A former colleague and her husband, both black, are constantly pulled over by police. As in, constantly. They had expensive cars, and expensive professional clothes since one was a VP in a financial firm and the other an SVP in hi tech. They said it never made any difference that they didn’t speed, used blinkers, all the legal stuff - they got pulled over on any and all pretexts. They said that usually as soon as the officer saw their clothes, they’d get waived off. It happened with so much regularity that my colleague had to figure in police stop time when driving to a client meeting. And people want to know why there’s anger out there?
Dang…I must say my favorite line is, “Is this your car?”
^ Bingo. That’s what they think is going through the officers’ minds. She was really annoyed when she was pulled over with two kids in baby seats and she was running late. Usually she says she is polite, but this time with the kids crying in the back, she asked the officer, “What, you think I stole them too?” Great line.
Black people have been killed by the police for less, though.
I first remember hearing about that when it was in the news that FloJo’s husband kept getting pulled over, just for being an AA man driving a nice sports car in Los Angeles. I think he finally got rid of the car. I wonder if that helped.
That was a long time ago.
@prezbucky I’m not convinced actual crime is reflected in crime statistics. Let me take this to an extreme: if police only stopped black people and did random checks on them and never stopped white people, the crime statistics would disproportionally show black people as guilty of crime, wouldn’t they? Well we have very close to that situation in many places. My ivy-educated always dresses up black daughter has been subject to stop and frisk while carrying shopping bags in NYC. Yet I worked with several people who did lots of illegal drugs and I thought were sort of obviously affected. They were 40s, white, educated men and women. Not one was ever routinely stopped.
I think the factors are: young, male, African American and poor. The more of those a person happens to be, the more likely police target them. And poor is very subjective; in many places in the U.S., people seem to assume that a black person is poor. (Good evidence of this is if you ever look at the hideous comments by anonymous posters on some of these police shooting news stories. They start spouting off about welfare, unwed mothers and drug use although it has nothing to do with what actually happened.)
So yes, the police may feel threatened based on crime statistics but those statistics are heavily skewed by their own biases and those of the criminal justice system where black defendants are more likely to be found guilty (often poorer defense attorneys) than white defendants.
Since we’re on a college discussion board, I will also throw in that this doesn’t even include what goes on in many college campuses. Expensive private colleges where most students are white are much less likely to turn their students in to law enforcement authorities for incidences of rape or pot use. Of course, this affects a small percentage of our national population but I just wanted to point out how insidious this is in our country.
^^^
We might never know exactly how much crime is committed. We can’t ask officers “How many people did you observe possibly committing a crime today, yet you let it slide?” and expect honest answers. hehe
And the data we have has some bias built into it.
Regardless, clearly some cops’ cognitive lenses need to be shifted to a more neutral position.
I agree with you that their lens needs to be shifted… and the culture that they cover for each other.
I honestly don’t know how to change this and I would hope someone who knows something about criminology would chime in but I think the military does a better job of instilling enough trust that soldiers know they have each others’ back while not encouraging them to cover for each other, although I’m sure it still happens. One obvious one is training (it seems in this case campus police are not subject to the same training but are permitted to do routine policing outside campus grounds) ,including more black officers on the force, although, as seen in Baltimore, this is definitely not the entire solution. Another one, maybe not so obvious, is to stop all the randomness in police stops and detentions and stopping the criminalization of poverty-- stop and search, arresting people for selling single cigarettes. If a person is charged just with resisting arrest, then perhaps the arrest needs to be investigated.
@prezbucky Here’s an interesting stat from Ferguson:
It’s not just Ferguson. It’s the whole state of Missouri:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/us/big-disparity-for-blacks-pulled-over-in-missouri.html?_r=0
And it’s not just Missouri. It’s [url=http://www.aclu-il.org/cpd-traffic-stops-and-resulting-searches-in-2013/]Chicago[/url] and [url=http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/portland_police_traffic_stops.html]Portland[/url] and [url=http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/15/3566899/connecticut-traffic-stops-and-racial-profiling/]Connecticutt[/url]. Etc.
The argument that black drivers are pulled over more frequently because they’re more likely to have something they shouldn’t have is simply false, no matter what cops may “believe.”
So let’s change their belief system regarding arrest and conviction rates, or figure out what else it is and go to work on that. (If it isn’t crime stats they are worried about.)
Their behavior is based on a “belief system” that blacks are more dangerous than whites. I doubt very seriously that statistics are going to change that. It is a very old, very entrenched mindset at many of our police departments.
There are only two things that will change it. One, if cops who harass, abuse, or kill black people are held accountable. Two, if cops who lie for other cops who harass, abuse or kill people are held accountable.
Speaking of which:
http://www.fox19.com/story/29673938/two-uc-officers-placed-on-paid-leave-after-indictment
This is not the first time these two officers have been involved in the unjustified death of a black man:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/30/samuel-dubose-officers-kelly-brinson
The “Is this your car?” incredulity may have something to do with the apparent common belief that most blacks in America are poor, and probably on the government dole. Legitimate black ownership of luxury cars may not compute in the minds of law enforcement whose interaction with blacks is largely limited to low income, high crime neighborhoods. As the designated hammer, all blacks may look like nails to them in the immediate. And this mindset by law enforcement may extend to black professionals living in affluent areas; the perception that they are somehow out of place, and possibly up to no good. I don’t think this phenomenon is across the board, though. I suspect that there are parts of the country where even law enforcement is aware there is a sizable population of affluent blacks residing in certain neighborhoods. Parts of Atlanta spring to mind. Parts of the D.C. Metroplex, too, where my sister and her H (who is a regional manager for a major bio-phamacuetical company) live.
Maybe if we broke out the stats for how many people that commit homicide are white and black?
@poetsheart Several of the police stops to which I referred were in the DC area. At one, the cop called back-up and had me sit in his police car while now ex husband was questioned in another. My daughter was in the back seat, in her car seat. When I asked if I could please get her and asked if I was under arrest, saying if I wasn’t I wanted to leave, the cop asked me if I had my child’s birth certificate on me to prove she was my daughter. When I said of course I didn’t carry it in my purse, he said if I didn’t sit and answer his questions, he would tell Child Protective Services that he had reason to believe my child wasn’t mine and she would be out in emergency foster care until I could prove to a judge she was mine. In the end, we were let go-- no ticket, no arrest-- but not before he gave me his phone number in case I ever came to my senses and dumped my husband (his words).
I can’t find my jaw, @2collegewego.
You know earlier today I was thinking of scenarios in which I could be stopped. Your scenario popped in my head, totally hypothetical…and to see you say this happened to you. Just frightening.
@Niquii77 If that happened to me now, I would file a complaint but I was really young at the time and, honestly, the cop scared me.
I can imagine so! Especially in the moment, with your child involved.
@2collegewego That’s awful. It’s inconceivable that any of that would happen to me in my white suburban world . Unfortunately there are those who believe that if something has never happened to them, it’s never happened to anyone and therfore is not a problem that needs to be addressed.
2collegewego, WOW! Unbelievable. These cops were clearly power-trippin’. The D in the car seat is probably a grown woman now, right? So this happened sometime in the mid to late eighties? It probably galled this bully in the extreme that you were a white woman who sullied herself by willingly “gaving herself” to a black man, a violation as offensive as it gets in the minds of many white men at the time (and even today, though I think like many other things, it’s slowly changing). What obviously hasn’t changed, however, is the willingness of many in law enforcement to throw their weight around with the the belief they can act with impunity. I think each case that comes to light with shocking and undeniable proof of abuse, will bring about a change in national consciousness, and less tolerance for the preservation of the status quo.
My BIL has never told me that he’s been stopped for DWB. He is often on travel, or works from home, but when he’s on the road, he drives a company car. The current one is a Toyota Avalon, so maybe it’s not luxurious enough to call him into suspicion, I don’t know. I’m curious now, though, so I’ll ask him after I arrive in Maryland tomorrow for a family celebration of my parent’s 59th wedding anniversary.
2collegewego-
The wacko cop hit on you?? Was he “really” giving you his # for “your protection” when you “came to your senses”? Eww. Words fail me.