“I speak as a governor and as a mother of two small children,” Raimondo said, “and I think we’ve all been troubled by the recent headlines all around this country about law enforcement.”
The governor added that this is a significant step in addressing a much larger problem, but said that she believes this will help keep communities safer, and make law enforcement more effective.
“Although this is an important piece of legislation, and one that is going to deliver real results, you all know this one bill isn’t enough. We must be actively engaged in our communities, and be committed to keeping our families and communities safe,” she said.
Representative Joseph Almeida (D- District 12), the main sponsor for the House version of the bill, said that it is a product of working for, and with, the people.
“You have two choices when you get elected,” he said. “You can be a politician and tell people what they want to hear, or you can be a legislator and tell them the truth. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
Senator Harold Metts (D- District 6), who was the Senate sponsor, spoke on how the bill will allow Rhode Island communities to heal with one another, and promote togetherness between communities and police officers.
“We were challenged to take our heads out of the desert sands of denial, and drink from the wells of equality, justice, and brotherhood,” he said. “Instead of having separation, and having the parties be polarized, they decided to work together. Instead of separation, we had collaboration.”
The act requires that law enforcement officers include in the ethnicity of the driver stopped, the reason, whether or not there was a search, and whether or not there was contraband taken from the vehicle in their traffic stop reports. It also prohibits officers from subjecting juveniles or pedestrians to a search without probable cause, and requires them to notify a driver why they are being stopped.
Colonel Steven O’Donnell, the superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, said that the practices laid out in the Act are already happening.
“Almost all the information in that bill is something that State Police already do by policy. We’ve been doing it for years, so it didn’t take much to sit down with the community, and most of them we know very, very well,” he said. O’Donnell also gave credit to the House and Senate for being open minded about the subject of policing, particularly Senator Metts, who took part in the State Police Training Academy several years ago.
“Better training, better understanding, and better communication is really why that bill passed,” he said. “Everybody sitting down, some people losing some of their egos on both ends of the table, and coming to an agreement.”
Over the next 48 months, data will be collected from every traffic stop to determine whether or not there are racial disparities in Rhode Island’s policing system. Governor Raimondo said this data would be used to make informed decisions concerning the system.
“I think it’s clear there’s more that has to be done in Rhode Island and all around the country. You can’t look at what happened in Ferguson and South Carolina and think we’re doing enough, so what this bill says is that we’re committed to making changes based on facts, and making sure that our streets are as safe as possible, and that we’re protecting everybody’s civil rights in the process,” she said.
]]>The bill, known as the Comprehensive Community-Police Relationship act, requires that all police departments collect data on a subject’s race during traffic stops. The information will then be submitted to the Department of Transportation’s Office of Highway Safety, to be put in a yearly report showing what has been done to address any racial disparities. The act also makes illegal “consent searches” of juveniles, unless the officer has probable cause or reason of suspicion.
“It’s more communication between the police, the community, and juveniles,” said Representative Joseph Almeida (D-District 12), the main sponsor of the bill on the House side. “All we’re asking for is more probable cause, and right to be stopped.”
Almeida also said that the act is already helping to build communication between people of color and police.
“Communication is a big issue in civil rights,” he said.
Senator Harold Metts (D-District 6), the bill’s main sponsor on the Senate side, believes that after the events in Baltimore, New York, and Ferguson, communication is more needed now than it ever was before.
“We have to work together,” he said. “Even despite all the tension that’s across the country and across the world, the community and the police have to work together to build trust, because that’s the only way we’re going to have safer communities.”
According to Metts, different groups have met over the past eight months on both sides of the issue to come up with the version of the act that has been passed. Although the legal aspects of the bill concerning racial profiling and traffic stops were certainly important for him, there was something bigger that everyone seemed to miss.
“The important thing that everybody overlooked, for me, was how two opposed parties, initially, got together, and realized that they had to work together to come up with this compromise bill,” he said.
Metts added that the bill is especially important in his district, which is largely comprised of people of color. People have spoken to him about racial profiling and the way it dehumanizes them. Metts himself has been a victim of such profiling.
“Everybody wants to be treated with respect and fairly, on both sides,” he said.
Opponents to this bill, and similar bills all over the country, have argued that making officers take this extra step, or having to fill out more paperwork, is too much work. Representative Almeida, who is a retired police officer, believes otherwise.
“That’s bull,” he said. “That’s not true. Paperwork is good because we were told to form a paper trail. It’s not going to give them any more work. Besides, if you look to the right [in a police cruiser], there’s a computer there. It’s not going to stop anything.”
The specific requirements of the bill are fairly straightforward. Searches conducted by police officers should be documented and include the date, time, location, and probably cause leading up to the search. Those who have been recorded with video or audio equipment have the right to view that footage, provided that it does not compromise the investigation. It also establishes a procedure for searches of juveniles without a warrant. Officers can only ask for the juvenile’s consent if there is probable cause, and if there is, the juvenile has the right to refuse the search.
The collection of this data would begin July 2016, and would be put toward the Office of Highway Safety’s yearly report, as well as a quarterly summary of the monthly information provided by police departments.
]]>The Providence College Coalition Against Racism held a press conference, followed by a march through the Providence College (PC) campus, “to protest the ongoing racial profiling on campus and the failure of the college administration to stop doing business with the Renaissance Hotel.”
Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachary has been a professor at Providence College for seven years and has been stopped by campus security eight times. She is the director of PC’s Black Studies Program and has recently been promoted to full professor. PC has a policy prohibiting racial profiling.
The Coalition maintains that the PC director of Safety and security, Jack Leyden, is not enforcing this policy.
“Some try to discredit our experiences with claims such as ‘It must be how they are dressed,’” said Jordan-Zachary, “and I always want to say, ‘I survived 18 years as a black female academic. I think I know how to dress.’”
“I do everything conceivably possible not to draw the attention of security guards on this campus,” said Jordan-Zachary, such as “trying to figure out how to walk through buildings so that I am almost invisible,” and selecting classrooms to teach in that are as close as possible to her office to avoid long walks on campus.
Student Bini Tsegaye, a graduating senior, also spoke about the systemic racism and profiling on the PC campus. “For four years straight I’ve been stopped and questioned by security and safety officers, and most of the time they drive around in their van to see if I belonged on campus.”
Tsegaye got a job on campus, thinking that “being a student employee would decrease the constant interrogation and profiling, since security officers would be working with me. But that’s not the reality I saw on my job.”
In addition to calling for an end to racial profiling on campus, Professor Cedric de Leon called upon PC to stop recommending the Providence Renaissance Hotel for college events because of “the owners’ failure to respond in a legal manner to workers’ efforts to organize a union.” The Renaissance and the Providence Hilton, both located downtown, are managed by The Procaccianti Group (TPG).
When PC students and faculty approached the college about boycotting the Renaissance, they were told that there was “no compelling interest for Providence College to advise the families of our students and our alumni to avoid using the hotel.”
Professor de Leon disagrees. Providence College is a Catholic school. “This inaction,” says de Leon, “is a violation of Catholic social thought, and is due to the fact that those whose rights are being violated are by and large people of color and therefore of little social importance either to the PC administration or to TPG.”
“The fact that PC insists on using anti-union hotels, despite the many other hotels in Providence,” said De Leon, “suggests that a strong personal connection between PC and TPG is preventing the administration from doing what is right.”
Two hotel workers, Santa Brito from the Renaissance and Jonah Zinn from the Hilton, spoke about working conditions at the hotels and the impossibility of negotiating with TPG.
Brito, who is currently not working due to health problems she received on the job, recalled being pregnant, and “at the moment I went to give birth [TPG] tried to fire me.”
“We are also fighting against racism in the hotel,” said Brito. “We are living day to day with the racism in this hotel and we need to stop it now.”
“One of my co-workers,” said Zinn, “the hotel tried to fire her two weeks after she gave birth to twins. While she was pregnant the hotel refused to reduce” the number of rooms she needed to clean in a shift.
The Coalition presented four demands.
After the press conference, de Leon led a march through the campus. After the march students and faculty stepped forward to describe the ways they were made to feel uncomfortable or even endangered on campus by PC security or fellow students. de leon finally led those still in attendance to sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Listening to those speaking out, its clear PC has a lot to overcome before being known as a welcoming, inclusive campus, able to live up to its Catholic ideals.
]]>“The troubling issues raised in the ACLU report point out how far our society has yet to go before we achieve true equity,” said Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, noting statewide all-day kindergarten in particular and education in general are policy areas where the Senate would seek reform to address systemic racial disparities in Rhode Island.
“The Senate’s focus on education acknowledges the outcome gaps that exist in our state, and we will continue to prioritize making investments that will help eliminate disparities,” she said. “An important priority for the Senate this session is legislation to promote full day kindergarten in all Rhode Island school districts. Full day kindergarten is a proven, effective method to help close achievement gaps. More work needs to be done on many fronts, and the Senate remains committed to working towards the ideal of true equity for all Rhode Islanders.”
House Speaker Nick Mattiello was less specific.
“I have not yet had the opportunity to review the ACLU report, but the House of Representatives will always work to enact policies that treat all persons fairly, equally and without discrimination,” he said. “In particular, I will continue to work with the members of the Legislative Black and Latino Caucus on racial equality issues in our state. I look forward to reviewing any legislation they may propose, as well as other bills on these issues that may come before the House.”
The House passed an ACLU-supported bill in 2012 that prevents schools from suspending students for chronic absenteeism, said spokesman Larry Berman. School suspensions is an issue raised in the new ACLU report. Last session, that bill’s sponsor Providence Rep. Grace Diaz said there is more work to be done in this area in particular.
“We’re still working to address racial disparities in overall suspensions and attendance rates, especially in our city schools,” Diaz said in a press release. “We need to continue to be creative in how we address problems in education while stamping out racial bias.”
Also last session, a bill that would authorize the Department of Education to analyze school suspensions for racial implications was held for further study. It reads, “The commissioner shall develop a method to analyze local school system discipline data collected in accordance with §16-60-4(21) to determine whether the discipline imposed has a disproportionate impact on students based on race or ethnicity. If such a racial or ethnic disparity is found, the local school system shall prepare and present to the department a plan to reduce that disparity.”
Paiva Weed said last session a bill to address racial profiling in traffic stops passed in the Senate. It was called the Comprehensive Community-Police Relationship Act. “Unfortunately, the bill died without a hearing in the House,” according the the ACLU.
“Senators Harold Metts and Juan Pichardo have been particularly diligent leaders in the Senate in examining equity issues in schools, law enforcement, corrections, and economic development,” Paiva Weed said. “We will continue to pursue their worthwhile efforts, such as the annual Education Summit which Senator Pichardo hosts, and winning enactment of the racial profiling prevention legislation which Senator Metts drafted and the Senate passed last session.”
For decades, Cicilline has been working on a solution.
As a congressman, as mayor of Providence and as a lawyer in private practice, Cicillne has throughout his career been ahead of the curve on rooting out racial profiling.
“Racial profiling is wrong and creates more problems than it solves,” he said in an email to RI Future. “When individuals are targeted because of their race, the most important crime-fighting tool police officers have, the trust of the community, is damaged.”
Cicilline, D-RI, is one of 60 co-sponsors of Congressman John Conyers’ 2013 End Racial Profiling Act. The bill is similar to the new federal rules announced Monday by the Justice Department with the very notable exception that an act of Congress would apply to state and local law enforcement agencies. The new Justice Department guidelines apply only to federal law enforcement officers.
“I welcome Attorney General Eric Holders update of racial profiling guidance for federal law enforcement agencies,” Cicilline told me. “This is a step in the right direction, but we must go further and end racial profiling wherever it may occur. The End Racial Profiling Act will address the root cause of racial profiling, protect individuals civil liberties and educate law enforcement on the differences between a suspect description and discriminatory profiling.”
The bill, according to this summary, defines racial profiling as: “the practice of a law enforcement agent or agency relying, to any degree, on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or religion in selecting which individual to subject to routine or spontaneous investigatory activities, or in deciding upon the scope and substance of law enforcement activity following the initial investigatory activity, except when there is trustworthy information relevant to the locality and timeframe that links a person of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or religion to an identified criminal incident or scheme.”
It would require police departments to develop policies aimed at eliminating racial profiling and would create federal guidelines for collecting data.
As mayor of Providence, Cicilline put together “a plan for tackling racial profiling, a practice that the city’s police have been charged with engaging in,” according to Rhode Island Lawyer’s Weekly.
The plan was critiqued by the ACLU but won praise by the Police Assessment Resource Center. The group said the action plan contained “several recommendations, such as more police/community interaction, data collection and analysis, and mandatory diversity training for officers every two years. Under the plan, officers found to have engaged in racial profiling would be required to attend counseling and training sessions, and could face reprimands or dismissal.”
Cicilline campaigned for mayor, in part, on reforming the police department. He won some praise from the late Providence Phoenix, and even Steve Brown of the ACLU. Wrote Wrote Ian Donnis in 2003:
“It will take time to change public perceptions, particularly in the poorer Providence neighborhoods where police-community relations are most in need of improvement, but many observers are optimistic about the outlook. As put by Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, ‘Things can only go up. I think that’s a fair statement and I have no reason to doubt that they will. The mayor has certainly demonstrated in his other roles a strong concern about this issue. I would be very surprised if we didn’t see some significant changes in police-community relations.'”
One of the ways Cicilline demonstrated his commitment to police-community relations was as the initial lawyer in the Bernie Flowers case. Flowers was a 50-year-old African American who in September of 2000 was pulled over at gunpoint by the Westerly police. He sued the Westerly police department for violating his civil rights.
“This lawsuit is intended to hold accountable the police who violated Mr. Flowers’ civil rights and to discourage others from engaging in this kind of racial profiling, which continues to be one of America’s greatest shames,” Cicilline said in an ACLU press release from 2001.
Flowers got a new lawyer when Cicilline became mayor and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2004.
]]>These young men and women will determine the future of the Providence Police Department for the next 20 or 30 years, so it is very important they get the training right. We need a police department that respects and responds to the community. Last Tuesday night, at the South Providence Boys and Girls Club, the graduates had the opportunity to meet members of the community they will be serving for the first time.
“The community needs law enforcement and law enforcement needs community,” said Providence Police Colonel Hugh Clements, to the 60 or so people who attended the event. “The culture of law enforcement has to change.”
Kobi Dennis, organizer and “community guy” introduced the new police officers. “You are going to be on the street soon,” Dennis told the new recruits, then gesturing to the crowd behind him, added, “and these are the people you are going to be seeing.”
Dennis wanted to keep the interaction between police and community positive and avoid turning the event into a series of complaints about the police. After all, these are new recruits, with unblemished records. In many ways this is more than an introduction to the community, this is a fresh start for the Providence Police Department.
But this was a chance for many citizens to explain to the new recruits their perception of the police, which isn’t always positive. For instance, a Latino teenager talked about being harassed by the police simply because of the way he was dressed. Harassment, disrespect and being the object of suspicion simply for being African American or Latino was a recurring theme from the public.
“My daughter is 18,” said an older African American man, “When she’s walking, she doesn’t want to be out with her brothers because they always get harassed [by the police]. Her brothers are supposed to protect her, but she doesn’t want to be out with them.”
A mother stood and talked about watching the police interact with teenagers hanging out in the park across the street from her home. The teenagers in the park are often stopped by the police and instructed to sit on the ground as they are questioned and their backpacks searched.
“What good are our rights if you are violating them?” asked the mother. “Our kids feel the way they do [about the police] because they feel disrespected. They don’t trust you. I’m a black woman. I’ve been pulled over six times in my life for no reason.”
Colonel Clements understood the community’s reaction, and explained that though police officers often have information that leads them to make searches that may seem unwarranted, that doesn’t mean the officers need to be disrespectful while performing their duties. The officers, said Clements, “need to be able to articulate why they are doing what they are doing.”
“I would expect, at least, that you might say, ‘Have a nice day,” added Dennis, to some laughter.
Young people of color are disproportionately more likely to be victims of gun violence in Providence. A woman spoke movingly of losing a teen she was mentoring to a bullet. She told the new officers, “Our kids get shot, yours don’t.”
This is the barrier that separates community and police into us and them. One optimistic young recruit said that he sees his job, in part, as helping to “break down the wall between police and community.” Another new officer added, “We are taught to use our presence and our voice to de-escalate situations.”
A female social worker from the community had some insight on how to get break down the walls that separate police from community. “Be role models and mentors,” she said, “Attend neighborhood events and introduce yourself. Examine the reasons you want to be a cop. If you don’t want to contribute to the wellbeing of our neighborhoods, please step down.”
In addition to questions and dialog around the issue of racial profiling and community engagement, there were some comments of a positive note. “I see a lot of individuals of color [among the recruits] and that’s a good thing,” said one woman from the audience, “Do not forget where you came from.”
To the women among the new officers another audience member said, “Our girls really need to see you in leadership roles.”
In the end this was a positive interaction. There was a lot of optimism from the community and from the new recruits. “I joined because of a positive experience with a police officer in my youth,” said one young officer.
Let’s hope that through respectful, dignified community engagement these new officers can create many more positive experiences for our communities.
]]>“Which,” he continued, “is basically telling a black or brown poor kid to pull our pants up, turn our hats the right way, wear a suit and we’ll get ahead, Alright? Fuck that, alright? Martin Luther King had a suit and tie on when he was shot. Malcolm X had a suit and tie on when he was shot. Medgar Evers had a suit and tie on when he was shot. This is my suit and tie. This is the uniform of the hip-hop generation, my sagged pants and my cocked hat.”
The event was billed as an event to “Demand justice for all victims of anti-black violence, state terror and police impunity.” Many of the over 120 people present, especially people of color, had stories to tell of being stopped by the police and being treated as criminals because they “fit the description. The event was held under the watchful eye of the Providence Police, who hovered at the edge of the park. Ironically, just as Alex, one of the event organizers, took the microphone to address the crowd, the police swooped in on the other side of the fountain to arrest a homeless man for reasons unknown.
“I think it’s really important to understand that police violence, anti-blackness and white supremacy all plays out in our society in a variety of ways,” said Andrea, one of the organizers, “Some of this violence is actually physical violence that leads to death, that leads to imprisonment, etc., but some violence is not so physical. We can have emotional violence, we can have spiritual violence, and that’s constantly happening to us…”
The killing of Mike Brown, an unarmed black man in Ferguson MS, has sent reverberations throughout our country, and young people, like those who held this rally, are beginning to explore ways in which to stand up against racial profiling, police militarization and the corporatization of law enforcement, including the prison-industrial complex.
The conversation is shifting.
Watching citizens and activists peacefully organize around the ideas of inclusivity and respect for human rights fills me with hope for the future.
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Then Chairman of the Rhode Island Human Rights Commission Michael Evora testified about why some of law enforcement’s objections to the bill contradict best practices used by police in Rhode Island. “I respectfully submit,” he said, “that in some instances the term officer safety is used as a subterfuge.”
]]>Hear more about their work here in this podcast of excerpts from my February 15 interview with PrYSM youth leaders, ?Sangress Xiong and Yonara Alvarado, and PrYSM staffer Franny Choi. It aired lived on my weekly program, Sonic Watermelons on Brown Student and Community Radio.
During the interview, Xiong, Alvarado and Choi talk about recent campaign actions, like the February press conference introducing House Bill 7256, the making of the local documentary called Fitting the Description, and other recent activities that they have participated in with PrYSM and the Coalition Against Racial Profiling. Alvarado (who is Latina) says she became passionate about the topic after being in the car and witnessing racial profiling when her uncle was stopped by an officer, and subsequently feeling less faith in whether officers are best serving the community; Xiong, who is Hmong (Southeast Asian), helps explain how a practice once known as Driving while Black has expanded to include not only the Latino/Hispanic community, but the Southeast Asian community in Providence as well including friends and neighbors of his.
I also spoke with the three guests about the benefits and limitations of using digital media tools to collect stories from people whove been subjected to racial profiling, and for doing outreach about legislative efforts like the Comprehensive Racial Profiling Prevention Act that will be reviewed and discussed at next Wednesdays House Judiciary hearing. The ten-page bill deals primarily with conduct during motor vehicle stops and searches, and among the provisions are:
In addition to collecting the probable cause information, the bill would require officers to collect data on race during stops and departments to maintain and report this data at intervals over a 4 year period. Choi says collecting data is key to ending racially divisive practices, and along with the ACLU in their work on the topic points to a local, southern RI city for proof of its inclusion in the bill as being effective legislation.
In Narragansett, says Choi in the excerpts, the department began collecting information without the legislation, and found a drop in racial disparities in stops after instituting the policy. The ACLU also found recent actions and improvements in Johnston. At the end of the day, says Choi, when youre pulling someone over, have a reason to pull them over.
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To connect with PrYSM about their work on Racial Profiling, visit www.prysm.us or email franny@prysm.us. For more information about the Coalition Against Racial Profiling or next Wednesdays hearing, contact Nick Figueroa of the Univocal Legislative Minority Advisory Coalition (ULMAC) by email at policy@ulmac.org. Anyone can attend the hearing and sign up to testify, but Figueroa highly encourages anyone who would be testifying for the first time to contact him in advance for information and tips on the process of giving testimonies and what to expect in the hearing. For example, four other bills are scheduled to be discussed on the same night and in the same hearing (meeting), so 4:30 may be the start-time for the hearing, but not necessarily when the Racial Profiling Bill is addressed.
Additional clips from the interview will be made available on VenusSings.com and IsisStorm.com, where you can also follow show updates about Sonic Watermelons, which airs live every Wednesday, from 6-8 PM (EST) at www.bsrlive.com.
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Think there’s racial profiling in Rhode Island? The study certainly seems to suggest as much, and a number of state legislators and the RI-based Coalition to Stop Racial Profiling have teamed up to do something about it.
The legislators, led by Grace Diaz, D-Prov, introduced a bill into the House called the Comprehensive Racial Profiling Prevention Act. The bill, according to a fact sheet put together by the ACLU, would:
The Coalition, on the other hand, put together with the help of the Providence Youth Student Movement and Youth in Action this short documentary called “Fitting the Description.” Check it out:
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