the N-word. His cop buddies said nothing despite the fact that it was this officer’s job was to patrol an all-black area of North St. Louis.
I’m sure it wasn't the first time this had slipped out. Nor the first
time his cop buddies sat in silence. I called the department and told
the story anyway but I bet that cop is still there.
When I mentioned to a police officer friend that “I guarantee Derek
Chauvin’s buddies in the Minneapolis police force knew about his
aggressive and inappropriate tendencies,” his only fall back was
again to put the onus on the department itself and not on the everyday
cops.
So let’s be clear, the reason we need radical change isn’t because of
a few bad apples. We can easily fire the few. It’s because these issues
have persisted unabated while we’ve left it to police departments to fix their act. They haven’t acted so now we must. The silent good ones can no longer be silent.
The question then becomes how do we balance the very real need to
have trained policemen and women protect us with this urgent
need to eradicate racist, biased and abusive cops in our nation’s
police departments. Let me suggest a hybrid approach.
When it comes to non-violent crime or post-violence issues, we
should consider training and putting in place experts in each field
where intervention is necessary.
Homelessness advocates and experts.
Domestic violence experts.
Parenting experts.
Social workers.
People who can address non-violent or post-violent situations on a
more intentional and thoughtful level. People who seek solutions and redress.
Because here’s what we know — the police aren’t trained to help
these people anyway.
Sure they can make a report. Find a perpetrator. Arrest people who fit descriptions. But they can’t actually dig deeper into some of these issues.
It’s easy to forcefully make a homeless man move his belongings,
but maybe a homeless advocate can find an alternative and much
more viable solution at that moment.
When it comes to violent crimes, we need to maintain a police force
that has not only been retrained in the proper use of force but also
has undertaken intense bias training and testing. The training should be administered by organizations that have experts in this field, not by the police.
Also, a police force should look more like the community it purports to protect. In other words, black communities should have more black police officers.
This limited police force will need to be revamped. There will need
to be a commitment to “police the police.” The days of watching
your police pal and not reporting him or her are over and there must be consequences. There should be requirements in place stating that video
and audio cams must be kept on at all times. And if they are not, that should be grounds for automatic dismissal, or worse for the offending officers.
There should be independent reviews and audits of the cam
recordings in order to ensure justified behavior as well as
compliance with the “cam-on-at-all-times” rule. Certainly, there
will be more details in any plan, but the idea is to have the necessary
police force held to a far higher standard.
I’m admittedly not a police officer nor an expert on crime. I am sure
there are countless other scenarios I have not mentioned that must
be addressed in a radically new plan. We can begin though by
establishing a police force that we all truly respect, one that looks
like the people it protects while keeping these cops away from scenarios where their AR-15s, chokeholds, and pin downs are rarely if ever needed.
Let’s not be naïve about our need for policing, but let’s also not be
naïve about the severity of race and abuse problems, and the
accompanying silence, in our police ranks.
This is the perfect time for crime, social justice, and race experts to converge in order to create a plan that works for all of us, not just white people. My suggestions hopefully can offer a starting point for that dialogue and comprehensive planning to take place.
Being a police officer, particularly in a high crime area with high
murder rates, must be incredibly challenging and difficult. Imagine
not knowing if you will see your family again if you make the wrong
move. Imagine not knowing on a traffic stop if someone will pull
out a gun.
But then imagine if you’re black and you have that same fear every
time you leave your house. You see, officer, you do understand what it
feels like after all.
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Jeffrey Kass is the author of “Oreos and a Pack of Marlboro Lights,” a collection of lightly fictionalized tree stories, essays, and even a poem covering a wide variety of subjects including relationships, race, religion, and coming of age matters. He can be reached at jeffrey@jeffreykass.com
