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Penn's police training is faulted
The force gets only sporadic training to prevent racial profiling, said a group formed after an October incident. By James M. O'Neill Inquirer Staff Writer University of Pennsylvania police receive only sporadic training to prevent racial profiling, and the training material reinforces racial stereotypes rather than sensitizing officers to stay clear of them, a new Penn report has concluded. Yesterday's report also found that African Americans are stopped more than others by Penn police, but the report's authors said they lacked key data to determine whether racial profiling was the root cause. Among those stopped, the proportion receiving citations is "remarkably similar across ethnic groups," the report found. The study was issued by a group of Penn professors and officials formed in October after a Penn professor's husband, who is African American, had been stopped, pepper-sprayed and arrested while carrying two bicycles on a campus sidewalk. The bikes were his. A disorderly conduct charge filed against him was later dropped. "I'm pleased they came up with something substantive," said Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, the professor whose husband, Rui DaSilva, was arrested Oct. 11. "It's clear that when they saw the training material, they saw areas that needed improvement." The report says that although Penn police department policies call for annual training to prevent racial profiling, training was offered in 2001, and not again until this January. And although the training met national standards, the report deemed it severely flawed. "Stereotyping that the... policy is intended to discourage was inadvertently being taught to officers," the report stated. "Minority groups were distinguished from each other on the basis of stereotypic behaviors, communication styles, potentials for violence, and attitudes toward authority. "Officers were further instructed to use different styles of communication depending on persons' ethnic background; a practice which... could violate the bias based profiling policy, and is in any case contrary to the spirit of the policy." The committee chose not to include the training material in its report for fear that it might be used out of context, said Dennis Culhane, the committee chair and chair of Penn's psychiatry department. Maureen Rush, Penn's vice president for public safety, said Penn would create a committee to improve training and to create a five-year training plan. She also said the department was assembling a brochure to offer "detailed suggestions for citizens on how to react to interactions" with police officers. Rush will also implement other report recommendations - an annual review of data on Penn police stops, citations, arrests and searches, to check for racial bias; and a monthly review by the police chief of each officer's stops. The committee made no conclusions about blame in the incident involving DaSilva. Culhane said the committee was not charged by Penn to discern blame and had no legal authority to take testimony. He said the committee interviewed DaSilva and a friend present at the arrest and reviewed a video surveillance tape that recorded the incident. The group reviewed the police officer's report on the arrest, as well as a superior's interview with the officer. The committee asked to interview the police officer directly, but Culhane said Penn police denied the request because the police union contract bars such questioning of police. |
