HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

There are some positions in our society that require at least the illusion of complete impartiality. Judges and police officers who enforce our laws are chief among those. Because we entrust these individuals with the authority to take away a person’s freedom, and in some case even their lives, it is imperative that we have an assurance that these professionals do not make decisions based on any negative feelings about a person’s race or ethnicity. As Dr. Martin Luther King so eloquently stated in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Dr. King’s quote applies to all of us, but especially to those who comprise our legal system.

With respect to the police, we Americans rely on them to keep us safe and treat us fairly, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion. However, across this country there exists a deep rooted mistrust of the police and the criminal justice system because so many tragedies are caused by police callousness, folly or ignorance, and the subsequent refusal by grand juries to find criminal culpability. Contrary to popular belief, this mistreatment did not magically happen overnight.

Minorities communities have suffered decades of over-criminalization with policies such as “broken windows,” which theorizes that where signs of disorder – such as broken windows or graffiti – proliferate and persist, a general failing of the community takes hold. So, as this theory continues,  minor infractions are treated as major crimes, and when more and more behaviors are criminalized there are more occasions for police departments to enforce their monopoly on legitimate violence in the community. Minority communities have experienced the same over-criminalization in our juvenile justice system and school discipline. Conduct by students in school that in the past would have at worst resulted in suspension, now result in minors being arrested and taken to juvenile hall. In many of these cases, students are expelled, which leads to them entering the “school to prison pipeline.”

Despite these numerous complaints, the pervasive racism by law enforcement seems to fall on deaf ears, and until a “Trevon Martin,” “Eric Garner,” or “Michael Brown” is killed no one listen to the calls for a fair criminal justice system.  Despite the complaints of the existence of racist and biased police officers, not until a “Lt. Shawn Williams,” “Deputy Chief David Borst,” or “Officer George Hunnewell” does anyone listen to the calls for a fair criminal justice system.

Limited But Powerful Statistics

Though the U.S. Government does not have a databasecollecting information about the total number of police involved shootings each year, according to Katie Rucke of MintPressNews “it’s estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Americans are killed by police officers each year. Since 9/11, about 5,000 Americans have been killed by U.S. police officers, which is almost equivalent to the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in August 2014, local police were involved in 400 killings each year, with many of those incidents involving white cops and black victims. The FBI also reported that between 2005 and 2012 on average nearly two times a week, a white police officer killed an African American and that there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police.

Moreover, a pilot study conducted by the federal government between 1991 and 2000 found that “excessive force” was not used in 99.583% of all reported cases. In fact, the FBI stated that there were an average of about 400 “justifiable homicides” a year by law officers in the line of duty between 2008 and 2012.

Finally, a report by a group called the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP) identified 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct in the U.S. involving 6,613 officers from April 2009 through the end of 2010. In these cases only 33 percent resulted in conviction and 12 percent in prison time.

These statistics suggest that the fatal shooting of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner from Staten Island, New York; John Crawford from Beavercreek, Ohio; Marquis Jones from San Antonio, Texas; Ezell Ford from Los Angeles, California; Rodney Mitchell from Sarasota, Florida or Raymond Herisse from South Florida are anything but isolated incidents. On the contrary, police brutality is a national crisis, and the underlying structural violence – racism, economic injustice and militarism – is a national epidemic.

Those who deny that racism is at the heart of police brutality only need to pay attention to recent news reports. For instance, in San Francisco, California – a supposedly very progressive and enlightened community, there is a serious and growing scandal uncovered by the FBI and Federal Prosecutors involoving San Francisco Police Officers sending racist and homophobic text messages. Four of the officers under investigation have been members of the police department over 10 years. Federal Prosecutors and the FBI turned over the text messages obtained from a San Francisco Officer who was recently convicted in federal court on corruption charges. The texts included:

Q: Do you celebrate quanza at your school?

A: Yeah we burn the cross on the field! Then we celebrate Whitmas!

The convicted officer wrote to another officer the following text:

Q: I hate to tell you this but my wife’s friend is over with their kids and her husband is black! He is an attorney but should I be worried?

A: Get your pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. It’s not against the law to put an animal down.  

Convicted Officer responded: Well said!

The FBI found numerous texts containing racial and homophobic epithets.  For instance, in response to a black officer being promoted, the convicted officer wrote, “Fuckin’ Nigger.”

The frightening consequence is that these officers were patrolling the streets of San Francisco for over ten years, arresting members of the minority community and being promoted presumably as persons of character.  The reality is you had virulent racist and homophobe officers patrolling the streets of San Francisco and arresting minorities.

This scandal is growing: It was announced on Tuesday, March 17, 2015, that 10 more officers, including a captain, are under investigation for sending racist and homophobic texts, and have been reassigned to non-public contact duties.

Unfortunately, this situation is not limited to San Francisco. A similar, but more severe, incident occurred in Charleston, West Virginia. Last September, Lt. Shawn Williams, a 16-year veteran of the Charleston Police Department, was placed on leave pending an investigation by the Charleston Police Department’s Professional Standards Division. According to media reports, Williams was being investigated over allegedly racially charged comments made on videos that depicted his 8 year old daughter dressed in what appeared to be articles of a police uniform and dancing to an anthem of the Ku Klux Klan. The refrain of the song repeats the words, “Stand up and be counted, show the world that you’re a man. Stand up and be counted, go with the Ku Klux Klan.” Moreover, a man alleged to be Williams can be heard asking the girl questions and utilizing derogatory racial language.

Lt. Williams gave an interview to WCHSTV that aired on Nov. 26. He said that the videos were never made for public consumption, and that the views expressed on the video are not those that he or his family holds. He acknowledged, though, that the videos were disturbing, and that they would reasonably lead someone who does not know him to conclude that he harbored racially hostile beliefs. He said that he is not a racist. In January, he submitted his resignation one day before his scheduled hearing. Initially, Lt. Williams did not believe that he should be fired for his actions and continually and strongly hinted that others’ acts would be exposed if he wasfired or disciplined for these videos. He said that, if his behavior were placed on some theoretical racism scale at the Charleston Police Department as a 10, others would rate a 20 or 30.

Moreover, last July, the Daily Mail reported that that Deputy Chief David Borst and Officer George Hunnewell, two Florida police officers, were discharged from the force after they were outed as KKK members in an FBI investigation. One officer was fired and the other resigned before the department had the opportunity to fire him.

If America is to have any hope of eradicating policy brutality, eliminating bias in our courts and restoring the faith of minority communities in the legal system, then it will have to employ a multi-faceted approach which will include but not be limited to, legislative, educational, economic and social reform. And at the heart of this reform will have to be our legal community. The founders of the National Bar Association – our nation’s largest and oldest organization of legal professionals – and our civil rights leaders, have always understood that any effort to advocate for civil rights HAS to have a legal component, a group of lawyers committed to eliminating discrimination that is institutionalized in the laws of our cities, states and our nation. There is ALWAYS a legal strategy behind any successful civil rights effort.

Legal Community: Rise and be Counted is an Op-Ed by Pamela Meanes, Esq.

Pamela Meanes, Past President National Bar Association
Pamela Meanes, Past President National Bar Association