By Marc Jampole
The American public is relearning many lessons from the
events in Ferguson following the shooting of an unarmed teenager by a police
officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The three
biggest takeaways from this tragedy and its aftermath are:
- We have gone way too far in militarizing our local police forces.
- There is still rampant institutional racism built into our policing and criminal justice system.
- The police and criminal justice system does itself and the people it is supposed to protect a disservice by never admitting a mistake.
Ferguson is only the latest proof that minorities and the
poor get treated badly by the criminal justice system across the country. As Jeff Smith, a former Missouri state
senator and professor of sociology at The New School, pointed out in a New York Times opinion piece, Ferguson
does the same kind of racial profiling that the courts have made New York City
stop doing. In Ferguson last year, 86
percent of police stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were
of African-Americans, numbers which are way out line with the percentage of the
total Ferguson population that they represent, which is about 62%. Even more
damning is the fact that police officers were far less likely to find
contraband on African-Americans, 22 percent of whom were carrying something
illegal, compared to 34 percent of whites.
It’s almost painful to see the Ferguson police chief try to
justify the actions of his department. For example, instead of thanking the
Governor for bringing in the Highway Patrol and National Guard and installing a
charismatic African-American to be the face of the police response, Chief Tom
Jackson prefers to complain about the insult to the Ferguson police that the
switch in authorities and tactics represented.
Instead of admitting he was wrong to bring out the tanks,
the Ferguson police chief released information meant to stain the reputation of
the young man who was shot six times, including twice in the head. First it was
news that the boy was a suspect in a robbery, which the officer who fired the
shots was decent enough to admit he didn’t know when the confrontation
occurred. Now we’ve learned that the boy—Michael Brown—had marijuana in his
system. So what? It wouldn’t matter if he was a suspect in 30 armed robberies
and they found traces of cocaine, heroin, Oxycontin and meth in his body. An
experienced police office trained in protecting the public and probably in
martial arts fired six bullets into his body. One or maybe two bullets and
I—and the rest of the public—could understand the act as possibly, maybe
necessary. But six?? The officer should
get his due process, but the police department would advance the cause of
better understanding between police and minorities by admitting its mistakes
and stating that it will not support officers who behave brutally or illegally.
But closing ranks isn’t new for the criminal justice system.
Several times a year we read of district attorneys who are opposed to new
trials or the release of the unjustly imprisoned, or those who will fight tooth
and nail to insist that a retarded or near retarded death row prisoner has a
high enough IQ to qualify for the death penalty. We recently saw the union
representing New York City police department cry that is was unfair to
investigate the death of an innocent man from a police choke hold. The union
also bemoaned the lack of solidarity of the teachers’ union to participate in a
march against police brutality. The
union made itself look bad by not explicitly stating that it did not support
the use of chokeholds, which is an illegal tactic for police in New York State.
People and organizations make mistakes. Organizations
occasionally hire individuals who won’t follow the rules or make their own
rules. When you admit your mistake and then fix it, you gain the respect of
others. When you hunker down and defend your position even after it painfully
clear you were wrong, others begin to disrespect you and question your
authority. Now imagine decades of closing ranks and protecting bad decisions
and rogue employees and you begin to understand why minority communities
distrust our criminal justice system.