PROBLEM OF MISTRUST

We Must Heal The Relationship, Bridge The Divide Between Blacks And Police

IN CINCINNATI, black folks rioted after a police officer shot and
killed an unarmed black man. And in Baltimore, a mainly
African-American jury acquitted a black teen-ager who crashed into a
patrol car, killing a police officer.

There is a war going on, people said during the 1960s, referring to
race relations.

Now, in the new century, there is a profound mistrust -- bordering on
hate -- between some African-Americans and some of our nation's
police departments. It is sad, but true. Many blacks do not view the
police as their friends.

The friction between police officers and the black community is not
new. In fact, this long-festering problem was documented 34 years ago
by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known
the Kerner Commission.

President Lyndon B. Johnson created the commission to study racial
disorders in 23 urban areas during the "long, hot summer" of 1967.
The commission's basic conclusion was "our nation is moving toward
two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."

A post-mortem of the riots also showed that the "abrasive
relationship" between the police and minority communities was an
"explosive" source of "grievance, tension and disorder."

The commission also noted the dilemma caused by the use of tough
law-and-order police tactics to reduce crime in black neighborhoods.

"The police are faced with demands for increased protection and
service in the ghetto. Yet the aggressive patrol practices thought
necessary to meet these demands themselves create tension and
hostility," the commission concluded.

Earlier this month, a white Cincinnati policeman shot an unarmed
black man, touching off three days of protest and vandalism. His
death became part of a troubling pattern -- he was the 15th black man
to be killed by Cincinnati police in six years. No whites were killed
by police during that time.

Cincinnati was one of the cities hit by racial disorders in 1967 and
its problems were chronicled in the commission's report released in
March 1968.

In 1967, rioting broke out in Cincinnati after the arrest of a black
man who was protesting the murder conviction of his cousin. Many
blacks saw the arrest as another example of selective enforcement of
the city's anti-loitering law. "Between January, 1966, and June,
1967, 170 of some 240 persons arrested under the ordinance were
Negro," the commission's report noted.

Another pattern developed as rioters were arrested. The police
charged most of the whites with disorderly conduct, which carried a
maximum sentence of 30 days in jail and a $100 fine. Many blacks were
charged with violation of the Riot Act -- punishable by one year in
jail and a $500 fine.

Unfortunately, the racial animosity between the black community and
police officers works both ways.

If you are a cop in an urban area with a large minority population --
such as Baltimore or Cincinnati -- you're bound to be more suspicious
of African-Americans. It's your job to catch criminals, and blacks
commit more of certain kinds of crimes than non-blacks.

"Of course we do racial profiling at the train station," Gary
McLhinney, the president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police,
explained in a New York Times magazine article that appeared on June
20, 1999. "If 20 people get off the train and 19 are white guys in
suits and one is a black female, guess who gets followed? If racial
profiling is intuition and experience, I guess we all racial-profile."

Ironically, then-Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier said
this in the same article: "To say that being of any particular race
makes you a suspect in a particular type of crime is just wrong, and
it's not done in Baltimore."

Yeah, right. That's one reason African-American jurors are becoming
increasingly suspicious of police. Because the cops lie sometimes.
And that played a heavy role in the decision made by a Baltimore jury
on Jan. 19.

Cautious Jurors

The jury deliberated about four hours before clearing Eric D.
Stennett of murder, attempted murder and vehicular manslaughter, even
though his own lawyer admitted that Stennett was driving the speeding
Ford Bronco that killed Officer Kevon M. Gavin.

Prosecutors argued that police saw Stennett shoot into a crowd in
Southwest Baltimore and drive away in a Ford Bronco. Clad in body
armor and with a 10 mm semiautomatic handgun on the seat, Stennett
took police on a high-speed chase that ended when he rammed Gavin's
cruiser, the prosecutors charged.

During the trial, it came out that a police officer who witnessed the
crash originally wrote a report that said Stennett had "lost control"
of his vehicle and it "veered" into Gavin's cruiser.

To be convicted of murder, however, the defendant must be proven to
have had the intent to kill. Several days later the officer amended
his report to say that Stennett "did not attempt to slow down or
stop," and could have avoided Officer Gavin's car, but instead
deliberately ran into it.

Both those reports can't be true. The police officer told the jury to
believe the one that he filed several days after the incident, and
which was more favorable to the prosecution.

"Please!" one of the jurors told The Sun later, in talking about the
police. "You can't just go turning your report around to ... some
version you want to believe happened. Show some professionalism,
especially when you're talking about a criminal charge."

Indeed. Jurors are told to use their life experiences and common
sense when they evaluate the credibility of witnesses. They also are
instructed that they should not automatically give the police more
credit than any other witnesses.

When I was prosecuting street crimes in the District of Columbia, my
colleagues used to joke that there should be a different instruction
for urban jurors: don't give law enforcement officers less credit
than anybody else.

Now the police have their own concerns about being "profiled." The
mistakes the police made in the Stennett trial don't take away from
the fact that the defendant, while fleeing police, drove a Ford
Bronco that landed on top of a police cruiser and killed a man.

Stennett's defense attorney, during the closing, practically invited
the jury to convict his client of a crime. He said: "I'm not saying
that this young man should walk out of here free.... I'm not saying
that he's not guilty of something. But I'm suggesting to you ... it's
vehicular homicide, if anything, manslaughter, if anything. It's not
murder ..."

The jurors declined the defense attorney's recommendation. Stennett
walked. Jurors told The Sun they acquitted because they had
reasonable doubt about whether Stennett was guilty of murder, and
they did not understand the judge's instructions about manslaughter
and vehicular homicide. Their comments, as reported by The Sun's Jim
Haner and John B. O'Donnell, betrayed a troubling discomfort with law
enforcement. "The police must take us for fools," one juror commented.

Community Needs The Police

The Cincinnati riots and the Stennett case illustrate the profound
lack of faith that minority communities have in the police. People of
all races complain about inefficient government services. Everyone
gets ticked off about a long line at the Department of Motor
Vehicles. But there are more troubling consequences when citizens
lack confidence in government employees who are licensed to kill.

When your car has been stolen, or your crazy ex-boyfriend is outside
your door with a gun, who are you going to call? We need the police.
The minority citizens who have the most concerns about police conduct
are the same people complaining about the lack of police in their
neighborhoods. It's like the guy at the cafeteria who complains about
how bad the food is, and that there's not enough of it.

End The War On Drugs

What to do about the impasse between black and blue? Two suggestions,
one pie in the sky and the other practical enough to get done in six
months.

The pie in the sky proposal is to end the war on drugs. It's a war
that is counterproductive, and it cannot be won, as the recent film
"Traffic" brilliantly depicts. Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke
was correct when he argued that the drug problem would be better
controlled through a public health and regulatory approach (what we
do now for cigarettes) rather than with the criminal justice system.

Another, less noted, benefit of ending the war on drugs would be to
reduce dramatically the racial profiling that has caused many people
of color to lose faith in the police. Almost every "driving while
black" stop is an effort to look for drugs -- even though, according
to the Justice Department, African-Americans do not
disproportionately commit drug offenses.

If drugs were decriminalized, police could concentrate their efforts
on serious violent criminals, who are apprehended through
old-fashioned detective work, not racial profiling.

Ending the war on drugs would also eliminate a prime opportunity for
police corruption. Last year a Baltimore police officer was charged
with planting crack on a suspect, who he then arrested for
possession. That is every African-American's nightmare. Take a small,
easily hidden substance and make it illegal. Then give it to someone
who you don't trust, and who has the power to arrest you.

Would you feel safe? Enforcing the drug laws creates too much
temptation for police to lie or make arrests in an arbitrary or
discriminatory way.

OK, I know the war on drugs is not going to end any time soon. As a
law professor, I'm supposed to put ideas out there, and that's one
good one. As a African-American man, I have a more practical
suggestion: cameras on every squad car. Why not use technology to
give us more information about what goes on in encounters between
police and citizens?

This could be done in Baltimore by the end of the year. Obviously
cameras wouldn't capture everything, but they could go a long way in
providing security for those who are afraid of -- of all people --
the police.

Whatever reforms are undertaken, the goal must be immediately to heal
the dysfunctional relationship between African-Americans and the
police. In that war, as citizens of both Baltimore and Cincinnati
must understand, there are only losers.