Systemic racism in policing ‘is a fact.’ Here’s what Lexington needs to do better.
Gary Potter has spent much of his academic career determining whether what we think about crime is real or not. His book, “The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice,” co-authored with Victor Kappeller is in its fifth printing, considered required reading in many criminal justice programs, such as the one he recently retired from at Eastern Kentucky University.
American people, on the whole, have exaggerated notions about crime, that what we think is a problem, that our streets are full of violence and criminals, is not true. Violent crime is down by 51 percent since 1991.
What is true, however, is what most Americans until now thought was not: Systemic racism in policing.
“It’s a fact,” Potter told me. “All you have to look at numbers and research, it turns up in every analysis of policing, from traffic stops to drug arrests to shootings.”
Potter recently spoke to the Mayor’s Commission on Racial Justice and Equality’s subcommittee on criminal justice, about perception versus reality in policing. The Commission was formed recently in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at police hands, and a month of protests by local activists demanding more police accountability in Lexington.
In keeping with our misconceptions about crime is the fact that 1 percent of all police calls involve violent crime. The rest involve mental health, traffic, domestic violence. But we train police for that 1 percent in forces that are increasingly militarized with big guns and SWAT teams, that are again, primarily deployed against people of color.
As Potter pointed out to members, he’s talking about national data. “We don’t have a lot of local data,” he said. “We need much better data and much better information on policing.”
The data we do get is usually forced by local media, such as the revealing story by Herald-Leader reporter Beth Musgrave, which crunched the numbers on who Lexington police pull over and why.
According to Musgrave, “from 2015 to 2019, about 23 percent of all tickets and warnings by Lexington police went to black drivers. Black people make up 14 percent of Fayette County’s population. Moreover, the number of Black people of driving age is only 11.9 percent of the total population.
“During that same period, Black men received 14 percent of those tickets and warnings but Black driving-age men are only 5.2 percent of the population. Black women of driving age are 6.2 percent of the overall population and received 9 percent of the tickets and warnings issued.”
Lexington Police say they need more information and context about that data.
Here’s what Potter suggested to the committee that the city and Lexington Police need to do.
▪ Find out what Lexington Police are actually doing. What percentage of time do police spend on violent crime versus social work? Who calls them and why?
▪ Do a victimization survey. Crime rates are based on police information about arrests. Find out what’s really happening to people in what areas of crime.
▪ Do a citizens’ assessment of what Lexington needs when it comes to crime and enforcement.
▪ Create a separate citizens’ advocate or inspector general to help the public negotiate complaints about the police. Right now, people have to go to the police to make a complaint against them. “That’s a cumbersome and intimidating process,” Potter said.
▪ Assess who is becoming a police officer and how we train them. In Europe, police have to go to police college for three years before training even starts, Potter said.
“We teach cops to be warriors with the war on crime or war on drugs, or whatever war it is, then we send them on the street to do social work with the mentally ill,” Potter said.
All this new information could then help Lexington decide what kind of police department it wants, or where, perhaps some of its resources could be re-allocated. Defunding the police confuses and alarms folks. Of course we will always need some form of police, but maybe not in the form we have now.
Police Chief Lawrence Weathers says that policing is always evolving. “It’s become much more holistic,” he said. “People need to see all the things we do in addition to dealing (with) violent crime.”
Exactly. We need to better understand what Lexington police do. Across the nation, even as crime went down, police budgets went up. In Lexington, more than 50 percent of the city budget goes to public safety, police fire, 911, corrections etc. Of that about 20 percent or $79 million is for police.
In my opinion, it’s a no-brainer that we should devote more money to social workers to help the mentally ill, affordable housing for the homeless and much more drug rehabilitation to lessen substance abuse. Right now, we have it backwards. We think we need more police because they have to mop up the problems we don’t want to solve. Let’s solve them and then see how many police we really need.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 9:51 AM.
