Blacks still moving targets for Missouri cops
Of the St. Louis American
James Buford, CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, again has fiery words for Mayor Francis Slay’s opposition to a citizens’ police review board with elected representatives.
“It seems that the citizens of St. Louis are not allowed to have a voice in protecting themselves against rogue police,” Buford writes in a column in today’s American.
Buford said he “doubted” if a review board created last year by the mayor and St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, which is solely appointed by the mayor and approved by the police board, could be autonomous and credible.
“What would be the difference between the decisions of this group and the current police board?” Buford asked. “Absolutely nothing.”
Alderman Terry Kennedy’s revised proposal to create a civilian review board with appointees and elected representatives is again languishing in committee at the Board of Aldermen. Buford called the Kennedy proposal for a review board with four-of-seven elected representatives “ideal.”
Buford’s plea for compromise comes just as state Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office reports that black motorists, regardless of where they are traveling in Missouri, have a 38 percent greater chance of being stopped by police than white motorists.
In addition, African Americans are 71 percent more likely to be searched by police after being stopped than whites.
Nixon said that even though this is the fifth time in the report’s five-year history there has been a major discrepancy in treatment between races, this “does not prove that stops are being solely made on the basis of race.”
In 2002 and 2003, blacks faced about a 40 percent higher chance of being stopped by police.
Nixon, who is considering challenging Gov. Matt Blunt in 2008, said, “Law-abiding drivers have the right to travel throughout Missouri without the fear that they will be stopped based solely on their race or ethnicity.”
Seventy police agencies did not file reports, up from 56 in 2003. While police departments that do not report traffic-stop statistics face the threat of losing state funds, only $7,200 was withheld from 16 departments in 2004. That averages just $450 per department.
The time has come for someone “to watch over those who are supposed to be watching over us,” Buford said.
The calls for an elected police review board intensified last year when two city police officers fired 28 rounds into a black driver’s vehicle carrying him, his wife and two small children.
The driver was not wanted for arrest in any jurisdiction and faced no felony charges after police peppered his car with bullets.
A city police officer was convicted on a number of federal charges stemming from threats and physical abuse of suspects earlier this year. Local authorities did not find grounds to charge him, although federal authorities later convicted him.
The apparent profiling of black motorists does not exist in the City of St. Louis, which is just more than 50 percent black. St. Louis police stopped 11,585 blacks and 11,556 whites. Black city drivers still have more than a 50 percent greater chance than whites of having their vehicle searched once stopped, though.
African Americans in St. Louis County had a 50 percent greater chance than whites of being pulled over by police while driving.
The Rev. Gill Ford of St. Louis, director of Region IV of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which includes Missouri, said the profiling study is important “because when the NAACP and other organizations made the claim that racial profiling existed, law enforcement emphatically denied that it happened.”
“(Police) claimed that the accusation was outrageous and not factual. If you look at what has went on during the past five years, the report reflects that there are a disparate number of stops,” Ford said.
Ford called the comparative number of searches between blacks and whites “astounding” and said that police know that African Americans are no more likely than whites to be carrying drugs or other contraband.
“Now that we have evidence that something is going on, where is the voice of the people?” Ford said.
“The people have to say, ‘We’re not going to take this anymore.'”
Ford said he is familiar with Alderman Kennedy’s proposed bill, but warns that any civilian review board would be limited even if it has subpoena power and elected members.
“Police officers could be called, but all they would have to do is plead the Fifth Amendment,” Ford said.
He said that community members must force change, because the attorney general’s annual report only proves that there is a problem and does not solve it.
“There is a delicate balance that people in poor communities understand. They don’t want crime, but they don’t want to be hassled by police. They don’t want to deal with criminals, but they don’t want their children being treated criminally when they have done nothing wrong,” Ford said.
“The law enforcement community must understand the dynamics of both sides of this issue.”
