Thursday, September 2, 2010 1:47pm EST
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What would you rather have on the corner of your block: a 14-year-old with a gun or a police officer?
I asked that question in frustration during a recent talk radio show when my fellow guest, an urban education professor at a major university, branded police officers as terrorists.
As murder rates have risen in a number of large cities -- 71 percent for 2004-2006 according to the Police Executive Research Forum -- police are grasping at new measures like surveillance cameras, consent searches, and stop-and-frisk techniques to fight violent crime. The professor's comments came in the midst of a discussion about Philadelphia's recently announced crime plan, part of which calls for the use of a controversial police method called stop and frisk.
I found the professor's terrorist comment as misguided as those emails that warn black people not to buy gas on Tuesdays. I also found the mentality behind it dangerous. For the past two years, Philadelphia has suffered more than one murder a day, overwhelmingly at the hands of black-on-black crime. As a result, the city of brotherly love leads the nation's big cities in homicides. But police officers are the terrorists?
The city's new crime strategy is obvious: putting cops in those long-neglected neighborhoods where crime continually occurs. The answer to my question is equally as obvious. But during the program I stood alone. One caller appreciated my view, but said that ultimately he didn't want either presence in his neighborhood.
There is an endless debate as to whether such police tactics are effective and fair. Some critics, from guilt-ridden white liberals to fiery black activists to worried parents believe that stop-and-frisk results in racial profiling. It amazes me how these critics are more concerned about the possible violation of a person's civil rights than a person's right to not get shot in their neighborhood. And how they aren't nearly as outraged that blacks are continually profiled in more damaging ways, like inferior schools, blighted neighborhoods and minimum wage jobs.
There is no doubt that within the black community there is a visceral fear of police, and history tells rightfully so, from Jim Crow lynchings to Bull Connor's police dogs to Rodney King's beat down to Sean Bell topping Amadou Diallo's 41 shots to the countless black men harassed daily in neighborhoods throughout the country by the boys in blue.
Philadelphia has a long history of police brutality; so long that in 1998 Human Rights Watch found that the plague of "corruption and brutality scandals" earned the city "one of the worst reputations of big city police departments in the United States."
In 2006, police shootings in Philadelphia left 20 people dead, more than in any year since 1980 and the highest total among the nation's 10 largest cities. In 2007, the number was 15. And this past New Year's Eve, after seeing a reveler fire his gun on the front porch and run into the house, a police officer fired 11 shots through the front door, where inside about 40 people were gathered for a party. Abede Issac was riddled with bullets as he ran to shield girlfriend's nine-year-old son. The officer's bullet grazed the boy. Two other partygoers were shot and wounded. Issac died a week later.
Such incidents restore old wounds. To heal such a dysfunctional relationship, police must be held accountable for their abuses, up to and including being prosecuted for murder. And the community must stop treating police like the enemy. The threat of police brutality is no excuse for condoning the persistent black-on-black violence that plagues many of our communities.
Last year in Philadelphia, police killed 15 residents. Criminals killed 392.
Our fear of police only makes us complicit in crime. It's the same fear that waves to the drug dealers on the corner instead of organizing against them and calling the police. It's the same fear that keeps us from calling 911 when we hear gunshots because we think our number will show up on caller ID. It's the same fear that fuels Philadelphia's stop snitchin' mentality that emboldens criminals and leaves them roaming the streets to kill again.
Only time will tell whether these new police measures are effective, and it's up to the community to demand that they are. The reality is, like long lines at the airport, some people will be inconvenienced. Some people will be wrongly stopped and frisked. Some people may even be racially profiled. But what is also racial profiling is that the victims and perpetrators of the city's gun violence are overwhelmingly young black men, men who've been perpetually disenfranchised, along with the black communities that they live in.
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