RACISM WITHIN A MAJOR URBAN POLICE DEPARTMENT
August 4, 2016
I commend host Ann Fisher and her
staff and guests for WOSU’s “All Sides” opening hour today, “Allegations of
Racial Discrimination by Columbus [Ohio] Police,” podcast at http://radio.wosu.org/post/allegations-racial-discrimination-columbus-police,
to anyone teaching, and for that matter anyone seeking to understand or
document the institutional problem of racism within US police departments. John Jay professor Delores Jones-Brown puts
the situation in Columbus in national context throughout the hour. Without naming the other participants in the
first half hour of the program, they also include a longtime local reporter, a
current (now committed school resource officer) and former black officer suing
to enforce the state civil rights commission recommendations for redress with
their attorney (and their testimony is specific). The primary interviewee in the second part is
the government affairs director for the state Fraternal Order of Police, which
nominally represents the rights of police at all ranks, in lieu of having
recourse to independent human resources personnel. It is too bad he didn’t hear the earlier
segment, because he simply refused to believe host Ann Fisher’s allegations
that a white sergeant could possibly threaten not to watch a black officer’s
back in the narcotics division, because “all officers watch each other’s back,”
adding that both complainants and respondents were “independently” represented
by FOP reps (and goes silent when she presses him on how the earlier cases got
buried. For her part, Professor
Jones-Brown affirms that this is a national problem for officers of color.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the
two urban police departments I have cited as models of replacing “broken-windows”
with “community” policing, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richmond, California, have
hired black and openly gay chiefs respectively, and the proportion of officers
of color in their forces, and the proportion of people of color in Columbus,
far exceed that in Columbus.
For all the talk about police
violence against “civilians” of color they encounter, this is the first
recognition of racism within police forces I have seen in a long time. It is a reminder on one hand that racial
representation matters especially at higher levels, and on the other hand that
the racism implicit throughout US, which suggests that people of color are more
criminal and less trustworthy than white folks, victimizes police too. I’m thinking, too, that in police departments
like those in Cincinnati and Richmond, letting go of demonstrating success in
law enforcement and getting to know people of color they police in many respects
carries over how police come to know and respect one another, so including
white supervisors of officers of color. Ann
Fisher and your staff, thank you for a most revealing program. Love and peace, hal
Reminds me of my first tour of Korea, being assigned to the 110th MP Co., Camp Ames Korea, where just a few weeks earlier of my arrival another MP Co., had to respond to break up race riots within the 110th MP's. Sam Luckey
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