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. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe