By Seth Richardson
The Gazette’s new “Data Geek” Perry Swanson has taken on the important subject of the effects of race on law enforcement arrest decisions. In his April 27th article, Swanson outlines the statistics in Colorado Springs. The most significant statistic is that while blacks make up only 7 percent of the population, they account for 20 percent of arrests.
The pertinent question of course is whether or not blacks are committing more offenses than whites or Hispanics, or whether they are being arrested at a higher rate than whites because of their race? The statistics superficially suggest that officers, when initiating contacts, are racially profiling blacks, which is hardly an unknown law-enforcement phenomenon. Of course the term “racial profiling” itself is a loaded one, and carries a good deal of baggage that it may not warrant.
What would add a good deal of credibility to these statistics would be a comparison of convictions (or plea bargains) by race. Swanson points this out in his blog, but not in the article. He also points out the important question of what percentage of arrests of blacks versus whites is the result of officer-initiated contacts. It would also be interesting to see a statistical comparison of arrests of blacks by black police officers versus white police officers.
What’s important is not how carefully police scrutinize the conduct of any member of the public, because when you’re in public, the police have both the right and the authority, and indeed the duty to scrutinize you, within strict constitutional limitations of course; what’s important is whether you are engaged in illegal activity or not. Those who do not engage in illegal activity have nothing to fear from lawful police scrutiny. If you don’t want the police to be interested in what you’re doing, don’t do things that the police find interesting.
Do you get nervous when you see a police officer parked on the shoulder of the highway? Many people do because they know they are speeding. Do you become nervous when you see a police officer on the street? If so, why? And what sort of attitude do you exude if the officer approaches you to speak to you? Are you friendly, cordial and helpful, or are you hostile, angry and confrontational?
Experience tells police officers that those who are hostile, angry and confrontational often have something to hide, irrespective of their race, which makes the officer interested in finding out if that might be some illegality. It’s their job to do so, so one can hardly blame them for taking an interest in persons who show physical and emotional signs of guilt. They wouldn’t be good police officers if they didn’t pick up on such subtle clues of possible wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, the race issue is a place where guilt by association can skew the normal physiological reactions of an individual, which creates a feedback loop of increasing hostility and suspicion. And I’m not talking about guilt by association of blacks by police officers; I’m talking about guilt by association by blacks against police officers. If racial profiling of blacks by police officers is a problem in most big cities it’s as likely to be a result of institutionalized, cultural anti-police biases and open hostility to law enforcement on the part of blacks as it is racism on the part of police officers. This aspect of the problem is very often overlooked.
It’s important to note that a police officer’s response to evident postural and attitudinal hostility may have nothing whatever to do with racism and everything to do with a finely honed instinct for survival and an equally finely honed ability to sense that something isn’t right about an individual. While it may be true that police officers sometimes demonstrate heightened caution when dealing with blacks, that heightened caution may be the result of experience with hostile attitudes manifested by blacks.
Police work can be a life-or-death occupation and survival can depend on properly judging the imminence of potential threats. Making a mistake by underestimating a potential threat can be fatal, so we must allow some reasonable latitude to officers in how they act based on prior experience, and we must each do everything possible not to escalate the perceived threat level when dealing with the police. Observing the reactions of black police officers during interactions with other blacks can be highly instructive in this regard. One might say that for most police officers there are only two colors; blue and not-blue.
It could be racism, of course, as it too often has been on the part of police in the past, and it’s important to distinguish between experiential reactions to observable behavior and internalized beliefs by the officer about blacks in general that may constitute racism. Racism, you see, has a very specific definition, one that’s worth repeating: Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. So, in this particular context, unless the particular police officer can be identified as holding the belief that blacks are inferior because of their race, racism is not the proper term to use.
It may be that a particular officer is prejudiced or bigoted against blacks, but that is again is different from individual or institutionalized racism. It is important to identify officers who hold prejudiced or bigoted attitudes about any group, minority or otherwise and to weed them out of the department as quickly as possible, and it is the duty of the command structure to carefully investigate and take quick and decisive action against any police officer who manifests such prejudices. Such people cannot be tolerated in law enforcement and they endanger everyone by their presence.
But what’s just as likely is that additional scrutiny of blacks by police is related to the historical and cultural animosities towards police by blacks that manifests itself in behaviors that police officers find suspicious. This is not to say that these behaviors are entirely unjustified, given the long history of very real oppression of blacks in major cities across the nation by police. Such institutionalized discrimination has been the subject of countless investigations and remedial programs and many problems remain on the law enforcement side of the issue. However, it is equally important to acknowledge and address unwarranted hostility and confrontational attitudes by blacks towards police if we hope to create a community where law abiding people of all races have a comfortable and cordial relationship with their law enforcement officers.
Much work remains on both sides of the cultural divide between blacks and the police, and the efforts must be aimed at the deeply held prejudices and bigotries of both groups. It is wrong to blame only the police for these difficulties. Everyone has to accept their share of creating an atmosphere of hostility and animosity between citizens and police, regardless of race.
Prejudice means to form an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge or an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race or their supposed characteristics. Bigotry means an obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one’s own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them.
The police are our public servants. They are there to assist and protect us, and while they owe us a duty of honesty and even-handed enforcement of the law, we owe them a duty of respect and cooperation for the difficult job they do. Let us recognize that our police, as a class, are too often the subjects of prejudice and bigotry themselves, and let us all strive to judge every individual police officer on his own merits, weeding out the bad ones and respecting and supporting the good ones.
© 2009 Altnews
I lived in Colorado Springs for several years and I can say that this community is one that is very intolerant of people that are non-white. It is a republican base that thinks that it is holier than thou art and all this plays itself into the politics and law enforcement aspect of this community and who is prosecuted and who is not. When you have always lived in a community that doesn’t think outside the box, than you believe and begin to champion profiling other races as being criminal and deviant.
It is a shame that this is 2009 and we are still living in a time where race baiting and fear mongering are the norm and content of character of many of the whites that live in Colorado Springs.
May God have mercy on your souls.
Johnny R wrote: “With blacks being around 13% of our population violent crimes are much higher with blacks. This is not racist it is just the truth.”
That may be. Again, the Gazette editorial did nothing other than suggest that blacks prepare to defend their rights when contacted by police. Is that a problem?
Seth wrote: “What then are the police to do? Should they ignore the high crime areas and focus their efforts on rousting suburban housewives in hopes of catching some of them with a joint in the ashtray?”
No, not at all. Read the editorial again. It was not critical of police. It said that people, especially black people, should be prepared to enforce their rights when dealing with police. Would you disagree with this? — Wayne
Seth wrote: “You point out in your column that the suburban housewife is less likely to be subjected to a warrantless search of her car than is the inner-city black and this is true, but the reasons may not be closely tied to race, they may have to do with the simple statistic of police presence in the low-crime suburbs versus the high-crime inner city. ”
Of course, Seth. The editorial did not argue that police should not patrol more heavily in high crime neighborhoods. It argued that citizens must enforce their civil rights, especially if they live in neighborhoods where they are more likely to come into contact with police. — Wayne
I prefer to use other facts rather than a TV show for opinions. Let us look at the cold hard facts………………..
The U.S. Justice Department provides a breakdown of homicides by the race of both the victim and offender. Looking at the data for 2005, we find that whites committed 48.0% of all murders and blacks committed 51.2% of all murders.
With blacks being around 13% of our population violent crimes are much higher with blacks.
This is not racist it is just the truth.
79% of black families are fatherless, 78% of jail and prison inmates come from fatherless families. Much has been written on the children from fatherless families, the risks to them and problems they face as adults.
When blacks (I could say and whites, but someone seems to want to make this about race) want to face the real problem, look in the mirror, look for ways to help your struggling friends and neighbors, help them make wise decisions. Otherwise you suck valuable resources from our community and country.
There are many statistics and studies on the black population and crime if you have the honest will to study and look at the facts or you can attack the messenger. And the problem will continue.
While I agree that the crime statistics are clear, we must be careful to also recognize that correlation is not necessarily causation and avoid making assumptions about blacks and criminality that might be unwarranted. This is the difficulty that police face in their day to day contacts with citizens. It’s very easy to allow the sort of disproportionate crime statistics you cite to be misinterpreted in ways that create discriminatory practices. One of the most difficult things to do, given the public perception of high crime rates being associated with blacks is to then settle into the mindset that all blacks are criminals. This is one of the errors that police, and indeed everyone makes that reinforces the negative stereotype that increases interracial hostility. And when the police fall into that trap, they naturally tend to focus their attention on all blacks, even though that attention may be unwarranted. That’s what the statistical analysis of contact, arrest and conviction data hopes to illuminate.
National statistics, while important, are not as pertinent as local crime statistics when it comes to evaluating how the police do their job. Remember that the national statistics are very likely skewed by data from places like New York, Los Angeles and Detroit. What obtains there may not obtain here, at least in degree.
I also agree that the issue of children and how they are raised is important to society, but that’s a culture wide issue not limited to minorities.
The issue is hardly a simple one amenable to simplistic answers, but for Colorado Springs, it’s important to carefully examine it to be sure that everything that can be done is being done to ensure the fairness and objectivity of our police. Because we place great authority and trust in the police, it is appropriate to hold them to the highest standard and to subject them to critical scrutiny of their policies, procedures and actions. But this must be done as an “audit” of the police, and not in an accusatory manner unless and until evidence of systemic wrongdoing is discovered. On an individual basis, each officer is responsible for proper conduct and must be properly supervised and trained, and disciplined or terminated if he or she engages in any sort of behavior that violates the civil rights of citizens, regardless of their race. This is why it is important that citizens obtain the identity of police they have contact with and make reports to the police department about the demeanor and professionalism of the individual officer. Without input from the public as to how officers are exercising their authority, the police have little to go on when it comes to the need for retraining or discipline. It is our responsibility to monitor our police because “The police are the people, and the people are the police, the police being only persons paid to give full time attention to the duties incumbent upon all persons in the interests of community safety and existence.” So said Sir Robert Peel, founder of the London Metropolitan Police, the model for modern law enforcement.
Dealing with cultural and racial divides requires much work as well, but that is not the subject of this particular editorial.
Interesting and thoughtful analysis, Seth. I do quesion the notion that blacks may be reacting inappropriately to police. I have no data to support my supposition that blacks are in no way responsbible for the way they are treated, at large, by police. But I do watch the TV show Cops. Episode after episode, city after city features cops pulling over black people for no apparent reason. Blacks comprise a minority in nearly every city in America, yet the stops featured on Cops must involves blacks 90-plus percentage of the time. The stops are followed by the unbelievable propensity of the mostly cooperative black suspects giving officers persmission to search their cars. I think police detain black people because they cooperate in warrantless searches. I think they cooperate in warrantless searches because they fear the police. — Wayne
Trying to draw conclusions about racial bias by police based on watching “Cops” seems a bit of a zero-sum game to me. The first problem is that because of editing, we have no way of knowing what behavior by the driver caused the police to take an interest. I would point out that, as a former police officer, I can state that most of the time the probable cause for a stop is observed at distances that make it very difficult to tell the race of the occupants of the car. It’s not as if a cop sitting at an intersection is scrutinizing the race of the drivers of cars that run the red light and is only pursuing the black drivers. Only after you stop the vehicle do you determine the race of the occupants most of the time.
This is not true, of course, of pedestrian contacts where the race of the individual is clearly visible, and this is where subtle bias may inject itself into the detention. This is why it’s important to determine how many of the arrests resulted in convictions and what the racial balance of non-arrest Terry stop detentions is.
You point out in your column that the suburban housewife is less likely to be subjected to a warrantless search of her car than is the inner-city black and this is true, but the reasons may not be closely tied to race, they may have to do with the simple statistic of police presence in the low-crime suburbs versus the high-crime inner city. Police tend to go where the crime is, so it’s no real surprise that they patrol more heavily in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Indeed, they would be remiss if they did not do so.
The natural consequence of a greater police presence in high-crime neighborhoods is a higher incidence of police contacts with citizens, and in a high-crime area, this naturally results in more contacts with criminals, and thus more investigatory detentions and more arrests. Only if the contacts, detentions and arrests do not result in criminal convictions would I have a serious concern about the disparity between racial groups involved. If it is true that blacks are arrested at three times the rate of whites, it may be because crime rates in heavily-black neighborhoods are much higher than in the suburbs.
What then are the police to do? Should they ignore the high crime areas and focus their efforts on rousting suburban housewives in hopes of catching some of them with a joint in the ashtray? Would this not be unlawfully discriminating against the law-abiding blacks in the high-crime neighborhoods by leaving them as unprotected prey for criminals? Indeed it often seems as if police are caught in an intractable dilemma; patrol high-crime minority neighborhoods too heavily and the residents complain that they are being oppressed by the police. Don’t patrol enough and residents complain that police are ignoring the crime problem in their neighborhood. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Perhaps citizens in high-crime areas should follow the lead of the Black Panthers in Berkley in the 60s and arm themselves openly and patrol their own communities to suppress the criminal element. That way they will have less to complain about either way.