My comments interpretations are not what I
"meant".
What I said was what I meant. 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
harrassed 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
conducisve 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
taxpapers 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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