If there exists a broad belief that police are far removed from the staggering U.S. rate of incarcerations, it is time to change the perception. The police department is the doorway to prisons. It is law enforcement that chooses who to stop, frisk, arrest, jail, and refer to the prosecutor for further action. Without the police officer, there is no mass incarceration.
When the stops, frisks, and arrests are done in a selective and discriminatory manner, the result is prison populations in the U.S., the highest of any country in the world, are disproportionately African American. The reality is, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for low-level drug offenses despite that fact that whites are equally likely to use, sell, and be in possession of drugs. College campuses, including Ivy League schools, are known havens of marijuana and drugs, yet no raids occur.
Blacks are more likely to be stopped, frisked, arrested. Blacks are more likely to be referred for prosecution, more likely to be coerced into plea agreements, and if they stand trial, more likely to be convicted. Once convicted, blacks are given longer sentences than whites convicted of the same crimes.
The Blue Wall of Silence greatly impedes progress in building a community where citizens can trust the fairness and integrity of the police. Penetrating that wall requires that police leadership acknowledge the injustices that have occurred in the African-American community for generations. It likewise requires that the community take ownership of countering injustice while minimizing criminal activity.
“Incarcerations in Black and White, the Subjugation of Black America” was written to disclose glaring disparities within the criminal justice system. In 2014 I asked nine black mothers if they would participate in a conversation with white mothers about the talk we have with our black sons. No explanation was needed. All nine knew exactly what “The Talk” was, and all nine had had it with their sons. Black parents dating back to slavery have been forced to talk to their sons about interactions with the police, no matter how innocent, how well dressed or how educated their sons may be.
The intended one-time “Mother 2 Mother” first held at The Missouri History Museum, along with “Father 2 Father” conversations became a nearly four-year demand in more than 35 churches, synagogues, community groups, schools, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. One conversation filmed at the National Civil Rights Museum is part of the PBS documentary “The Talk: Race in America” that was aired nationally in 2017. It can be viewed at PBS.org.
When Wesley Bell is voted in as the prosecutor in St. Louis County on November 6, he and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner will have new opportunities to reduce crime – not by harassing and arresting African-American men, jailing blacks for possession of marijuana while whites using opioids are sent to treatment, not by criminalizing a growing segment of our population suffering from mental illness, nor by sending masses of people into the criminal justice system – but by finding alternatives to incarceration, getting the community more involved in deterring criminal behavior, increasing economic opportunities within the private and public sectors, and by assuring that those individuals hired to serve and protect us all are free of racial animus.
If we raise the bar on the ground floor, the doorway to incarcerations, the rest of the community will follow suit. Prosecutors alone cannot change the landscape of crime, prisons and policing. They need the cooperation and support of the community. Not simply gestures of goodwill, but hands-on activism within the community that keeps a watch both on the activities of our youth and on the behavior of our police, activism that calls to bear witness on injustices known to occur throughout the system, that utilizes the power of the black church to demand change in our banking systems, lending practices, and employment benchmarks, activism that brings our children back to our city schools and neighborhoods.
As we enter into a new realm of policing and prosecuting in the St. Louis metropolitan region, it is time for us to be one community. Not us and them, but neighbors, educators, law enforcement and churches working as one to ensure that no individual feels the compulsion to resort to crime, whether that crime is committed on the street, in the police car, or in the boardroom.
Christi Griffin, is the Founder of The Ethics Project, a non-profit organization addressing the impact of crime, injustice and incarcerations, and the author of “Incarcerations in Black and White: The Subjugation of Black America.”
