There have been headlines like “Governor Spanks Mayor Slay” and articles about a coup within the St. Louis police board. What all this really means for better governance of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and more accountability to the citizens remains to be seen.
What’s important at this moment in time is whether racial profiling will get more than a blip in the news. Racial profiling is against the law, and some police departments are breaking the law. The question should be “Now what?” instead of “So what?”
This is the 10th anniversary of the racial profiling report by the Missouri Attorney General. As the result of an organized effort by organizations and concerned citizens, a racial profiling bill was passed in 2000. A few of us who were instrumental in the law’s passage were subsequently invited to join the Attorney General’s Racial Profiling Task Force.
I gladly accepted the opportunity that allowed me to hear the views and concerns of law enforcement officials across the state for a whole year and put forth our community’s experience with police. Our primary goal was to ensure that all municipalities collected and submitted data as required by law for the first year’s report.
There were concerned police chiefs and sheriffs who welcomed the new law as an instrument to improve police practices and their public image. But I vividly recall an overwhelming sentiment expressed that such a law was bound to restrict police officers’ ability to perform their duties, as now they would hesitate before stopping motorists for fear of being called racist. Those fears quickly evaporated when police began to see that, regardless of how the data affirmed their racist practices, they were not going to be subject to any discipline.
The data collection even got better over the years while the racial disparity got worse. Now in places like Ladue, where the police chief resigned for allegedly being told to profile, black drivers were pulled over 1,700 percent more times than their percentage in the driving age population of Ladue. Blacks throughout the state were 70 percent more likely than whites to be stopped and twice as likely to be searched, even though the rate of finding contraband was higher amongst whites. This means that not only is this practice racist, it’s not even good policing. The data implies that police should be stopping and searching white people more.
The stats are ugly all around. Black women are stopped twice as much as white women. Blacks are stopped for longer periods of time than everyone else. But it’s the stats for the group of black males from 18-29 that are most troubling. This is a sector for whom racial profiling begins as pedestrians at about 12 years old. They have been targeted for a long, long time without any relief. Periodically, their respond to this police harassment erupts in violent ways that they would claim are self-defense.
Meanwhile, the responsible people have been silent on the decade of lawbreaking by police. This includes former AG Jay Nixon, now the governor, and current Ag Chris Koster, who hasn’t said what he plans to do about the repulsive stats. These are the state’s highest law enforcement officials.
Most state legislators have been quiet. In St. Louis, there’s former police chief Joe Mokwa and now Chief Dan Isom, who hasn’t said what he plans to do about the disgusting stats either, though he was on vacation when the report was released. There have been several police boards over time; and then there’s the Board of Alderpeople.
This may be another example of lethargy around problem-solving in this city. We particularly have a poor track record in matters involving race. There’s a lot wrapped into the current racial profiling report – historic racism, equal justice and protection under the law, police accountability – that demands our attention and thoughtful planning.
If we are serious, then on the 11th anniversary of the racial profiling report, the City of St. Louis can celebrate a drop in the racial gap based upon real-life solutions that were fully implemented during the year.