Pubdate: Sun, 29 Apr 2001
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2001 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.sunspot.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Paul Butler is a law professor at George Washington 
University. He was formerly a federal prosecutor, specializing in 
public corruption, with the Department of Justice
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)
Note: Drug War reference is near the end of the piece

PROBLEM OF MISTRUST

We Must Heal The Relationship, Bridge The Divide Between Blacks And Police

IN CINCINNATI, black folks rioted after a police officer shot and 
killed an unarmed black man. And in Baltimore, a mainly 
African-American jury acquitted a black teen-ager who crashed into a 
patrol car, killing a police officer.

There is a war going on, people said during the 1960s, referring to 
race relations.

Now, in the new century, there is a profound mistrust -- bordering on 
hate -- between some African-Americans and some of our nation's 
police departments. It is sad, but true. Many blacks do not view the 
police as their friends.

The friction between police officers and the black community is not 
new. In fact, this long-festering problem was documented 34 years ago 
by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known 
the Kerner Commission.

President Lyndon B. Johnson created the commission to study racial 
disorders in 23 urban areas during the "long, hot summer" of 1967. 
The commission's basic conclusion was "our nation is moving toward 
two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."

A post-mortem of the riots also showed that the "abrasive 
relationship" between the police and minority communities was an 
"explosive" source of "grievance, tension and disorder."

The commission also noted the dilemma caused by the use of tough 
law-and-order police tactics to reduce crime in black neighborhoods.

"The police are faced with demands for increased protection and 
service in the ghetto. Yet the aggressive patrol practices thought 
necessary to meet these demands themselves create tension and 
hostility," the commission concluded.

Earlier this month, a white Cincinnati policeman shot an unarmed 
black man, touching off three days of protest and vandalism. His 
death became part of a troubling pattern -- he was the 15th black man 
to be killed by Cincinnati police in six years. No whites were killed 
by police during that time.

Cincinnati was one of the cities hit by racial disorders in 1967 and 
its problems were chronicled in the commission's report released in 
March 1968.

In 1967, rioting broke out in Cincinnati after the arrest of a black 
man who was protesting the murder conviction of his cousin. Many 
blacks saw the arrest as another example of selective enforcement of 
the city's anti-loitering law. "Between January, 1966, and June, 
1967, 170 of some 240 persons arrested under the ordinance were 
Negro," the commission's report noted.

Another pattern developed as rioters were arrested. The police 
charged most of the whites with disorderly conduct, which carried a 
maximum sentence of 30 days in jail and a $100 fine. Many blacks were 
charged with violation of the Riot Act -- punishable by one year in 
jail and a $500 fine.

Unfortunately, the racial animosity between the black community and 
police officers works both ways.

If you are a cop in an urban area with a large minority population -- 
such as Baltimore or Cincinnati -- you're bound to be more suspicious 
of African-Americans. It's your job to catch criminals, and blacks 
commit more of certain kinds of crimes than non-blacks.

"Of course we do racial profiling at the train station," Gary 
McLhinney, the president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, 
explained in a New York Times magazine article that appeared on June 
20, 1999. "If 20 people get off the train and 19 are white guys in 
suits and one is a black female, guess who gets followed? If racial 
profiling is intuition and experience, I guess we all racial-profile."

Ironically, then-Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier said 
this in the same article: "To say that being of any particular race 
makes you a suspect in a particular type of crime is just wrong, and 
it's not done in Baltimore."

Yeah, right. That's one reason African-American jurors are becoming 
increasingly suspicious of police. Because the cops lie sometimes. 
And that played a heavy role in the decision made by a Baltimore jury 
on Jan. 19.

Cautious Jurors

The jury deliberated about four hours before clearing Eric D. 
Stennett of murder, attempted murder and vehicular manslaughter, even 
though his own lawyer admitted that Stennett was driving the speeding 
Ford Bronco that killed Officer Kevon M. Gavin.

Prosecutors argued that police saw Stennett shoot into a crowd in 
Southwest Baltimore and drive away in a Ford Bronco. Clad in body 
armor and with a 10 mm semiautomatic handgun on the seat, Stennett 
took police on a high-speed chase that ended when he rammed Gavin's 
cruiser, the prosecutors charged.

During the trial, it came out that a police officer who witnessed the 
crash originally wrote a report that said Stennett had "lost control" 
of his vehicle and it "veered" into Gavin's cruiser.

To be convicted of murder, however, the defendant must be proven to 
have had the intent to kill. Several days later the officer amended 
his report to say that Stennett "did not attempt to slow down or 
stop," and could have avoided Officer Gavin's car, but instead 
deliberately ran into it.

Both those reports can't be true. The police officer told the jury to 
believe the one that he filed several days after the incident, and 
which was more favorable to the prosecution.

"Please!" one of the jurors told The Sun later, in talking about the 
police. "You can't just go turning your report around to ... some 
version you want to believe happened. Show some professionalism, 
especially when you're talking about a criminal charge."

Indeed. Jurors are told to use their life experiences and common 
sense when they evaluate the credibility of witnesses. They also are 
instructed that they should not automatically give the police more 
credit than any other witnesses.

When I was prosecuting street crimes in the District of Columbia, my 
colleagues used to joke that there should be a different instruction 
for urban jurors: don't give law enforcement officers less credit 
than anybody else.

Now the police have their own concerns about being "profiled." The 
mistakes the police made in the Stennett trial don't take away from 
the fact that the defendant, while fleeing police, drove a Ford 
Bronco that landed on top of a police cruiser and killed a man.

Stennett's defense attorney, during the closing, practically invited 
the jury to convict his client of a crime. He said: "I'm not saying 
that this young man should walk out of here free.... I'm not saying 
that he's not guilty of something. But I'm suggesting to you ... it's 
vehicular homicide, if anything, manslaughter, if anything. It's not 
murder ..."

The jurors declined the defense attorney's recommendation. Stennett 
walked. Jurors told The Sun they acquitted because they had 
reasonable doubt about whether Stennett was guilty of murder, and 
they did not understand the judge's instructions about manslaughter 
and vehicular homicide. Their comments, as reported by The Sun's Jim 
Haner and John B. O'Donnell, betrayed a troubling discomfort with law 
enforcement. "The police must take us for fools," one juror commented.

Community Needs The Police

The Cincinnati riots and the Stennett case illustrate the profound 
lack of faith that minority communities have in the police. People of 
all races complain about inefficient government services. Everyone 
gets ticked off about a long line at the Department of Motor 
Vehicles. But there are more troubling consequences when citizens 
lack confidence in government employees who are licensed to kill.

When your car has been stolen, or your crazy ex-boyfriend is outside 
your door with a gun, who are you going to call? We need the police. 
The minority citizens who have the most concerns about police conduct 
are the same people complaining about the lack of police in their 
neighborhoods. It's like the guy at the cafeteria who complains about 
how bad the food is, and that there's not enough of it.

End The War On Drugs

What to do about the impasse between black and blue? Two suggestions, 
one pie in the sky and the other practical enough to get done in six 
months.

The pie in the sky proposal is to end the war on drugs. It's a war 
that is counterproductive, and it cannot be won, as the recent film 
"Traffic" brilliantly depicts. Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke 
was correct when he argued that the drug problem would be better 
controlled through a public health and regulatory approach (what we 
do now for cigarettes) rather than with the criminal justice system.

Another, less noted, benefit of ending the war on drugs would be to 
reduce dramatically the racial profiling that has caused many people 
of color to lose faith in the police. Almost every "driving while 
black" stop is an effort to look for drugs -- even though, according 
to the Justice Department, African-Americans do not 
disproportionately commit drug offenses.

If drugs were decriminalized, police could concentrate their efforts 
on serious violent criminals, who are apprehended through 
old-fashioned detective work, not racial profiling.

Ending the war on drugs would also eliminate a prime opportunity for 
police corruption. Last year a Baltimore police officer was charged 
with planting crack on a suspect, who he then arrested for 
possession. That is every African-American's nightmare. Take a small, 
easily hidden substance and make it illegal. Then give it to someone 
who you don't trust, and who has the power to arrest you.

Would you feel safe? Enforcing the drug laws creates too much 
temptation for police to lie or make arrests in an arbitrary or 
discriminatory way.

OK, I know the war on drugs is not going to end any time soon. As a 
law professor, I'm supposed to put ideas out there, and that's one 
good one. As a African-American man, I have a more practical 
suggestion: cameras on every squad car. Why not use technology to 
give us more information about what goes on in encounters between 
police and citizens?

This could be done in Baltimore by the end of the year. Obviously 
cameras wouldn't capture everything, but they could go a long way in 
providing security for those who are afraid of -- of all people -- 
the police.

Whatever reforms are undertaken, the goal must be immediately to heal 
the dysfunctional relationship between African-Americans and the 
police. In that war, as citizens of both Baltimore and Cincinnati 
must understand, there are only losers.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe