Racism & the police

Published : Apr 20, 2012 00:00 IST

Teenager Trayvon Martin, who was killed on February 26, and (below, in a file photograph) George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer charged with the crime.-REUTERS Teenager Trayvon Martin, who was killed on February 26, and (below, in a file photograph) George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer charged with the crime.

Teenager Trayvon Martin, who was killed on February 26, and (below, in a file photograph) George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer charged with the crime.-REUTERS Teenager Trayvon Martin, who was killed on February 26, and (below, in a file photograph) George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer charged with the crime.

The killing of an African-American youth in Florida highlights yet again the need for tact and sensitivity on the part of the police in the U.S.

The killing of an African-American youth, Trayvon Martin (17), in Sanford, central Florida, on the night of February 26 by a neighbourhood watch captain, George Zimmerman (of white-Latino parentage), has triggered a major controversy in the United States over the police's attitude to the black community.

While Zimmerman claimed that he was punched on his face by Martin and badly beaten before he (Zimmerman) opened fire in self-defence, the victim's parents and many African-American leaders refused to buy this version. They maintained that this was a racially motivated cold-blooded murder and demanded Zimmerman's immediate arrest. The police have been accused of being insensitive to the victim's family in not detaining Zimmerman.

The Sanford police chief (a white) squarely accused of inaction and poor investigation of the episode stepped down temporarily to ensure an impartial probe into the incident. The acting chief is a black. Incidentally, at the time of his death, Martin was serving a period of suspension from school because his bag had traces of marijuana. Mention of this background of Martin in official circles has been assailed as an irrelevant diversion of the main charge of the unjustified shooting down of an innocent black.

Demonstrations over Martin's killing continue. Incidentally, President Barack Obama openly expressed his sympathy for the boy, an index of the strength of public opinion that had been aroused in the matter. We have not heard the last about the happening, which is bound to further harden black mistrust of police across the country.

This is one of the major challenges to the credibility of the U.S. police. How can it integrate more with the dominant minorities: both the blacks and the Hispanics? If one were to write a candid history of the police in the country, race relations would figure prominently in it. Of the more than 15,000 stand-alone police departments in the country many have a strength of less than 20 personnel it can be safely said that nearly 10, which service the larger cities, have come to adverse notice sometime or the other for their insensitive handling of minorities, especially the blacks. The latter have always perceived the police as a hostile government agency that is white dominated, one that does not mind using physical violence against the blacks at the slightest provocation. The two forces which generally stand out for their controversies on this subject are the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Boston are among several other places that have also had incidents that showed them in poor light when it came to interacting with the non-white sections of the population.

New York and Los Angeles are perhaps the two most difficult cities in the world for policing. Their racially diverse populations, the presence of a substantial section that is economically weak, and a thriving drug and underground firearms market make them especially vulnerable to police-citizen confrontation on their streets.

New York City, which witnessed a major controversy in the 1990s with regard to Commissioner Bill Bratton's zero-tolerance policing, which was considered anti-poor (read anti-black), is still beset with several controversies. The most important of these is the much-written-about Stop and Search policy. Black leaders are categorical that this policy is nothing but crude racial profiling because it is their members who are severely targeted. Some statistics do support these critics.

On the admission of the NYPD itself, there were as many as 684,330 stops during 2011. Of the persons so stopped and possibly also searched, 87 per cent were either black or Hispanic. About 10 per cent led to arrests or summonses. Also, 8,000 weapons (including 800 handguns) were recovered from these stops. The seizure of so many firearms, scrupulously recorded, should normally inhibit police detractors. But it does not because of the more than apparent biases on either side. This is almost analogous to the situation wherein many of us (including yours truly) in India feel that we are definitely profiled at U.S. airports and subjected to a needless and humiliating pat down. The choice of a few whites among the passengers, in addition to us, for such dubious treatment hardly impresses us.

Two specific incidents that made headlines are worth recalling here. Who can forget the March 3, 1991, attack in downtown Los Angeles of a hapless African-American youth, Rodney King (26); he was beaten mercilessly by a group of at least seven LAPD officers in public view. His only mistake was that he wanted to drive away from the scene in spite of being asked to stop. The unmitigated torture was caught on video and transmitted widely across the globe.

Rodney King is now synonymous with police torture. Four LAPD officers were prosecuted for the savagery. Three of them were acquitted and the jury could not make up its mind on the fourth. The court decision led to widespread riots in the city. In the civil rights proceedings before a federal court, again, two officers were discharged and two others were sent to jail. The bitterness left behind by the incident remains, despite Commissioner Bratton's commendable efforts after he took over the department, moving over there from the NYPD.

The second incident that greatly embarrassed the police in the country related to the unimaginative treatment meted out to an eminent Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in July 2009. The professor, a black, who lived in Cambridge (Massachusetts), was arrested by a local police officer (Sergeant Crowley) after a telephonic report from a caller that someone was breaking into and entering a house in the area.

The impression given was that this was a burglary in progress. It ultimately turned out that the professor was breaking the entry door of his own house (which had accidentally got jammed and shut) with the assistance of the cab driver who had brought him from the airport after a trip to China, His explanation to the patrol officer who had arrived at the spot did not convince the latter, and he was arrested for disorderly conduct towards a police officer following an altercation. Things were cleared five days thereafter and the case against Prof. Gates was closed.

When this was brought to his notice, President Obama opined that the police action was wrong. This was roundly criticised by law enforcement officers as a gross intrusion into what was essentially their province. The President was, however, graceful enough to swiftly apologise for his comments. He also went beyond this later to summon Sergeant Crowley and Prof. Gates to the White House where Vice-President Joe Biden sorted out matters over a round of beer, an interaction that was to become facetiously known as the Beer Summit. The incident served to highlight the complexity of police work and how extreme tact and sensitivity are called for on the part of both the police and the citizenry.

Just as religion and caste are the tinder boxes in the Indian context, it is race in America. King and Gates revealed how the police could get into a mess by the mindless conduct of individual policemen. The Indian police have had far too many such incidents to relate here. It is sufficient to say that the police leadership here has to be alert all the time to make sure that force biases are kept under check. Or else, the police could get further estranged from the community.

Police scholars have researched and written elaborately on the subject of race relations in the U.S. Their focus, invariably, is on how to bridge the gulf between the police and the black community. One measure that has been tried out for several years is to enlarge the minority representation in police forces. (The majority in the Washington, D.C., police are blacks, and this squares with the city's demographics. In contrast, Philadelphia, which has a majority black population, has more whites in its police force.)

Special recruitment has only had a marginal impact, and the numbers have not gone up as fast as they should. In some police departments, the numbers have actually gone down. Washington, D.C., is one such example. This is because an average black youth believes that entering a police department that has predominantly white supervisors is too much of a risk. The fear was that once a black joined the police force, he was liable to be ill treated, and this could be so subtle that he would not have recourse to justice.

Again, there is the theory that more blacks in the police would not necessarily mean better treatment of the minorities. There was one perception that a black policeman tended to be more autocratic towards others in his own community, and his white counterpart could, for reasons of self-preservation, be expected to be more careful in handling a black. These are, of course, wild generalisations and they hardly serve to enlighten anyone on what is essentially a sociological problem. It is for community leaders and the media to keep a close eye on police conduct so that prejudiced actions are quickly remedied.

Sign in to Unlock member-only benefits!
  • Bookmark stories to read later.
  • Comment on stories to start conversations.
  • Subscribe to our newsletters.
  • Get notified about discounts and offers to our products.
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide to our community guidelines for posting your comment