RACISM IN POLICING

On Tuesday, April 12th, a man wearing a gas mask “set off smoke grenades in a crowded subway” Brooklyn, New York. Then, he opened fire, injuring at least 23 people during their morning commute. According to officers, the gunmen left some things behind, a “Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines, a hatchet, fireworks and a liquid believed to be gasoline,” and a key to a Uhaul van rented in Philidelphia. As a result of that key, officers have named a Black man, 62-year-old Frank R. James as a person of interest. Officers have not found or questioned James yet, though ABC News says a “man-hunt” is still underway.

Any act of violence that publically terrorizes a community is unequivocally wrong, but so is the way many White Americans frame crime in urban areas. When a Black person commits a violent crime, there’s often a subsequent demand to put more officers on the street. However, more officers would not have stopped the tragedy in Brooklyn, New York.

Years ago, I visited Brooklyn, staying there for 3-months. My stop was the Kingston–Throop Avenues station. This area had predominately Black-owned businesses, not far from Peaches, a restaurant that serves southern comfort food; the owner is from New Orleans, so I felt right at home. But, my point in telling you this is that I know what policing was like in New York’s subways. We often saw police officers patrolling at night. However, when you go through the turnstiles, there is no process where officers routinely search you. How, then, could we expect an increased police presence to stop Tuesday’s tragedy?

I’ve written about this before, but police officers do not typically prevent crimes from happing — this is not Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. Police respond to crimes, and unless they see someone committing a crime or a suspect, they are not preventing crimes from occurring — they are responding to crimes and deterring criminal activity. If you walk through the turnstiles in Brooklyn, officers won’t be checking your bags like the TSA at the airport. So, how would they have known that a man would start shooting or that he had fireworks, smoke bombs, and gasoline in his possession? The only way that officers could know that is if officers searched him. However, if New York and other major cities re-establish “stop-and-frisk” draconian methods, the Black and Latino communities will suffer.

Stop-and-Frisk policies led to many innocent people being harassed and harmed by police officers. “In 2009, Black and Latino people in New York were nine times as likely to be stopped by the police compared to White residents.” According to the Washington Post, “12 years of data from New York City suggest stop-and-frisk wasn’t that effective” at stopping crime or finding illegal firearms and drugs. For years, officers violated citizens’ Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.” New York’s stop-and-frisk policy was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge, so the discussion should end there, but it won’t.

Unfortunately, most public safety measures are created by centering White people, many of whom live their entire lives without being stopped and frisked by officers. After each violent incident unfolds, Mayor Eric Adams calls for an increased police presence. But, America has more people imprisoned than any country in the world; if having more people in jail and a greater police presence were the answers to public safety, we’d be the safest country in the world. Sadly, decisions about policing are often driven by racialized fear, not data.

America is grappling with a gun-violence problem. Gun-related killings make up 79% of homicides in the United States, compared with 37% in Canada and 4% in the United Kingdom. The kill-or-be-killed mentality harms Americans of all stripes, but can more police with more guns be the solution — that’s certainly what conservatives want us to believe.

Despite their affinity for law enforcement, except for those guarding the Capital on January 6th, “more police” on the streets will not fix the problem of gun violence. Keep in mind that cities do not require police officers to obtain a formal education in psychology or sociology. So, how can they understand the behavioral patterns in society, understand the way the mind works, and how to de-escalate when they aren’t required to obtain a social sciences degree? They can’t. But, as the saying goes, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The rhetoric we hear today that more police on the streets is the only way to promote public safety creates an unsafe scenario for Black and Latino people, who are disproportionately stopped, beaten, and killed by officers. Without probable cause, stopping citizens on the regular basis is unjust.

“Essentially, I incorporated into my daily life the sense that I might find myself up against a wall or on the ground with an officer’s gun at my head,” he wrote in The Times. “For a black man in his 20s like me, it’s just a fact of life in New York.”

At a breakneck pace, New York’s Mayor released a “Blueprint for Safety,” which aims to reinstate “a plainclothes police unit.” This news is troubling for the Black community given that that unit “was involved in a disproportionate number of fatal shootings.” But, unfortunately, there’s a pattern in America’s cities. When White people feel afraid, they support policies that subject Black people to increased police brutality. As the “man-hunt” continues, Black Americans wonder if they will get the blame for the crimes committed by one individual.

Since yesterday, investigators found that James, the person of interest, allegedly posted rather disturbing videos and messages about race and crime, some of them rather hateful. However, it’s disheartening that the Associated Press described his rhetoric as “black nationalism,” but this is part of a larger pattern of White journalists using crime to diminish America’s Black liberation movement.

White Americans tried to discredit Marcus Garvey, the man who started America’s first Black nationalist movement. Garvey advocated for “unity, pride in African cultural heritage, and complete autonomy.” The United States government accused him of mail fraud, imprisoned and deported him. Yet, nowhere in the ideology of Black nationalism is a call to enact violence on innocent people, or disrespect Black women.

“In his videos — which number in the hundreds and feature titles such as “why we need more racial profiling,” “should the black woman be forcibly sterilized,” and “TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL” — James often rails against numerous racial and ethnic groups, including whites, Blacks, Jews and Latinos.” Now let’s get real as we unpack this. How on Earth can anyone call a Black man who calls for the forced sterilization of Black women a Black nationalist?

Malcolm X a Black nationalist once said in his 1962 speech, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” So calling James, if he is the man who made these videos, a Black nationalist, is disrespectful and racist. Black men fighting for equal civil rights are not the same Black men calling for “more racial profiling.”

White nationalist organizations like the Proud Boys have a violent agenda, but Black nationalist organizations don’t. So can you see why it’s problematic to misinterpret James’ alleged perspective as pro-Black? It’s absolutely not. In an essay published in An Injustice Magazine, I distinguished between the Black and White power movements. They are night and day because the goal of Black power movements is, as Dr. Huey P. Newton once said, to give “power to the people.” That language is befitting of a multiracial democracy. Stokely Carmichael added, “Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of White America to their questions about it.”

On the flip side, White nationalist organizations have spread hateful messages from their onset: In 1924, at a Ku Klux Klan convention, Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker said “build a wall of steel, a wall as high as heaven,” to keep immigrants out. And if you think this hate is in the past, think again. Just last year, federal officials named White Supremacists’ domestic terror the greatest threat to domestic security.

Portraying James as a Black nationalist is not only misleading; it’s a dangerous false equivalence. It’s clear that the “person of interest” did not adhere to Black nationalists’ beliefs, and misrepresenting them as such only muddies the waters.

Economics determined that predominately Black cities “in the South and Midwest” don’t benefit from an increased police presence. Instead, they “may leave some cities worse off,” failing to decrease homicides or other violent crimes. The problem with the national conversation about mitigating increased crime is that it usually leaves out the impact on Black communities. Fatal police shootings hit a new record in 2021, meaning that officers are killing more citizens, not less. What impact do you think adding more officers will have?

The road to public safety may be paved with good intentions, but that doesn’t mean it will keep Black people safe from police brutality. We should be cautious of the bad faith talking points that bubble up to the surface after acts of violence. We should let public safety policies be guided by empirical evidence, not fear and racial animosity.

“We always see a call for increased training, and there is zero empirical evidence that any form of increased training reduces the violence” —

New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán

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