I got assaulted by the police, and all I got was this big bag of money.

In our latest installment of Some Cops Behaving Badly we have the story of Dana Holmes, a white woman that was recently arrested for DUI just outside of Chicago. I will post the video, but it's 6 minutes long. For me, that is pushing it when it comes to attention span for videos on the internet. Here is a recap of the important parts: Three cops are there, and she is being patted down by one female officer. She lifts up her foot, the way someone might when being asked to show the bottom of their foot to someone else. All of a sudden, the cops grab her and throw her into a cell. They then proceed to strip her clothes off. She just lays there in the cell face down crying. Then a few minutes later they throw in a blanket for her to cover herself with.

Feel free to watch for yourself:



[ETA: here is a link to a shorter video that actually shows her clothes being removed.]

A couple things: In the police report, the officers claimed that she "kicked" one of them. Anyone with functioning eyes can see that is not what happened. To me, it looked like she was following instructions to show them her feet and then all of a sudden they got pissed and went cray. Also, they claimed they removed her clothes because they were performing a "strip search." I'm no cop, but I've watched plenty of cop shows. That is not how you do a strip search. For one thing, when you're searching someone with no clothes on you have them bend over so you can look up their butt to make sure they haven't hidden anything there. That didn't happen.

Why?

Because they weren't strip searching her, they were taking all her clothes off because they could, and she had clearly done something that they didn't like. They were trying to humiliate her and teach her a lesson. That lesson being: Don't F with the police.

I'm guessing she got the message.

This example shows us, that we live in a nation where regardless of race, color, creed or national origin--if you give cops attitude they all can (and some will,) make your life a living nightmare.

So let me tell you what is most likely going to happen next. First, I have to point out if this video didn't exist, absolutely nothing would happen. This would be a disturbing story that Dana Holmes told her friends and family, and that would be the end of it.

But since we have moving picture proof of the encounter, here's what's going to go down: Dana Holmes is going to sue the police department, and the officers involved are going to be put on paid administrative leave while they investigate. Ms. Holmes and the police are going to reach a settlement, where she receives a lump sum cash payment. It'll be anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 dollars, depending on how good her lawyer is. The cops may or may not be reprimanded, but most likely all the cops involved will be allowed to keep their jobs. On the off chance they do get fired, they will go to their police union and challenge their firing(s). Then they'll get re-hired once all the media attention dies down. Ms. Holmes might spend her money to buy a house, or she might blow it all on meth to deal with the PTSD she got from being treated so callously by the police. Since it's her money now, she is free to do with it what she wishes.

Here are just some of the problems I have with the likely outcome to this situation.

1) I am a bit uneasy with the idea that people that go through traumatizing things get money for it. Obviously, no one is going to turn down money. But it seems like if you were the recipient of a bunch of cash from a lawsuit like this, the money would seem like blood money. How would you enjoy it? It seems like whatever you bought with it would just be a constant reminder of your horrible ordeal.

2) Paying money as punishment for doing something wrong makes a little more sense when you are talking about suing corporations, because corporations are motivated by money. But what about when you are talking about the government? The government doesn't have a profit motive. I'm not sure what the government is supposed to be motivated by. If I had to guess, I would say something like the common good . How is it in the interest of the common good to pay one person a large sum of taxpayers' money, and let the so-called public servants that caused the money to be paid to continue to work and receive more of the taxpayers' money? It's not.

3) I am not necessarily opposed to the idea of any victim of police brutality getting money. But the problem is that when we just pay off victims, and do nothing to change the system that caused the incidents in the first place. We are just inviting more incidents to happen. A better outcome in this situation would be for Ms. Holmes to get her check (or not,) AND have all the police involved in this incident fired and banned from working in law enforcement at any point in the future. The PD where this happened could put out a strongly worded statement saying how those officers were wrong, and they have no tolerance for such behavior. They would show this by retraining their officers and continuing to fire cops that decided to engage in such behavior in the future.

If I can turn this into a follow up friday for a moment, I want to go back to the last time I wrote about an incident of some police behaving badly. Except this was an unarmed black man who got shot 10 times by a cop. Yeah, he died.

My white friend Paula (whose late father was a cop,) said this:

I can assure you that no one dislikes bad cops more than good cops do.

Well Paula, they sure have a funny way of showing it. I have never heard a cop that is currently employed by a police department speak out publicly against another cop when they do something wrong. People who know me in real life, know that I don't use absolute language often. So when I say never, I mean never...not even one time.

It would be so great if these good cops would come together and create and organization called Police Against Police Brutality. Or maybe Police for Positive Policing. I said here that I don't like it when people always define themselves as against something.

I googled the first term I mentioned, and you know what I came up with? A group called something like Black Cops Against Police Brutality. And it looked like their website hadn't been updated since 1988.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see such a group exists. But it doesn't surprise me that black cops are against police brutality, since black people are disproportionately the victims of police brutality. Since cops are disproportionately white, I think it would be nice to see a group that encompassed police officers of all races that were committed to ending abuses in departments across the nation.

I'm gonna wrap it up here, because I've been writing for awhile. Once again, I have to give my disclaimer that I am in no way attempting to disparage all cops. I know from personal experience that some cops are quite cool. My general impression of the number of fleeting experiences that I've had with them is that if you're neutral or nice to them, they will be neutral or nice to you.

I am talking about the minority of cops that do damage to the reputation of cops as a whole. Some other examples of positive policing that could occur would be:

--Making videotapes like the one that recorded Ms. Holmes standard in all police departments, big and small. I also think that all cops on patrol should wear cameras on their person. There should also be serious penalties for departments that "lose" footage, because that seems to be an unusually common occurrence when said footage is subpoenaed in court cases.

--Removing the Internal Affairs department and having incidents of cop misbehavior be investigated by a panel that has nothing to do with the police. It would be awesome if the panel was just made up of randomly selected residents of the area that the department served.

--Making it easier to fire bad cops. This goes for teachers too. And anyone else that is protected by a union. If you're pro-union, you should not be pro-union so incompetent people can keep their jobs. There are many benefits that unions bring about, but keeping substandard employees employed shouldn't be one of them.

So, we'll see how the situation with Dana Holmes plays out. I am interested to hear what you think about what I've written, or about any of the topics I've discussed more generally. Click below all those colorful boxes at the end of this post where it says, " _some number_ comments" and leave me a comment.


To like myblackfriendsays.com on facebook, click here.
To follow me on twitter (@myblackfriend) click here.

All the news that's fit to print.

Several months ago, my faithful reader JD made a comment on this post that said that I should make a post about all the various inequities that exist between black people and white people in different aspects of life. I always thought that was a good idea, but thought it would require me to spend some time on the internet gathering my facts. And since it's hard enough as it is for me to just sit down and write stuff on the blog, I really didn't know when making a post that required actual research would ever happen.

But then I read a book called The Covenant With Black America. It's a collection of essays written by black scholars that talks about problems facing the black community, and what can be done to solve these problems.

Each chapter outlines a problem, and also has several statistics that help to illustrate the disparities that exist. This means that I no longer have to do research on the internet, I can just pass the statistics onto you all. Voila: blog post written.

I'm not going to change the writing that much. I don't think that's plagarism since I'm not hiding my source, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's some sort of copyright infringement since I'm sharing a fair amount of the material from the book. Hopefully, I won't get sued.

Education

-- 33% of black students in 7th through 12th grade have been suspended or expelled from school at some point vs. 15% of white students.

--for black people ages 16-24, 13% do not have a high school diploma or GED vs.7% of white people from the same age group.

--the nationwide college graduation rate for black students who enroll in college is 40%, compared to 61% for white students.

--46% of black adults scored in the lowest category of proficiency in the National Adult Literacy survey, vs. 14% of white adults.
(Click on the link to get an idea of the skills that the survey seeks to assess.)

Criminal Justice System

--13% of black men have permanently lost their right to vote as a result of being convicted of a felony. The same is true for about 2% of men of other races.

--Black people are about 12% of the U.S. population, and about 44%(!) of the prison population.

--The black prison population grew by 300% between 1954 and 1984, and from 1954 until the early 2000's has increased 900%(!) [Sidenote: What era of time in U.S. history does the mid-1950's roughly coincide with?]

--Young people of all ages use drugs at similar rates, but black youth represent 60-75% of all drug arrests.

--Black youthful offenders are twice as likely to be transferred to adult court than their white counterparts.

Policing

--Nationwide, 10% of black drivers pulled over were likely to be searched or have their vehicles searched, vs. 3.5% of white drivers.

--A study on the New Jersey turnpike found that while only 13.5% of cars
on the turnpike had a black driver or passenger, 73% of motorists stopped and then arrested were black.

--57% of black police officers believe that officers are more likely to use violence against African-American people than white people, while only 5% of white police officers agree.

Housing/Transportation

--49% of the homeless population is black.

--Black renters are 20 times more likely to get less information than white renters of similar economic backgrounds when inquiring about advertised housing. Landlords tell them about fewer apartments and don't show them everything that is available.

--Homeownership rates: 49% for black people compared to 76% for white people.

-- Black and Latino people make up 62% of bus riders. Only 12% of the Department of Transportation's budget is spent on public transit, compared to 60% spent on highways, which serve primarily white suburban commuters.


Economics

--Black people own/have 1.2% of the wealth in the United States. This figure has not changed since the end of the Civil War in 1865.


Just a couple of things I want to say...

There are other areas of life/additional statistics that are talked about in the book that I don't mention here.

If your first inclination is to question the validity of the information presented, you should read this post.

You might find the stats on prisons/arrests/etc. on a white supremacist website. This helps to illustrate the idea that so much of how we process information depends on our perspective.

This book was written five years ago. I don't think long enough for things to change significantly in one direction or the other.

I think we should all just marinate on what we've just read, and perhaps ponder these questions:

--What feelings came up for you as you were reading?

--How much of this did you already know? The things that you did already know, where/when did you learn them?

--What statistics are most surprising? Least?

If you'd like to read the book, you can buy it on Amazon,or see if they have it at your local library.

And if you have anything that you'd like to share, feel free to leave me a comment.

Boyz in the Hood

So I was watching some of the endless news coverage about the whole Senator Craig scandal. I'm not here to talk about Craig playing footsie in the bathroom, or his "wide stance" that he uses for keeping his slacks up--this is a blog related to race relations, so I'm gonna comment on something I heard on the interrogation tape...

There's a part when Officer K. is using one of his police interrogation tactics to get the Senator to confess just what he was up to in the bathroom before he flew to Washington. Maybe it should be called the Scarlet Letter strategy, because he was attempting to shame Craig into confessing. Officer K. said,

"I just, I just, I guess, I guess I'm gonna say I'm just disappointed in you, sir. I'm just really am. I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you." ( emphasis added )

Hmm...who's the guy that Officer Karsnia gets "out of the hood"? That's right--the black guy. We're you thinking any other ethnicity when you read that? I doubt it.

Ok, as I see it there are two things wrong with this. First, Karsnia is saying that he expects guys that come from the hood to lie to him. I think I'll write this off to Karsnia being a cop--cops have a tendency to treat everyone they come into contact with as a criminal--I think it's the way they're trained. Did you know that if a cop tells you to stop walking towards him or her and you don't, protocol tells them to shoot you--even if you are unarmed? Just FYI...

So, Officer Karsnia is letting us know that if he picks up a black kid in a poor neighborhood, the assumption is that the kid is not telling the truth. This sucks for the black kids that are trustworthy.

But I think that the bigger issue is what he doesn't say. "I expect this from poor black kids, but not a rich, old, white guy such as yourself." Yeah, yeah I get the whole elected official bit. But, in our society, the rich old white guy package that Craig comes in automatically lends him an air of credibility. But why?

We are taught that old white guys don't do things like lie, they do things like make this country great. Even though we have numerous examples to the contrary ( Ken Lay and Richard Nixon, just to name two) When an old white guy does something wrong, we don't say "Well you know those old white guys--you just can't trust 'em." But if a black kid commits a crime and then lies about it, a white person can say with a straight face that they think poor people "from the hood" are less trustworthy on the whole, and few would give it a second thought.

White people have gotten smart enough to not actually say "black," now they just use euphemisms like, "urban" and "inner-city." But we all know who they're talking about. The news program that I heard the tape on certainly didn't say anything about it, and I doubt that Karsnia even gave it a second thought. And I am not trying to brand Officer Karsnia a racist or to even imply that he made that comment with any malicious intent. The whole point of this post (and this blog) is to show white people the subtlety with which these messages are transmitted today. We hear things like that almost unconsciously without recognizing how they affect us. But when we see a black dude strolling down the street minding his own business, who doesn't look like he just came from a day at the office--we get scared.

Is there any wonder why?