Mr. Connally wrote arguing that the Mayor has not responded to the issue of
racial profiling because she wasn't testifying on this issue at the Capital.
This argument is incorrect. The Mayor can and has asked for improved
training methods for our police. But this issue of racial profiling is much
more complex that just changing the behavior of the police. Matthea Smith
wrote some of the best words I have ever read on racial profiling and with
her permission I am reposting them here as an example of what needs to
happen to really address this issue in our community:
Yes, the police do make terrible mistakes. But many, many times there are
citizens that call for police intervention, for example, those kids (that
happen to be Black) that must be dealing drugs on the corner, so I'll call
the police to remove them.
I also realize that it is difficult, if not impossible for a Black man to
drive a new expensive car down any street in the city of Minneapolis without
being stopped by the police. I have incidents that have happened in my
family -- three to be exact. But I am not just talking about the incidents
where the police are pulling folks over, nor am I minimizing it. This is a
serious problem that absolutely has to be dealt with promptly and promise of
a serious resolve.
However, this is just a fraction of the incidents of police intervention.
911 gets many, many calls for suspicious folks walking the streets, kids
"fighting" [when they are playing] in the streets, etc., etc., etc. These
calls are made by citizens that are doing their own racial profiling.
I know of a case where a community activist, that was self-identified as
working with the police, identified young black men that happened to be on
Lake street, as dealing and using drugs. This proved to be untrue. But the
call was made, the police were dispatched and the young men were harassed
and one was arrested for an outstanding traffic warrant.
Many times citizens are the ones that call the police and ask for police
intervention. If the color of the participants on the streets were white
would these same citizens assume the same need for police intervention? I
think the statistics from police calls show otherwise.
I am glad to hear that the stats shows that our crime is down. Because of
this, I believe this is an excellent time to work with the police on ways to
make sure their behavior is not that conducive of racial profiling. This is
similar to the work we did with domestic violence and trying to get the
police to identify battering. That work took time and a LOT of training.
And even though, battering still goes on, and more training needs to be
done, we have many sensitive police officers to battering and domestic
violence.
Unfortunately, we have not done as much training in the community, so there
is much to be done on the issues of domestic violence and battering in
neighborhoods and communities.
This correlation, for me, holds true with racial profiling. I am talking
about serious systems change...this doesn't happen by changing one person's
attitude, it is a
whole community.
I think if the community is truly upset about racial profiling it will be on
every Neighborhood
organization's agenda, and they will work with the police, through their
Community Policing
programs, with their NRPs, and local foundations, to make sure it is
eliminated in respective
neighborhoods through training and different programs.
In my opinion this is where one holds the taxpayers accountable for their
behavior.
Because basically, yes, we are paying for the racial profiling that we are,
in part,
responsible.
Matthea
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