Harold Crumpton, current president of the city NAACP, recently supported Mayor Francis Slay’s position opposing the creation of a elected civilian police review board. This is a classic example of why the NAACP continues to suffer from a credibility crisis with the very population it purports to represent.
How can Crumpton claim to be an honest broker for the interests of people of color when he makes statements that undercut the bargaining leverage of the African-American leaders who have been at the forefront of the call for a civilian review board? It is really strange that Crumpton would now express his opinion that an elected citizen review board “is not going to happen and that it is time to move on.” It is ironic that what he supports is a “moving on” to establish a review board that Slay wants.
This is not the only issue that Crumpton weighed in on last week that put him at odds with another black leader. In last week’s St. Louis Argus, while responding to Slay’s firing of Kenneth Jones as director of the Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, Crumpton stated without providing any evidence that “we have some serious problems with civil rights enforcement in the area. We have a dismal record in terms of response to these complaints.” This was just a left-handed way for Crumpton to provide cover for Slay, who admitted that Jones was fired because of his politics, not his job performance.
Crumpton may have hit on something, however, about our having “some serious problems with civil rights enforcement in the area.” The problem, in fact, starts with him. Crumpton finds all kinds of ways to criticize Jones and Jim Buford while staying quiet as a church mouse regarding the curious fact that the only people in the Slay administration who Slay has asked to resign or been fired have been African Americans.
Take his fight with Fire Chief Sherman George, whom he tried to blame for a rash of accidents in the Fire Department. Or the removal of Rita Kirkland as operations director. Or the opposition to the Equal Opportunity Commission’s attempt to settle the racial disparity issue in the Fire Department. Or the firing of Percy Green as director of the Minority Business Certification program. The list goes on and on. To paraphrase that cartoon philosopher POGO, Crumpton has seen the enemy of civil rights in this area, and it is him.