tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/michael-brown-13705/articlesMichael Brown – The Conversation2023-07-31T12:24:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2106362023-07-31T12:24:13Z2023-07-31T12:24:13ZJustice Department launches civil rights investigation of Memphis police – 4 essential reads about holding police accountable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539936/original/file-20230728-29-n5ruyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C52%2C7008%2C4500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Signs calling for all officers and emergency personnel involved in Tyre Nichols' death to be named and charged rest on public steps on Feb. 1, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/signs-calling-for-all-officers-and-emergency-personel-news-photo/1246727760?adppopup=true">Lucy Garrett/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seven months after the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tyre-nichols-officers-fired-memphis-facb607496ba0f8abf9d7cdf21c97446">horrific beating death by police of Memphis, Tennessee, motorist Tyre Nichols</a>, the Justice Department, on July 27, 2023, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/27/justice-civil-rights-memphis/">launched a civil rights investigation</a> into allegations the Memphis Police Department routinely used excessive force and, on a systemic basis, discriminated against Black residents.</p>
<p>Although Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said during a press conference that the investigation of the department and city of Memphis is “not based on a single incident or event,” she also said, “In January of this year, the nation witnessed the tragic death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police.” </p>
<p>The Justice Department, Clarke said, received multiple reports of Memphis police escalating encounters with residents that resulted in excessive force and have indications police there use force punitively.</p>
<p>The Conversation has published a range of articles that examine police departments’ unequal and sometimes violent treatment of Black people. Here are four articles to help you understand the depth and breadth of the problem. Rashad Shabazz, <a href="https://newsroom.asu.edu/expert/rashad-shabazz">a geographer and scholar of African American studies</a> who uses location and societal views about groups of people to make sense of police abuse, wrote three of them. </p>
<h2>1. Black police officers can be affected by anti-Black bias</h2>
<p>Police officers in the United States have always treated Black people as domestic enemies and viewed them as a problem, wrote Shabazz, who teaches at Arizona State University. And ample research indicates anti-Blackness is a factor in American policing from which Black police officers are not exempt.</p>
<p>“American society assumes that Black people are prone to criminality and therefore should be subject to state power <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-police-officers-arent-colorblind-theyre-infected-by-the-same-anti-black-bias-as-american-society-and-police-in-general-198721">in the form of policing</a> or, in some cases, vigilantism – as in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. This is a link deeply woven into American consciousness,” he wrote. “And Black people are not immune. In this way, the long-held targeting of Black men by police and widely held negative beliefs about them are a powerful cocktail that can compel even Black officers to stop, detain and brutally beat a man who looks just like them.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mean wearing black and gray carry a black casket topped with white flowers to the open back of a white hearse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539940/original/file-20230728-26-qxz8m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Family and friends bring Tyre Nichols’ casket to a hearse after Nichols’ funeral at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church on Feb. 1, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/family-and-friends-bring-tyre-nichols-casket-to-the-hearse-news-photo/1246727428?adppopup=true">Lucy Garrett/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Shabazz wrote that Americans’ collective surprise that five Black police officers could brutalize another Black man indicated a lack of understanding about race and racism.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-police-officers-arent-colorblind-theyre-infected-by-the-same-anti-black-bias-as-american-society-and-police-in-general-198721">Black police officers aren't colorblind – they're infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general</a>
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<h2>2. The Justice Department has found police in multiple American cities act on racial bias</h2>
<p>Police misconduct in the United States is not unusual. In fact, over the past decade, the Justice Department has found police in cities – including Minneapolis; Louisville, Kentucky; and Ferguson, Missouri – routinely deny Black people their constitutional rights, discriminate against Black people and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force when interacting with civilians, <a href="https://newsroom.asu.edu/expert/rashad-shabazz">Shabazz</a> also wrote:</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/police-treatment-in-black-and-white-report-on-minneapolis-policing-is-the-latest-reminder-of-systemic-racial-disparities-208418">Police body camera footage shows officers speak disrespectfully to Black people</a> during traffic stops; about four of every 10 Black people say police have unfairly stopped them; and Black people are more than three times as likely to be killed by police during interactions. These experiences explain why Black people have negative views of police.”</p>
<p>As Shabazz wrote, the unequal treatment of Black people by police stems from the history of slave patrols policing African Americans in the South. </p>
<p>Black people, though, have not been the only targets of police discrimination. Historically, police discriminated against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest and the Irish – before they were considered white - in the North. White Southerners, white Southwesterners, and white people in the middle and upper classes in the North, however, were not subjected to police abuse or racial discrimination.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, because of their different experiences with police, Black and white people view police differently.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/police-treatment-in-black-and-white-report-on-minneapolis-policing-is-the-latest-reminder-of-systemic-racial-disparities-208418">Police treatment in black and white – report on Minneapolis policing is the latest reminder of systemic racial disparities</a>
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<h2>3. Police officers who brutalize citizens do it repeatedly</h2>
<p>Often, the same police officers who engage in misconduct – such as witness intimidation, evidence tampering and coercion – do the same thing from one case to another, wrote Jill McCorkel. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igzCbrQQHbQ">A scholar of law and the criminal justice system</a> at Villanova University, McCorkel works with people in Philadelphia who were wrongly convicted of crimes.</p>
<p>“In the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Department of Justice found that the department had a lengthy history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-officers-accused-of-brutal-violence-often-have-a-history-of-complaints-by-citizens-139709">excessive force, unconstitutional stop and searches, racial discrimination and racial bias</a>,” McCorkel wrote. “The report noted that the use of force was often punitive and retaliatory and that the overwhelming majority of force – almost 90% – is used against African Americans.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People wearing winter coats and hats protest outside holding black and white signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539942/original/file-20230728-25-l3qp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protesters in Boston hold signs demanding justice following the killing of Tyre Nichols.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-hold-placards-demanding-justice-following-the-news-photo/1246610537?adppopup=true">Vincent Ricci/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But McCorkel wrote that civilian review boards that can conduct their own investigations and impose discipline may be a solution to the problem.</p>
<p>“Research at the national level suggests that jurisdictions with citizen review boards uphold more excessive force complaints than jurisdictions that rely on internal mechanisms,” she wrote.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/police-officers-accused-of-brutal-violence-often-have-a-history-of-complaints-by-citizens-139709">Police officers accused of brutal violence often have a history of complaints by citizens</a>
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<h2>4. Police often shielded from accountability</h2>
<p>Negative cultural myths about Black people and backing from the powerful Fraternal Order of Police together serve to justify a culture of police violence and shield police officers from accountability for their misconduct, Shabazz wrote.</p>
<p>As a consequence, sometimes people who have been abused by police or whose loved ones were killed by police seek police accountability in civil courts. That’s what Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, did when she filed a US$55 million federal lawsuit against the individual police officers who beat and killed her son. That lawsuit also targeted the Memphis Police Department and the city of Memphis.</p>
<p>“In Louisville, in Minneapolis and across the nation, Black <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-law-often-shields-police-officers-from-accountability-and-reinforces-policing-that-harms-black-people-homeless-people-and-the-mentally-ill-201552">people have complained about police misconduct</a> only to have those complaints ignored while white people’s complaints of misconduct are more likely to be sustained,” Shabazz wrote.</p>
<p>But Shabazz also wrote that homeless people who, like African Americans, are heavily policed and viewed as criminals, are also often the victims of police deadly force. And the mentally ill are routinely on the receiving end of police misconduct.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-law-often-shields-police-officers-from-accountability-and-reinforces-policing-that-harms-black-people-homeless-people-and-the-mentally-ill-201552">The law often shields police officers from accountability -- and reinforces policing that harms Black people, homeless people and the mentally ill</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The Justice Department has launched a civil rights probe of the Memphis Police Department to examine allegations of excessive force, improper stops and searches and racial disparities.Lorna Grisby, Politics & Society EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408272020-07-13T11:50:30Z2020-07-13T11:50:30ZWhen the world changes under a political scientist’s feet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346693/original/file-20200709-30-1bhol3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Floyd's death sparked a movement.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrator-hanging-a-black-lives-matter-sign-on-the-fence-news-photo/1224909384?adppopup=true">Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scientific method isn’t easy to use during rapid social change. </p>
<p>Protests in response to George Floyd’s death spread to over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/13/us/george-floyd-protests-cities-photos.html">2,000 cities and towns across the U.S</a>. People of all backgrounds are participating in this national uprising, demanding an end to racist policing. </p>
<p>As a political scientist, <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/sashea.html">I investigate why police killings lead to protest</a>. It is thrilling to watch this movement spark much-needed debates about race and policing. </p>
<p>Yet, because of the uprising, I am now facing a challenge that few political scientists ever do. Normally, the outcomes and causal factors that most political scientists study change slowly, over time. </p>
<p>Now, the protests I study have skyrocketed in number and participants. The beliefs I hypothesized were driving them could be changing as well. As more people join the protests and update their beliefs about race, the hypotheses I was planning to test could become outdated.</p>
<p>I am simultaneously watching welcome social change unfold, and watching events that could dramatically alter the work I’ve done for the last five years.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346695/original/file-20200709-26-1l21vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The protests across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death are unprecedented.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anti-racism-protests-continue-at-the-madison-square-park-in-news-photo/1224709172?adppopup=true">Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Theory, test, adjust theory</h2>
<p>Why does one police killing inspire a protest, but another killing does not?</p>
<p>I was moved to research this topic following the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2014/11/20/everything-know-shooting-michael-brown-darren-wilson/">2014 police shooting of Michael Brown</a> and the subsequent uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. A Ph.D. student at Stanford University at the time, I wanted to understand when and why communities resist police violence.</p>
<p>When you use the <a href="https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=oa_textbooks">scientific method in the social sciences</a>, you begin by developing a hypothesis – an informed prediction about the answer to your research question. So I started with a hypothesis that the circumstances of a police killing would determine people’s willingness to protest. For example, I believed people would be instantly outraged by the shooting of an unarmed youth but not be stirred to act if the person killed were accused of a violent crime.</p>
<p>Then you test your hypothesis by observing patterns in data and behavior.</p>
<p>The data I collected on the circumstances of police killings did not support this hypothesis. I also discovered through interviews that even longtime police-reform activists could react to the same killing in very different ways. So I had to adjust my theory. </p>
<p>Now, part of my research examines how people’s preexisting beliefs and attitudes shape the way they interpret violent police incidents. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Attitudes about race, specifically, color these interpretations. In a working paper with my co-author, political scientist <a href="http://www.israeltrummel.com/">Mackenzie Israel-Trummel</a>, we find through a survey experiment that people’s beliefs about the causes of racial inequality influenced whether they thought a detainee deserved to be beaten. </p>
<p>Respondents who recognized the role of structural racism in racial inequality were less likely to think the beating was deserved. Those who attributed inequality to the perceived individual failings of Blacks were more likely to blame the victim. </p>
<p>Before the recent protests erupted, in order to find out how these beliefs relate to the likelihood of protest, I was planning to test how these two views of inequality and structural racism correlated with actual racial and geographic patterns of protest following police killings. </p>
<p>I collected new data on which police killings led to protest in 2015 and 2016. My preliminary analyses reveal large variation in protest based on the race of the person killed and the region of the country. The killings of African Americans are seven times more likely to spark demonstrations than the killings of whites. Even comparing within race, African American communities in certain cities are quick to protest any lethal incidents while Blacks in other towns remain quiet. </p>
<p>If white and Black Americans have different attitudes about structural racism in different parts of the country, this could partially explain variation in willingness to protest police killings locally.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346694/original/file-20200709-22-1d1dhlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Protesters demonstrated across the country after Michael Brown’s death in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-protest-the-shooting-death-of-michael-brown-news-photo/459618934?adppopup=true">Joshua Lott/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Throw away theory?</h2>
<p>My research was proceeding in orderly fashion until the end of May of this year, when protests against police violence broke out across the country.</p>
<p>These protests and the growing movement around them provide clues that the very attitudes I was studying are changing rapidly following George Floyd’s death. Books about systemic racism are now <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/amazon-best-sellers-books-race-trnd/index.html">topping bestseller lists</a>. <a href="https://apnews.com/728b414b8742129329081f7092179d1f">Recent polls</a> have reported a dramatic shift in attitudes, as nearly half of Americans report that police violence is a serious problem in the U.S., up from only one-third who believed that in 2015.</p>
<p>The causal story I predicted – that attitudes about structural racism would drive protests – seems to have almost reversed: The protests themselves seem to be driving a shift in people’s views of structural racism and systemic problems in policing. </p>
<p>On top of it all, these shifts could be narrowing the racial and geographic divides I had seen before. </p>
<p>Previously, I saw very few protests about police violence in majority-white areas or in conservative regions of the country. Though exact numbers are unknown, it seems that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/george-floyd-white-protesters.html">more whites are joining</a> these Black Lives Matter protests than ever before, possibly narrowing the documented <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/09/29/the-racial-confidence-gap-in-police-performance/">racial divide in attitudes</a> about police violence. The demonstrations have spread all over the country, even into small towns and white-majority suburbs that have <a href="https://www.vox.com/21310027/black-lives-matter-protest-2020-california-simi">not protested police violence in the past</a>. </p>
<h2>Welcome change makes research harder (but worth it)</h2>
<p>As more and more Americans join protests and learn about structural racism and systemic police abuses, this could significantly change the way they perceive and respond to police violence in the future. </p>
<p>Will this shift in attitudes be long-lasting or temporary? Though my research would be simpler in a pre-2020 world, I sincerely hope these changes are long-lasting. </p>
<p>Since the upheaval is still ongoing, I must wait to test my theory. If I were to run the study now and find no support for my hypothesis, I would have no way of knowing whether I was wrong to begin with, whether this wave of protest has fundamentally changed the racial landscape of people’s attitudes about the police or whether this change is only temporary. </p>
<p>However, this delay is a worthy price to pay for more accurate research in the service of racial justice and police accountability. For now, I will keep my feet in the streets and an eye on the polls to determine whether it is the right time to run the study – or time to build a new theory for 2020 and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shea Streeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A political scientist says the protests against police violence that have swept the US signal welcome social change – and could dramatically alter the work she’s done for five years.Shea Streeter, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow /Assistant Professor (starting 2021), University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1399372020-06-12T12:16:07Z2020-06-12T12:16:07ZA short history of black women and police violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341267/original/file-20200611-80789-14bg7jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester holds up a sign with Breonna Taylor's name. Taylor was killed by police officers on March 13.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gather-with-balloons-for-a-vigil-in-memory-of-news-photo/1218020612?adppopup=true">Brett Carlsen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">Breonna Taylor</a>, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home. </p>
<p>The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found. </p>
<p>But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers. </p>
<p>Although the majority of black people killed by police in the United States are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men">young men</a>, black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The <a href="https://aapf.org/shn-campaign">#SayHerName campaign</a> has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue. </p>
<p>Police violence against black women is <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">marginalized in the public’s understanding of American policing</a>. There is a perception among many Americans that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. </p>
<p>This perception could not further from the truth.</p>
<p>Breonna Taylor’s story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a <a href="http://abwh.org/2020/05/31/by-remembering-our-sisters-we-challenge-police-violence-against-black-women-and-legacies-that-eclipse-these-injustices/">long-standing pattern</a>: For decades, black women have been targets of police violence and brutality. </p>
<p>And for decades, their stories have been <a href="https://time.com/5847970/police-brutality-black-women-girls/">sidelined in public discussions about policing</a>. Many scholars point to <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">misogyny</a> to explain the continued marginalization of black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/5edc95fba357687217b08fb8/1591514635487/SHNReportJuly2015.pdf">#SayHerName report</a>, <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/sayhername-police-violence-against-black-women-and-girls-an-interview-with-andrea-ritchie/">explains</a>, “Women’s experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men.”</p>
<p>Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.</p>
<h2>Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence</h2>
<p>Civil rights leader <a href="https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence. </p>
<p>Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s. </p>
<p>After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">only 5% of the state’s 450,000 black residents were registered</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fannie Lou Hamer attended the Democratic National Convention in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ds.07134/">Warren K. Leffler/U.S. News & World Report Magazine</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter’s workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat. </p>
<p>The restaurant owners made it clear that black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/voice-that-could-stir-an-army-fannie-lou-hamer-and-the-rhetoric-of-the-black-freedom-movement/oclc/1062296766&referer=brief_results">immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her</a>.</p>
<p>Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fannie-lou-hamer-the-life-of-a-civil-rights-icon/oclc/729961147&referer=brief_results">later recalled</a>, “They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn’t bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That’s how I got this blood clot in my left eye – the sight’s nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back.” </p>
<p>Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html">recounted her story before a live, televised audience</a> of millions. </p>
<p>In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories – and the stories of their loved ones. </p>
<h2>From lynch mob to violent police</h2>
<p>During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">grassroots initiative in New York City</a> to combat police violence in black communities. </p>
<p>In 1984, Mary Bumper’s 66-year-old mother, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520061">Eleanor Bumpurs</a>, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/14/nyregion/honor-student-17-is-killed-by-policeman-on-west-side.html">Veronica Perry’s 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed</a> by a plainclothes police officer. </p>
<p>Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.</p>
<p>United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City – <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/street-justice-a-history-of-police-violence-in-new-york-city/oclc/1004798959">an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing</a>. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.</p>
<p>On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders. </p>
<p>“We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry insisted</a>. </p>
<p>Her comments emphasized black activists’ recognition that the fight for black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence – whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, spoke after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gwen-carr-the-mother-of-eric-garner-speaks-to-a-group-of-news-photo/1215876745?adppopup=true">Stephen Maturen/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>The struggle continues</h2>
<p>In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/25/nyregion/jury-acquits-all-transit-officers-in-1983-death-of-michael-stewart.html">Michael Stewart</a>, who died in police custody in 1983. </p>
<p>Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/27/archives/boy-15-shot-to-death-pointblank-officer-arrested-in-east-new-york.html">Randolph Evans</a> was killed by New York police in 1976. </p>
<p>At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. “We as a people have to stand together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Mary Bumpurs explained</a>. “It takes each of us banding together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry added</a>.</p>
<p>Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women’s grassroots organizing during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role black women play in challenging police violence. </p>
<p>These women’s political work continues today through the “<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a38111/who-are-mothers-of-the-movement-dnc/">Mothers of the Movement</a>,” a group of black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.</p>
<p>This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to <a href="https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/eric-garners-mother-gwen-carr-talks-police-chokehold-ban-cops-kneeling-taking-a-knee-george-floyd-protests">push for legislation</a> that would fundamentally change American policing. </p>
<p>In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/502114-trayvon-martins-mother-sybrina-fulton-qualifies-to-run-for-county">run for public office</a>. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for <a href="https://abc7ny.com/rev-al-sharpton-eric-garner-gwen-carr-corey-johnson/6226857/">greater police accountability</a> and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of black people in the United States.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keisha N. Blain has received funding from the American Association of University Women and the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>Young men make up the majority of black people killed by police in the US. That’s fed a perception that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. They aren’t.Keisha N. Blain, Associate Professor of History, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1211582019-08-05T19:53:39Z2019-08-05T19:53:39ZPolice are more likely to kill men and women of color<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286976/original/file-20190805-36377-hdlanh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Activists rallied in New York City in July 2016 to protest police-involved shootings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-city-july-7-2016-449073844?src=hnQk-Lc5lQKW2byKZvdYSw-1-3">a katz/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, five years ago. Since then, <a href="https://fatalencounters.org/">U.S. police have killed</a> more than 5,000 people. </p>
<p>Researchers and activists only know about these deaths because journalists do what the federal government has not: collect <a href="https://openhealthdata.metajnl.com/article/10.5334/ohd.30/">detailed information</a> on police-involved fatalities. </p>
<p>Because the government has not collected systematic data on police killings, the public doesn’t have definitive numbers that, once interpreted, will show how likely people are to be killed by police. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821204116">a study published on Aug. 5</a>, sociologist <a href="https://artsci.wustl.edu/faculty-staff/hedwig-lee">Hedwig Lee</a>, social scientist <a href="https://www.mhesposito.com/">Michael Esposito</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ap4lWH0AAAAJ&hl=en">and I</a> use unofficial data to show how risk of death varies by age, sex and race or ethnicity in the U.S. </p>
<h2>Measuring police violence</h2>
<p>My colleagues and I rely on data provided by Fatal Encounters, a dataset maintained by journalist and former newspaper editor <a href="https://fatalencounters.org/about-me/">D. Brian Burghart</a>. Burghart conducts systematic searches of online news, social media and public records to provide a close-to-comprehensive and up-to-date archive of police killings. </p>
<p>The database shows about 1,000 and 1,200 deaths per year since 2000.</p>
<p>While overall, police are responsible for a very small share of all deaths – about 0.05% of all male deaths, and 0.003% of all female deaths, police are responsible for a substantial proportion of all deaths of young people. </p>
<p>For young men, police violence ranks as the sixth leading cause of death as classified by the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/lcwk4.htm">National Vital Statistics System</a>, after accidents, which include drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents and other accidental deaths; suicides; other homicides; heart disease; and cancer. Police are responsible for 1.6% of all deaths of black men between the ages of 20 and 24.</p>
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<p>Our analysis found that about 52 of every 100,000 men and boys, and about 3 of every 100,000 women and girls, will be killed by police. </p>
<p>For comparison, the lifetime risk of a person being killed in a vehicle accident for the general population is about 970 per 100,000, and the lifetime risk of being killed by firearm in a homicide is about 350 per 100,000.</p>
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<p>People who are American Indian and Alaska Native, black or Latino are more likely to be killed by police than people who are white. </p>
<p>Men of color have especially high lifetime risks of being killed by police. About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys are likely are killed by police. For American Indian and Alaska Native men and boys, the lifetime risk of being killed by police is about 1 in 2,000. </p>
<p>Young men and women are at greatest risk of being killed by police. Between the ages of 25 and 29, about 2 of every 100,000 young men in the U.S. are killed by police, while about 0.1 of every 100,000 women will be killed by police. </p>
<p>That risk is most pronounced for young men and women of color.</p>
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<h2>Policy implications</h2>
<p>Based on our results, I believe that the U.S. urgently needs to reduce the rates at which police kill civilians, and reduce inequalities in exposure of men and women to police violence.</p>
<p>In my view, some common sense interventions would likely drive down rates of death. For example, investment in community based mental health <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing">and social services</a> would reduce the use of police, jails and prisons as <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag">catch-all responses to social problems</a>.</p>
<p>Accountability and effective reform demands better data. The Bureau of Justice Statistics <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6626">is pursuing a data collection effort</a> that mirrors the news-based approaches that journalists have pioneered. And the <a href="https://policingequity.org/what-we-do/national-justice-database">Center for Policing Equity</a>, a research center in New York, is developing a national data system to track police use of force. </p>
<p>These efforts are promising, and I think they will provide policymakers and activists better sets of tools to hold police departments accountable for reducing the number of deaths that their officers cause.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121158/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>According to a new study, about 52 of every 100,000 men and boys, and about 3 of every 100,000 women and girls, are killed by police in the US.Frank Edwards, Assistant Professor, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/832052017-09-13T02:37:40Z2017-09-13T02:37:40Z5 things that have changed about FEMA since Katrina – and 5 that haven’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185550/original/file-20170911-30152-nv5g94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">FEMA's handling of Hurricane Katrina inspired resentment in the affected communities – but did it bring about real change in the organization?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/84806031@N00/105307858">Dental Ben</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes – is the Federal Emergency Management Agency ready for the new era of disasters?</p>
<p>I’m a professor of public administration and policy at <a href="https://www.cpap.vt.edu">Virginia Tech</a>, and I’ve written <a href="http://admin.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/disasters-and-american-state-how-politicians-bureaucrats-and-public-prepare-unexpected?format=PB">a book</a> explaining why expectations of this agency are so high – unrealistically so.</p>
<p>After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, the emergency manager of Dade County, Florida famously asked the media, “<a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2002/webspecials02/andrew/day3/story1.shtml">Where in the hell is the cavalry?”</a> after her requests for aid from FEMA went unanswered. Picking up on the anger, some members of Congress wanted to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X06000010">abolish the agency</a> as punishment for its poor response. </p>
<p>FEMA survived, but it came under blistering criticism again after Hurricane Katrina killed <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/hurricane-katrina-statistics-fast-facts/index.html">1,833 people</a> and caused <a href="https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/extremeevents/specialreports/Hurricane-Katrina.pdf">more than US$100 billion in damage</a>.</p>
<p>The response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fema-avoids-disaster-in-houston--so-far/2017/08/31/f8f709d0-8dc3-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html">gone much more smoothly</a> – at least so far. So what has changed with FEMA since Katrina?</p>
<h2>5 things that have changed</h2>
<h2>1. Leadership</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/our-responder-in-chief">Presidents</a> learned the importance of placing experienced emergency managers in charge of FEMA. During the Katrina disaster, President George W. Bush told FEMA Director Michael Brown, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4548480/katrina-10-years-later-brownie-youre-heck-job">“you’re doing a heck of a job.”</a> Ten days later, Brown resigned in disgrace. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185691/original/file-20170912-7125-19xak8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">FEMA director Michael Brown was forced to resign over his mishandling of Hurricane Katrina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/LM Otero</span></span>
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<p>Brown was only one of the agency’s problems at the time. An academic <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8663.html">analysis</a> found that turnover among FEMA leadership and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2008.03658.x/full">appointees without sufficient qualifications</a> contributed to the agency’s halting response. Before joining FEMA, Brown supervised judges at horse shows. He joined FEMA through <a href="http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2016/08/michael_brown_fema.html">a connection with his friend</a> Joe Allbaugh who was President Bush’s first campaign manager and FEMA director.</p>
<p>Since Brown, presidents have appointed FEMA directors with emergency management experience. Current FEMA Director Brock Long was director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, and had previously worked at FEMA. </p>
<h2>#2. Community perspective</h2>
<p>One of the signature initiatives of FEMA during the Obama administration was the “whole community” approach, intended to involve the private sector, community groups and individual citizens in disaster preparedness. The <a href="https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1813-25045-0649/whole_community_dec2011__2_.pdf">whole community approach</a> was intended to harness the assets of civil society, draw attention to disaster resilience and improve coordination. </p>
<p>For example, businesses played a key role in the Harvey response. Individual store owners opened as soon as they could to help distribute what people needed. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inside-story-what-took-keep-texas-grocery-chain-running-chip-cutter">Texas grocer H.E.B.</a> sent convoys to the affected region. The whole community approach is not the only driver of private sector involvement, but it reflects FEMA’s commitment to approaching the private sector and groups of concerned citizens as partners rather than as subordinates in disaster response. </p>
<h2>#3. Cell phones and the web</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-social-media-apps-should-be-in-your-disaster-kit-83743">Social media</a> inspired collaborative, bottom-up responses that we have only begun to understand. During Katrina, social media was a hobby of techie students. Facebook was not yet available beyond universities. Today, government agencies and rural Texans and Floridians use social media. People found out which shelters were open and who needed help during the storm through texts and tweets. Social media also drives the government’s response because government responds to what’s on CNN. Imagine if pictures of the <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/203207/five-days-at-memorial-by-sheri-fink/9780307718976/">dangerous conditions at Memorial Hospital</a>, hidden from news cameras during Katrina, had been circulated on the internet and broadcast on television. Lives might have been saved. </p>
<h2>#4. Going beyond rebuilding</h2>
<p>After Katrina, resilience replaced sustainability as the organizing concept in disaster management. Government agencies and private foundations used the term as a rallying cry to focus efforts on how to prepare for inevitable disasters rather than just avoid them. The <a href="http://www.100resilientcities.org/">Rockefeller Foundation</a> even funded resilience officers in local government beginning in 2013.</p>
<p>At its best, <a href="http://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/823/823">resilience</a> refers to the idea that communities can do more than just rebuild. They can invest in levees, canals, wetlands and insurance to adapt to a changing normal. </p>
<p>At its worst, resilience is an empty term that gives the impression that cities can bounce back if only they try hard enough. In truth, low-lying regions will have to decide to limit construction and inform people about true risks – both difficult in the face of a worldwide trend toward <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/urban-sustainability-laboratory">urbanization</a> and pressures to develop land and make money in the short term. </p>
<h2>#5. Early movers</h2>
<p>After Katrina, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/3721">Congress gave FEMA greater authority</a> to move resources to a disaster zone before a storm rather than wait for formal requests from governors after the event. Before Harvey, truckloads of food, water and tents were positioned outside of the flood zone, waiting for rains to subside so they could be sent to the recovery zone. <a href="https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2017/aug/27/fema-arranges-aid-texas-louisiana/">Supplies from FEMA</a> and the Department of Defense arrived within hours, not days, after the rains ended. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/opinion/sunday/houston-texas-harvey-government.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0">FEMA’s pop-up hospital drew praise</a>. </p>
<h2>5 things that are the same</h2>
<p>Despite the lessons learned, some things have not changed. </p>
<h2>#1. Agency misfit</h2>
<p>FEMA is still a part of the Department of Homeland Security – an agency that has other priorities. The department was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disasters-American-State-Politicians-Bureaucrats/dp/1316631206">focused on terrorism during Katrina</a>, and now its chief policy priorities are immigration and borders. </p>
<h2>#2. Still not the cavalry</h2>
<p>Neighbors, city and county governments, and then the state are the first responders, not the federal government. Even at the federal level, FEMA primarily coordinates responses led by other agencies like defense, housing and agriculture. Meanwhile, businesses, nonprofits and even <a href="https://theconversation.com/cajun-navy-rescuers-in-hurricane-harvey-show-vital-role-of-volunteer-boats-83200">individuals with bass boats</a> mounted their own response. </p>
<h2>#3. Limited powers</h2>
<p>Decisions about land use, zoning and development are made at the state and local level, not by FEMA. <a href="http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29NH.1527-6996.0000222">State and local emergency managers</a> have very little pull over development, and changing the building stock to strengthen 100-year-old homes or make wise investments in new ones requires a larger effort.</p>
<h2>#4. Inequality matters</h2>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002/full">Socioeconomic status and vulnerability</a> still shape response. People with money are able to evacuate themselves, or return home and rebuild more quickly. People without financial resources, jobs or social connections <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/09/08/549295524/poor-in-miami-hoping-to-ride-out-irma-on-bread-and-cans-of-tuna?sc=tw">face greater obstacles</a> to returning to a normal life, and they need help. </p>
<h2>#5. Timing matters</h2>
<p>The best time to prepare for the next disaster is immediately after the current one. Now is the time to communicate true flood risks through <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/09/here_s_why_fema_s_flood_maps_are_so_terrible.html">flood mapping</a>, strengthen <a href="https://www.fema.gov/building-codes-toolkit">building and zoning guidance</a>, organize <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1022917721797?LI=true">community planning</a> efforts to know what to do when the worst happens, and build new infrastructure to <a href="https://www.projectbrays.org/about-project-brays/">send water out</a> of vulnerable areas. FEMA can be a partner in these efforts, but it requires leadership from politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government. Until then, people will settle in risky places without reducing their vulnerability to storms, making the next disaster even more likely than the last. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story has been updated. An earlier version misstated that Michael Brown and Joe Allbaugh were roommates in college. Also, a typo has been corrected. Hurricane Katrina caused over $100 billion in damages, not $100 million.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Roberts has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. </span></em></p>Is the Federal Emergency Management Agency ready for the new era of disasters?Patrick Roberts, Associate Professor, Virginia TechLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656212016-10-06T14:55:35Z2016-10-06T14:55:35ZClinton and Trump need to address police violence in debate<p>On Oct. 9, 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will come together for the <a href="http://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2016-debate-schedule/2016-presidential-debate-schedule/">second presidential debate</a> – taking the stage only eight miles from Ferguson, Missouri. </p>
<p>Since the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0">police shooting of Michael Brown</a> in Ferguson on Aug. 9, 2014, the greater St. Louis area has been the epicenter of a national discussion – sometimes loud, often heated – about police violence. </p>
<p>This presidential debate should take up that discussion about race and policing – not only because of the significance of the location but also because of the timing. The town hall style debate comes after weeks of unrest in cities across the country, following the police shootings of <a href="http://www.essence.com/2016/09/19/medical-examiner-tyre-king-shooting">Tyree King</a> in Columbus, Ohio, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/us/video-released-in-terence-crutchers-killing-by-tulsa-police.html">Terence Crutcher</a> in Tulsa, Oklahoma, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/us/keith-lamont-scott/">Keith Lamont Scott</a> in Charlotte, North Carolina and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3810837/Unarmed-black-man-acting-erratically-shot-police-San-Diego-suburb-amid-claims-cops-confiscated-witnesses-cell-phones.html">Alfred Olango</a> in El Cajon, California. </p>
<p>These incidents have once again brought to the surface the systemic problem of police violence in black communities. Today, black teens are <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/14/12472896/milwaukee-wisconsin-riots-police-shooting">21 times</a> more likely to be shot and killed by the police than their white counterparts. As several historians have recently acknowledged, black Americans die at the hands of police at a rate that is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/25/mike-brown-shooting-jim-crow-lynchings-in-common">almost equivalent</a> to the number of documented lynchings during the early 20th century.</p>
<p>This issue has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/09/the-bahamas-travel-advisory-for-the-u-s-use-extreme-caution-around-the-police/">received international attention</a>. A recent report by one U.N. Working Group of Experts <a href="http://www.ushrnetwork.org/our-work/project/un-working-group-experts-people-african-descent-visit">stated</a>, “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.” This year alone, almost 200 black people have been killed by police – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database">a figure</a> that represents only documented and reported incidents.</p>
<p>These staggering statistics underscore the urgent need for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to move beyond symbolic gestures and instead clearly articulate how they intend to address this issue if elected president of the United States. </p>
<p>But what can be done by the next president? This is a question that concerns us as black millennials and as historians <a href="http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/index/charleston_syllabus">who write</a> about <a href="http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568584638">American racism</a>.</p>
<h2>A blueprint for action</h2>
<p>“A Vision for Black Lives,” the comprehensive <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/platform">list of demands</a> released by the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), provides one blueprint for how the next U.S. president can address the issue of race and policing. The M4BL is a coalition of <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/about/">more than 50 organizations</a> across the country, mostly led by black millennials who support Black Lives Matter (BLM).</p>
<p>Originally released on Aug. 1, 2016, “A Vision for Black Lives,” includes six policy demands that <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/tag/m4bl/">seek to bring an end to anti-black racism and state-sanctioned violence</a> in black communities. The activists call for “<a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/end-war-on-black-people/">an end to the war on black people</a>,” arguing that black youth have been criminalized and dehumanized in all areas of society. </p>
<p>They also demand “<a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/reparations/">reparations for past and continuing harms</a>” and “<a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/invest-divest/">investments in the education, health and safety of Black people</a>.” Reflecting the influence of <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/joseph-the-radical-democracy-of-the-movement-for-black-lives/">black power and black nationalist movements</a> of the 20th century, M4BL activists emphasize the need for <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/economic-justice/">economic justice</a>, <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/community-control/">community control</a> and <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/political-power/">black political power</a>. </p>
<p>“In recent years,” the <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/platform">platform</a> notes, “we have taken to the streets, launched massive campaigns, and impacted elections, but our elected leaders have failed to address the legitimate demands of our Movement. We can no longer wait.”</p>
<p>Yet, we have all been forced to wait as public officials continue to ignore these demands. Two months have passed since the release of “A Vision for Black Lives” and neither Trump nor Clinton have directly or concretely offered a response. </p>
<p>Regardless of one’s point of view, there is no denying that the next U.S. president must have a plan to address race and policing in a more tangible and extended fashion than in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/21/politics/police-shootings-politics-trump-clinton/">the first debate</a>. No doubt many Americans – including <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/about/">thousands of activists</a> who support the <a href="https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/">M4BL platform</a> – will be expecting both candidates to confront this critical issue.</p>
<p>Trump continues an <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trump-black-supporters/502502/">uphill battle to attract black voters</a>, with as few as 6 percent currently supporting him. Clinton is still struggling to gain the support of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/us/politics/young-blacks-voice-skepticism-on-hillary-clinton-worrying-democrats.html?_r=0">black and non-black</a> millennials – a voting bloc she will need to win this election.</p>
<p>Trump’s emphasis on “law and order” policies like a nationwide <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/fighting-stop-and-frisk-policing-from-rockefeller-to-trump/">stop-and-frisk campaign</a> and his dismissal of the BLM movement all suggest he is uninterested in proposing sweeping policy changes to stem police violence. But, he is not alone. <a href="https://mic.com/articles/148107/hillary-clinton-supports-black-lives-matter-in-wake-of-police-shootings#.f4hpONBjp">Hillary Clinton has publicly supported BLM</a> but ignored the movement’s recently released platform – even after scolding the activists last summer for <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/analysis-clintons-approach-black-lives-matter-activists-n413151">not having</a> “a plan” she could advance.</p>
<p>Both candidates have an opportunity in the upcoming debate to lay out a clear plan and vision for ending the unjust police killings of black people in the United States. While presidential debate topics are vast and the challenges facing the nation are many, the issue of police violence is one of the most critical domestic challenges of our time. It should not be ignored during the next debate – in St. Louis, of all places.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Will the candidates acknowledge the Black Lives Matter platform during the debate in St. Louis? Millennial voters will be listening.Keisha N. Blain, Assistant Professor of History, University of IowaIbram X. Kendi, Assistant Professor of African American History, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657632016-09-22T11:30:25Z2016-09-22T11:30:25ZThe trauma caused by violent protests can be acute, but is largely ignored<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138498/original/image-20160920-12481-1du68k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Public protests are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-rising-protests-in-south-africa-say-about-attitudes-towards-local-government-61109">regular feature</a> in many countries. People routinely take to their cities’ streets to make demands. Some protests turn violent. Physical injuries are common. But what about the less obvious, unintended emotional consequences? Professor of psychiatry Christopher P Szabo explains the trauma that protesters – and even onlookers – can experience.</em> </p>
<p><strong>What does research tell us about the links between protests and trauma?</strong></p>
<p>There is not a significant amount of empirical research data that shows the link between violent protest and emotional trauma. But <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jts.22105/full">recent research</a> looking at the protests in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30193354">Ferguson, Missouri in the US</a>, where demonstrators took to the streets after the state failed to charge a white police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, showed that exposure to violence during the protests resulted in high levels of distress. </p>
<p>The study involved both the community and police officers and wanted to examine how the proximity to community violence would have an impact on mental health, specifically post traumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms as well as anger. While it seems that community members reported more symptoms than police officers, the overall finding was that exposure to such violence led to high levels of distress among those directly exposed.</p>
<p>The research suggested that mental health interventions might be necessary for some members of the community who were directly exposed to the violence that ensued.</p>
<p><strong>What are the risks – beyond the physical – for people who are directly involved in protest actions that turn violent? What sort of trauma might they experience?</strong></p>
<p>It is possible that people who are involved or directly exposed to violent situations will experience emotional upset. In more vulnerable people, such as those who have a more anxious disposition, this might lead to them developing features of an acute stress disorder.</p>
<p><a href="http://psychcentral.com/disorders/acute-stress-disorder-symptoms/">Acute Stress Disorder</a> could arise in response to exposure to a traumatic event such as threatened or actual violence. Typically, the person feels anxious and relives the event through involuntary memories, dreams or flashbacks which are experienced as intrusive and distressing. They may occur in response to reminders of the event. Symptoms would appear after exposure and, if a diagnosis is made, would need to have existed for at least three days but not lasted for more than a month.</p>
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<p><strong>Can people who are not directly involved in these protests suffer trauma - through, say, watching protests unfold or hearing their friends’ stories?</strong></p>
<p>People who are not directly exposed to a trauma can still experience “vicarious” traumatisation. This has been described in a range of situations, such as among college students in the wake of the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14975780">September 11 attacks in New York</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, children who watched the <a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.10.1536">Challenger space shuttle explode</a> in 1986 also experienced this vicarious traumatisation. </p>
<p>It appears that geographical proximity without being directly exposed can influence someone’s emotional state. In addition, connectedness to the site of an event as well as the extent of media exposure might also have an influence. </p>
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<p><strong>How does trauma manifest itself? What signs should people be looking out for in themselves and others?</strong></p>
<p>It could manifest as anxiety along with sleep and concentration problems. It could also affect the person’s daily functions. And they may, for example, avoid the place where the incident happened.</p>
<p><strong>What should they do to deal with trauma?</strong></p>
<p>When someone starts to experience these feelings, it is important to share these changes with someone they trust. They should also be open to the possibility of counselling if the changes persist. They should also realise that being unsettled may be a perfectly normal response. The extent to which there is persistence and impact on the way that they function would influence the need to potentially seek professional assistance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher P. Szabo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People risk being physically harmed during violent protests. But there is also an emotional element at play.Christopher P. Szabo, Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatry, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636262016-08-24T02:06:24Z2016-08-24T02:06:24ZWho dies in police custody? Texas, California offer new tools to find out<p>How many people die in our criminal justice system each year? </p>
<p>It turns out it is hard to tell, and it depends who you ask.</p>
<p>Following the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and many others at the hands of the police, this lack of information has emerged as one of the most pressing issues in criminal justice reform. Reading media reports of these deaths would lead one to suspect that dying in police custody is a widespread problem. But hard data have been hard to come by. That’s why I believe new initiatives in Texas and California could be game changers, and deserve to be replicated in other states.</p>
<p>The federal government has acknowledged that federal data initiatives, which rely on law enforcement self-reporting, have failed to provide accurate information. In 2015, the Bureau of Justice Statistics <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/acardp.pdf">found</a> that data collection under the Arrest-Related Deaths program, which was in place for most of the 2000s, identified only about half of the expected number of homicides by law enforcement officers. </p>
<p>The most comprehensive information has come from watchdog groups and media sites like <a href="http://www.fatalencounters.org/">Fatal Encounters</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database">The Counted</a> which track deaths in police encounters through open-source data mining of news accounts. But these websites are also incomplete. Fatal Encounters estimates it has tracked 62 percent of deaths since 2000. The Counted only began its tally in 2015. Further, watchdog sites cannot alone restore the trust in government institutions that has been lost in police shootings and lack of accountability.</p>
<p>Reliable information on deaths that occur during arrests and while in jail and prison is important. Such data allow us to identify problems in the criminal justice system and come up with solutions based on evidence. It also provides greater transparency and accountability, and ultimately can help gain communities’ trust. </p>
<p>In response to its own findings in 2015 and the national upheaval around homicides by law enforcement, BJS this month <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/08/04/2016-18484/agency-information-collection-activities-proposed-collection-comments-requested-new-collection">announced</a> an improved nationwide data collection plan. The plan recognizes that “accurate and comprehensive accounting of deaths that occur during the process of arrest is critical for [law enforcement agencies] to demonstrate responsiveness to the citizens and communities they serve, transparency related to law enforcement tactics and approaches, and accountability for the actions of officers.” </p>
<h2>State involvement is key</h2>
<p>The improved data collection will provide better nationwide statistics. But states also have an important role in collecting and disseminating data. </p>
<p>State agencies and local law enforcement are more likely to respond to state directives and initiatives than to additional federal oversight. And programs to build public trust in local law enforcement and state agencies must come from within those institutions.</p>
<p>Two states are leaders in arrest-related and custodial death reporting – Texas and California. These two states have the nation’s largest incarcerated populations. Combined, they have more than 425,000 people locked up in prisons and jails. Each state has been collecting state custodial death data for decades. Under California and Texas law, law enforcement, jails and prisons must report to their state attorney general when a person dies in custody. </p>
<p>But just because the data existed didn’t mean they were publicly accessible – until recently. Last year, California’s attorney general debuted <a href="https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">Open Justice</a>. And this summer, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, I launched the <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/">Texas Justice Initiative</a>. Both websites publish state custodial death data since 2005.</p>
<h2>The Texas Justice Initiative</h2>
<p>I created the Texas Justice Initiative after a friend sent me a spreadsheet with thousands of entries and more than 100 columns, a collection of more than 10 years of custodial death data assembled by the attorney general. This data set was virtually unknown to people except for a handful of journalists and advocates. I was surprised the information was technically publicly available, but not accessible in a meaningful way. Thus, I began to create a public, online interactive database of these deaths.</p>
<p>Users visiting our website can download the data and toggle through demographic data, cause of death and year options. We also included incident-level information, such as the name of the deceased and the official narrative provided in the official report. </p>
<p>Our project revealed stunning figures. <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">Nearly 7,000</a> people died in police, jail and prison custody in 2005 to 2015. <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">More than 1,900</a> of them were not convicted of a crime, many of whom were being held in jail pretrial. And black people were disproportionately represented, <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">comprising 30 percent</a> of the custodial deaths, but only around 12 percent of the Texas population. </p>
<h2>California’s Open Justice</h2>
<p>The California attorney general described Open Justice as “a tool that embraces transparency and data in the criminal justice system to strengthen public trust, enhance government accountability, and inform public policy.” In addition to custodial death information, Open Justice provides criminal justice statistics such as crime rates and arrest rates. </p>
<p>The Open Justice numbers are also jarring. <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">An average of 684</a> people in California die each year in police encounters and jail and prison custody. <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">Thirty-four percent</a> of the people who died were not convicted of a crime. Black people are six percent of California’s population, <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">but represented 24 percent of deaths</a>. </p>
<p>Since we launched the Texas Justice Initiative, I’ve received responses from people across the nation calling for other states to provide similar information publicly. I’ve also received emails from people seeking to correct information about people they knew who are in the database. </p>
<p>The Texas and California collections and publications are not perfect, but together they provide a guide for other states to improve arrest-related and custodial death data collection. As other states follow Texas’ and California’s lead, they should publish the data in ways that allow for public engagement, greater transparency and data verification. </p>
<p>Better data – which means broad, detailed and accurate information – are vital to realizing the changes our institutions so desperately need. With more accurate numbers and information on custodial deaths, we can begin to identify who is dying in police custody and why, and also address the jail and prison conditions that contribute to high mortality, such as access to health care and the incarceration of people with mental health issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Woog receives funding from the France-Merrick Foundation. </span></em></p>No federal database provides reliable info on deaths that occur in police custody. It’s the same situation in 48 states. But now California and Texas are offering new models of accountability.Amanda Woog, Postdoctoral Fellow at Institute of Urban Policy Research and Analysis, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636292016-08-09T00:22:12Z2016-08-09T00:22:12ZRemembering Michael Brown: Why black youth are branded as criminals<p>Two years ago, on Aug. 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American teenager, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Two years have passed since the recent high school graduate was denied the opportunity to begin his next stage of life: <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/michael-brown-remembered-as-a-gentle-giant/article_cbafa12e-7305-5fd7-8e0e-3139f472d130.html">college</a>.</p>
<p>Brown was often described as a “<a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/michael-brown-remembered-as-a-gentle-giant/article_cbafa12e-7305-5fd7-8e0e-3139f472d130.html">gentle giant</a>.” His leisure activities were hardly different from most in his age group – hanging out with friends, listening to music and playing video games. The night before he was shot, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/us/michael-brown-spent-last-weeks-grappling-with-lifes-mysteries.html?_r=1">posted</a> to Facebook, “Everything happen for a reason.” Certainly, Michael Brown did not foresee what was going to happen the next day. But for too many black and brown youths, run-ins with law enforcement are too familiar and, coincidentally, predictable.</p>
<p>As a scholar of African-American history specializing in youth, race and crime, I find today’s issues of youth criminality inextricably linked to their racial past.</p>
<p>In those two years since Michael Brown, we have been regularly reminded that youth is a privilege granted to some and denied to others. </p>
<h2>Guilty perceptions of black youth</h2>
<p>According to a new <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8e15d538bf384e5ab0ba11d9aa54ff10/poll-police-harassment-familiar-young-blacks-hispanics">poll</a> conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, two-thirds of young African-Americans, and four in 10 Hispanics, admit to having personally experienced or knowing someone who experienced harassment or violence at the hands of the police.</p>
<p>In the two years since Michael Brown was killed, according to Washington Post data on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/policeshootings/">police shootings</a>, the police have shot and killed 27 persons under 18 – a majority of whom were black or brown. For young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 – a bracket in which it becomes more difficult to discern age by <a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdf">appearance</a> – the numbers increase exponentially to 296.</p>
<p>To be sure, police encounters make up only a part of the fundamental issues youths of color face in today’s justice system. The criminalization of black youths, or the process in which various <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/criminalizing-kids-the-overlooked-reason-for-failing-schools">social institutions criminalize</a> black youth, is expansive and denies many the right to be young.</p>
<p>This not only denies black youths the right to a fair justice system but also, as was the case in Michael Brown, often denies them the right to face a judge and jury.</p>
<p>Months before Ferguson, a group of psychologists conducted a <a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdf">study</a> that determined “black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent.” Indeed, for children of color, their denial of youth is inextricably linked to their denial of innocence — a denial that has deep societal and historical roots.</p>
<h2>Revisiting the “child-saving” movement</h2>
<p>The split-second decisions police officers make about the young men they confront are caught up in tacit ideas about adolescence that go back <a href="http://newpol.org/content/historicizing-ferguson">centuries</a>. As modern ideas about race and criminality were taking shape, especially in the late 19th century, a movement to keep youth separate and protected emerged.</p>
<p>Historians of the “child-saving” movement identify this period as crucial to understanding contemporary institutions of juvenile control. “Heavily influenced by middle-class women who extended their housewifely roles into public service,” writes historian Tony Platt, these <a href="http://www.umass.edu/legal/Benavides/Fall2005/397G/Readings%20Legal%20397%20G/3%20Anthony%20Platt.pdf">reformers</a> devised a separate criminal justice system to protect youth under the age of 18 from adult culpability. The Progressive era reformers who led this “child-saving movement,” from the 1890s through the 1920s, believed that with the proper intervention, young people could be disciplined without the scarring force of a prison sentence. Or, perhaps more importantly, without the stigma of being labeled a criminal.</p>
<p>Reformers used the color-blind language of age, but it quickly became apparent that the system they developed emphatically benefited white <a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Child-Savers,51.aspx">youths</a>. Black youths, on the other hand, were refused the right to adolescence, innocence and second chances. Separate but equal prevailed in theory; in practice, the juvenile “justice” system gave in to broader social notions about race and crime.</p>
<p>For white youths, especially white immigrant youths in the Progressive era, the separate juvenile system represented a step toward Americanization. Many reformers, such as Jane Addams, hoped a separate system to rehabilitate youths who turned to crime would curb societal concerns posed by the influx of European <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/addams/hullhouse/hullhouse.html">immigrants</a>. </p>
<p>Black youths – whether guilty or innocent – were branded “criminal” and almost guaranteed a life tethered to the justice system. In Chicago, for example, in 1903 there were 56 cases of black delinquency presented before a judge; in 1930, there were 657 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2292158?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">cases</a>. This kind of overrepresentation became the juvenile court’s most troubling problem by the 1930s.</p>
<p>States’ authority to separate youths from adults was reaffirmed by the federal government with the passing of the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act of 1938. The law <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/5032">laid out</a> when a transfer from the juvenile system into the adult system was in the interest of justice and took its direction from juvenile designations created at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>These labels included, but were not limited to, “the age and social background of the juvenile,” “the availability of programs designed to treat the juvenile’s behavioral problems” and “the juvenile’s present intellectual development and psychological maturity.” The open-endedness of these characterizations combined with the complete judicial authority allowed mostly white judges to shield many white youths from adult culpability. Black youths, on the other hand, were hastily demarcated as adults and bore the brunt of the punitive <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo3752802.html">shift</a> to the “Jim Crow juvenile justice system.”</p>
<h2>The right to remember</h2>
<p>The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins.</p>
<p>Certainly, a separate justice system must be in place to protect all youths from adult accountability for misdeeds that can be attributed to adolescence. But as it stands, the juvenile justice system mirrors societal prejudices toward black youths and, too often, regards them as mature beyond their years and guilty until proven otherwise.</p>
<p>North Carolina and New York, for example, have no legal authority to treat 16- and 17-year-olds as juveniles. These youths are housed in local jails with adult populations while awaiting trial and, if convicted, do their time in the adult criminal justice system. Young men of color, according to New York City’s “<a href="https://www.ny.gov/programs/raise-age-criminal-justice-reform">Raise the Age</a>” campaign, make up roughly 82 percent of youth sentences committed to adult confinement — nearly all of whom are accused or convicted of nonviolent offenses. </p>
<p>I believe President Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-why-we-must-rethink-solitary-confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html">order</a> to ban solitary confinement of juveniles in federal prisons was a step in the right direction. Be that as it may, it will take the efforts of both the federal and state governments to make amends.</p>
<p>It’s been two years since Michael Brown.</p>
<p>Two years since the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ferguson-wasnt-black-rage-against-copsit-was-white-rage-against-progress/2014/08/29/3055e3f4-2d75-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html">white rage</a>” in Ferguson was made visible after the kindling of the flame had been ignored for so long. Two years since a youth whose unsurpassed potential was denied to the world by a trained professional whose number one responsibility is to protect the general public. And as calls for police reform and training continue to emerge as the first-line response from politicians, I suspect the problem will remain.</p>
<p>It runs too deep. History cannot be unlearned with training. But history can be revisited. And it can help you remember. I remember Michael Brown; I remember a youth deferred.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Suddler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Do Americans view all youth as equally ‘innocent’? A historian takes us back to the movement that led to unequal treatment of black and white youth in the justice system.Carl Suddler, Visiting Assistant Professor of Black American Studies, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/546252016-02-17T10:46:12Z2016-02-17T10:46:12ZChicago police shooting data may reveal new ways to reduce deaths and racial disparity<p>The Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently investigating the Chicago Police Department. </p>
<p>The high-profile police shooting of teen <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/chicago-police-indictment/417531/">Laquan McDonald</a> – combined with the city’s efforts to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/us/laquan-mcdonald-witness-cover-up-allegations/">prevent the public</a> from learning about it – prompted the investigation. </p>
<p>Given that the Justice Department is playing hardball with Ferguson, Missouri – <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/10/466329269/justice-department-sues-ferguson-after-city-amends-police-reform-deal">suing the city</a> following its refusal to voluntarily enter into an agreement to reform its police department and courts – advocates in Chicago may also expect something important to change as a result of DOJ involvement. </p>
<p>In a recent paper, I analyzed <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724">259 Chicago police shootings that occurred between 2006 and 2014</a>. These are all of the incidents for which Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority had made a completed report of investigation <a href="http://www.iprachicago.org/resources.html">publicly available</a> as of last month. </p>
<p>My analysis of these incidents suggests that police reform in Chicago, like that <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf">in Ferguson</a>, must include a critical examination of the enforcement tactics that police departments use in poor, minority communities. </p>
<p>Better discipline and training are part of the solution, but they are unlikely to make dramatic difference by themselves. To create meaningful change, we must look beyond officer shooters in high-profile cases like that of McDonald and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0">Michael Brown</a>. </p>
<p>We shouldn’t just ask how officers might best manage suspects during an encounter, but why certain police-civilian encounters occur at all. </p>
<h2>Police shootings in Chicago</h2>
<p>There is no such thing as a “typical” police shooting, but many share common features. For example, in nearly <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724">50 percent</a> of the 259 incidents I reviewed, police officers shot during or immediately following a foot chase. </p>
<p>In my view, not all of these chases were necessary. We expect officers to chase and subdue a murder suspect <a href="http://www.iprachicago.org/L1057905U12-38.pdf">who fires shots at officers</a> as was described in one of the reports I read. But we ought to feel differently when officers chase and shoot a young black man whose only offense was <a href="http://www.iprachicago.org/L1033980U10-09.pdf">“looking in the officers’ direction”</a> or <a href="http://www.iprachicago.org/L1063293U13-26.pdf">“grabbing his…waistband and turning away.”</a></p>
<p>Egregious high-profile shootings like McDonald’s too quickly lead us to the conclusion that the problem is “bad apples” – cops who use their badges as cover for racist aggression. </p>
<p>The implication is that there are relatively few “bad apples” as compared to “good cops.” And that those “good cops,” with the right training, will only shoot when necessary.</p>
<h2>Discipline and training are not enough</h2>
<p>In reality, it is hard to know how many bad apples there are in any given department because neither <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/leaked-police-files-contain-guarantees-disciplinary-records-will-be-kept-secret">police departments nor unions</a> are keen on divulging that information. </p>
<p>This is just one of many obstacles to punishing police officers for misconduct. The public was rightly frustrated, for example, when it emerged that Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot Laquan McDonald, had a long history of civilian complaints for excessive force and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/us/laquan-mcdonald-shooting-chicago.html?_r=0">racist slurs</a>. Had Van Dyke been appropriately disciplined for any of his earlier brutality and racism, perhaps McDonald would be alive today.</p>
<p>But in a city like Chicago where there are tens of police shootings every year, it is hard to argue that every cop involved with a shooting is a “bad apple.”</p>
<p>My review of the available cases reveals that it’s not just racist cops who shoot. In the shootings <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=2700724">I examined</a>, the demographic profile of officer-shooters looks much like the demographic profile of the department as a whole. Police shootings cannot be reduced to a simple story about white-on-black racism because many of the police officers doing the shooting are black.</p>
<p>Most police shootings in Chicago are unlike the Laquan McDonald case in that officers typically claim a firearm threat prompted them to shoot. In nearly 80 percent of the 259 reviewed cases, the individual who was shot had access to a gun. This does not mean that these shootings were unavoidable, but it does suggest that many were probably not as clearly unnecessary as McDonald’s.</p>
<p>So, what if anything can be done about “good apples” who shoot? </p>
<p>Better training, many say. There can be little argument that better training is desirable. Some police shootings in Chicago have occurred because officers were physically dragged along after having reached into running vehicles. Some involved officers firing from moving vehicles, or at moving vehicles. Such practices are unnecessarily dangerous and could be readily avoided if officers were better trained to avoid them.</p>
<p>And of course, there is “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-force-police-warily-learn-to-de-escalate.html">deescalation</a>,” a buzz word in public discussion of police reform. Deescalation techniques are supposed to help officers defuse or withdraw from potentially violent incidents without jeopardizing anyone’s safety. There is nothing wrong with providing officers with more of this training. But, the emphasis on individual officer training is shortsighted.</p>
<p>Both discipline and training focus on how individual officers manage critical incidents. That overlooks an important question. How is it that an officer finds himself squared off with a potentially armed individual? To answer that requires thinking critically about departmental choices in particular neighborhoods, not just individual officers’ choices in particular cases.</p>
<h2>It’s where you live</h2>
<p>The likelihood of getting shot by the police is much higher in some Chicago neighborhoods than in others. Of the 259 police shootings that the IPRA has released information about, nearly 90 percent occurred in <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724">minority neighborhoods</a>. That goes a long way in explaining why 80 percent of police shooting victims were black in a city that is only one-third black.</p>
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<p>The police department and others might point out that the likelihood of getting shot by anyone is much higher in poor black neighborhoods than, say, middle-class white ones. Incidences of violent crime tend to be much higher in poor, minority neighborhoods. That would seem to explain why police shootings are also higher in those neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Not so fast. The connection between neighborhood violence and police shootings would make sense if shooting victims consisted exclusively of persons who were suspected of violent crime.</p>
<p>But in nearly a quarter of the 259 IPRA incidents, it was the police who <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724">stirred the pot</a>. These police-civilian encounters began as traffic stops for minor violations, because someone made a “furtive movement,” or just looked suspicious. Many of these stops were likely of the “stop and frisk” variety that have been controversial in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html">New York City</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/us/chicago-stop-and-frisk-to-be-monitored.html">Chicago</a>, and <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2013/04/stop_and_frisk_beyond_new_york_city.html">other cities</a>. The shootings that occur in the course of these kinds of encounters follow a general pattern. One of the stopped civilians flees and the police give chase. During or immediately after the chase, officers shoot in response to a perceived gun threat.</p>
<p>Even if one believes the officers’ version of an encounter’s final moments when a suspect’s threatening behavior prompted the police to shoot, we should ask whether the initial stop should have occurred at all. And, even if the answer to that question is “yes,” we should ask whether a foot chase was justified, given the harmlessness of the misconduct that precipitated the initial stop.</p>
<p>My review also revealed that plainclothes officers were responsible <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2700724">for nearly 40 percent of on-duty shootings</a>. There is evidence from other departments that such officers are, per capita, responsible for <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/RAND_FirearmEvaluation.pdf">more shootings</a> than uniformed officers. This may be because more aggressive officers are drawn to such assignments. It also seems possible that people have a hard time distinguishing these officers from civilians who mean harm – particularly when plainclothes officers break into an ongoing fight or melee.</p>
<p>Police departments and policymakers must critically examine the relationships between police shootings and stop-and-frisk, plainclothes policing and other enforcement tactics. Doing so will afford more insights into how to improve police-community relations in poor, minority neighborhoods. If this is truly reformers’ goal, more aggressive discipline and better training should be components of the agenda, not the whole of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nirej Sekhon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reform of police departments must include a reexamination of why cops and civilians come in contact so frequently in the first place.Nirej Sekhon, Assistant Professor of Law, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/470902015-09-29T05:30:34Z2015-09-29T05:30:34ZA new protest movement: Flexn your message through dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96547/original/image-20150929-30984-6lyrst.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Part protest, part dance party, part autobiography, Flexn tells stories of police brutality and racism in dance. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger, Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/arts/dance/street-dancers-tackle-a-ballet-project-and-the-armory-stage.html">Flexing, or Flex</a>, is a street dance style that originated in Jamaica in the 1990s and grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, East New York. </p>
<p>Performed to dancehall and reggae music, it has since evolved into a protest movement - an avenue for “flexors” to rally against social injustice, police brutality and racism. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GqSoEt3m17c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Considered by <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/06/the-impossible-body">many a form of political expression</a> - part-protest, part-advocacy - flexing gained momentum in the era of unrest following the police killings of two black men in the US: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html">Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-14/new-york-city-to-pay-59-million-to-family-of-eric-garner/6618090">Eric Garner in New York City</a>. </p>
<p>Flex confronts issues of social injustice through the exploration of personal narratives; dancers perform as individuals and groups, articulating their stories of inequality, poverty, violence, death and hopelessness in confronting vignettes. They use dance to tell deeply human stories that often transmute into joyful artistic expression.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96553/original/image-20150929-31008-1ngdqkk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Flexn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger, Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Mistakenly grouped in with hip hop, flexing originates from <a href="https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/meet-ghost-bedstuys-bruk-up-veteran-interview">“Bruk Up”</a> which has been described as a reggae style of popping. Usually danced shirtless and characterised by rhythmic contortionist movements of the arms and body, the dancers create new movement vocabularies on a seemingly daily basis. Laden with intent, flex is a style that enables its performers to “talk” about topics in a language just as potent as spoken word. </p>
<p>More than just a popular trend, flexing is gathering ongoing interest in mainstream culture. The dance documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3YUo1UH7vA">Flex Is Kings</a> premiered back in 2013 at the Tribeca Film Festival and music artist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1xcSrYVbJQ">Chris Brown</a> frequently incorporates flex and battles into his live shows. The highest compliment you can pay a flexor is to call them “dirty” – Flexapedia definition meaning “Not to be messed with; extremely skilled”!</p>
<p>Audiences had the chance to experience the energy and electricity of the dance form during <a href="http://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/whats-on/flexn">FLEXN</a>, which opened at <a href="http://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/">Brisbane Festival</a> last week. Bone-breaking, connecting, get-low, gliding, hat tricks, snapping and pauzin - these are some of the signature moves of “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jul/06/flexing-street-dance-craze-bone-breaking">Flexing</a>” that were on show during the performance.</p>
<p>The show’s comprehensive program introduces the uninitiated not only to a <a href="http://www.armoryonpark.org/programs_events/detail/flexn">Flexapedia of terminology</a>, but to the detailed life stories of each of the dancers. </p>
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<p>These narratives form the basis of the 18 episodes or sketches in the show. The audience is guided through gang warfare, domestic violence, incarceration, police barbarity, and the futility of hope when dreams of a better life are lost. </p>
<p>FLEXN is a collaboration between flex pioneer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/16/reggie-gray-flexn-manchester-international-festival-mif">Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray</a>, theatre director <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Sellars">Peter Sellars</a>, and members of the US African-American Flex community.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96555/original/image-20150929-30967-1n9ujlx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Flexn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger, Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Wanting to extend beyond the moves and tricks that are part of flexing’s <a href="http://battlefestleague.com/">battle culture</a>, the creative team took a storytelling approach. Each of the 15 dancers (12 men, 3 women) contribute something of their own history to the collective memory-making.</p>
<p>Initial rehearsals coincided with two key events that FLEXN looked to address in literally a protest “movement”, the deaths of <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-tottenham-to-baltimore-policing-crisis-starts-race-to-the-bottom-for-justice-40914">Eric Garner and Michael Brown</a> – both at the hands of police. </p>
<p>With music that ranged from traditional hip-hop through to Justin Timberlake, dancers interspersed dance moves with a literal miming of the lyrics – an approach that sometimes detracted rather than added to the emotional translation. </p>
<p>The sketches with the most impact, however, saw dancers demonstrating exquisite power, strength, sharpness, control, and a compelling emotional depth and expressiveness.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96556/original/image-20150929-30970-1gtwo70.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Flexn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger, Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.</span></span>
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<p>Central to the performance were demonstrations of the arm-contorting movement called “bonebreaking”; one could interpret this movement as a very literal translation of the saying “having your arms tied behind your back”. </p>
<p>In particular, James Davis, Sam Estavien and Dwight Waugh moved in very individual and distinct ways, yet slipped into beautifully lyrical and flowing movement sequences that belied the fact that many have no formal “dance” training. </p>
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<p>A key distinction about flex is that it focuses upon freestyling – improvising and creating your own moves. The sketch that best showed off these capabilities was Solitary Dances. Each dancer, framed by an invisible prison cell represented by squares of light, performed one-by-one with alternating music that represented their own story and flex style.</p>
<p>Some pieces were longer than others and could have done with some editing, however the overall effect was powerful. Considering that the whole show is made up of freestyling, bar a few small group choreographed sections, it is easier to forgive the flat spots where staging or mimed storylines detracted from the sheer athleticism and artistry of the dancers.</p>
<p>In the US, flex is a dance style closely associated with the street, and transplanting the show to the more staid environs of a proscenium-arched stage detracted from its characteristic immediacy and spontaneity. Regardless, the talent of the dancers themselves still shone through.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gene Moyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Flex, a dance style that originated in Jamaica in the 1990s, has evolved into a protest movement in the US that enables its practitioners to articulate their experiences of racism, police brutality and violence.Gene Moyle, Associate Professor in Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453512015-08-12T10:18:07Z2015-08-12T10:18:07ZWhy historically black colleges and universities matter in today’s America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91485/original/image-20150811-11101-absev2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black colleges and universities exemplify the American ideals of civil rights and equality. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bamakodaker/16704335209/in/photolist-82BswR-7EsE7K-7Ewn1y-7EwxhL-82BsFp-tvsZ1W-aHqDdH-ekUZAR-azaPFH-rs75Tt-fo3syA-fnNmLM-66u27S-66pHYt-66pJHB-66pJkt-66u2xJ-7EsxTK-82EBQs-82EC3E-ekUZi4-ekUZi8-ekUZg2-rGgNbo-nw87ii-nNyKKm-nNjGdB-nNsevU">LloydGallman</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.change.org/p/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin">Trayvon Martin</a>. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop">Michael Brown</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html?_r=0">Eric Garner</a>. <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/9002747/sandra-bland-arrest-video">Sandra Bland</a>. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debbie-hines/renisha-mcbride-black-wom_b_6630968.html">Renisha McBride</a>. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/martese-johnson-university-of-virginia-student-in-bloody-arrest-makes-first-court-appearance/">Martese Johnson</a>. And now <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33856887">Tyrone Harris</a>.</p>
<p>All these names remind us how precarious black lives can be. Martin, Brown and Garner were killed in their own neighborhoods. And that’s not all. Even religious settings seem to offer little protection. As we know, nine black people were murdered while attending services at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. </p>
<p>Through the years, predominantly black spaces such as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have sheltered black people. More than that, they provide an important space for the fight for civil rights, equality, and black liberation. </p>
<p>Despite this connection, many wonder what the role is of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) today. I have been researching HBCUs to understand how education and its pursuit by black Americans represent a constant affront to white supremacy. </p>
<p>Historically, educating the formerly enslaved and their descendants represented a truly radical act. And today, as black Americans choosing to attend these schools know (and confirmed by researchers), these campuses are <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3fries-britt.html">psychologically</a> and <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3outcalt.html">socially more liberating</a> than the predominantly white ones. </p>
<p>This is but one reason we still need HBCUs. Their historic role in the pursuit of freedom is yet another.</p>
<h2>Key role played by black schools</h2>
<p>HBCUs have always been the vehicles for liberty and equality in the journey toward black liberation within America. </p>
<p>Black Americans have long understood the relationship between education and democracy. Following the Civil War, learning the rules of the American and southern political economy was <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=382">necessary</a> to take full advantage of one’s citizenship rights. </p>
<p>However, at the time, not only did most people believe the formerly enslaved had no desire for education, they also thought black Americans did not possess the <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=382">mental capacity to pursue it</a>. </p>
<p>The fervent efforts of the formerly enslaved to establish colleges in the post-bellum South ran counter to these beliefs, although the founding of <a href="http://www.lincoln.edu">Lincoln University</a> in Pennsylvania in 1854, even prior to the Civil War’s conclusion, proved beyond doubt that black Americans were keen to seek education.</p>
<p>The point is, HBCUs played a crucial role in transforming how America was to understand and envision what it meant to be black following the Civil War. And throughout the years, these schools have served as incubators for future generations of freedom fighters. </p>
<p>It was HBCUs, for example, where the carefully crafted educational strategies that birthed the mass protests and civil unrest of the 1950s and 1960s <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5939918.html">emerged</a>, a fact that many people today may fail to appreciate adequately. </p>
<h2>Contributions of black colleges</h2>
<p>HBCUs influenced the character of the black liberation struggle. They trained the leaders and served as key sites of exchange where ideals about the best paths toward freedom took shape. </p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www2.howard.edu/about/history">Howard University</a>, an HBCU founded in 1867, as an example. Without this school, our understanding of equality and access would be quite different. </p>
<p>It was Howard graduates who would use the law to challenge the idea that separate educational facilities could ever produce equal outcomes for black Americans. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Thurgood Marshall trained in a black university environment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagobart/12707881243/in/photolist-kmXdmK-9ayLg-4RoeCR-4RoeSk-6vgUjD-avMUjn-avMUKZ-avMUSH-avQyZ9-avMR6R-avQx13-avMSoK-avMSSt-avMUcB-avMQTk-avMWVz-avQvJN-avQwmN-avMUZ6-avMUrk-avMUEp-avQxvG-avMRHT-avQytm-avQwyf-avMV7t-avQuVJ-8JHbcR-8JLdSh-8JHb28-sDsSPU-8JLdWJ-8JHaQg-8JLdsb-8JHawt-8JHaqz-8JHb6i-8JLe15-8JLdEd-ivaVq5-6vsPN7-89cnjY-4PrBRu-6vsPfm-6voCnv-9axYf-41zpBG-tgY3M8-avMRuF-avQv7o">PROBart Heird</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Charles Hamilton Houston, vice dean of Howard Law School, viewed the school as a laboratory that would <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=7834">“create the select and talented corps of lawyers who would work to fulfill constitutional promises.”</a> </p>
<p>So it did. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241">Thurgood Marshall</a>, the lawyer who would argue the Brown v Board of Topeka case and later became a Supreme Court justice, emerged from this environment. He came up with a brilliantly constructed critique of racially segregated education that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the system. </p>
<h2>Past and present challenges</h2>
<p>Predictably, black schools faced many challenges. From the start, defenders of white supremacy have understood HBCUs as spaces intricately connected to the fight for civil rights and black liberation. </p>
<p>To impede these schools’ ability to become training grounds for equality, political foes did all they could to make sure HBCUs <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6086-in-the-face-of-inequality.aspx">remained underfunded, underresourced and understaffed</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, southern state legislative bodies routinely diverted money away from HBCUs, leaving the schools to operate on <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1004277916909">razor-thin budgets</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1920s, foundations urged the schools <a href="http://upress.missouri.edu/product/Dangerous-Donations,434.aspx">to limit their curriculum</a> to politically neutral yet economically relevant subjects such as domestic service and agriculture, which were not likely to inspire students to challenge a system that denied their humanity. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, some of these challenges continue to this day. </p>
<p>Data from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities indicate, for example, that between 2010 and 2012, the state legislature underfunded South Carolina State University by more than <a href="http://diverseeducation.com/article/69727/">US$6 million</a>. </p>
<h2>Impact of black colleges</h2>
<p>Questioning the contemporary relevance of HBCUs is the modern-day equivalent of such efforts.</p>
<p>It is true that only about <a href="http://hbcu-levers.blogspot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions-faqs-about.html">9%</a> of all blacks enrolled in college attend HBCUs. And I can agree that if we understand the role of HBCUs only in terms of the numbers educated, then these schools are not as relevant to the majority of black Americans as they once were. </p>
<p>However, if we are to understand the role of HBCUs as vehicles of freedom and black liberation, then they still have an important role within our society.</p>
<p>In fact, when compared to predominantly white colleges, HBCUs continue to have a disproportionate impact on the production of college-educated black Americans. They may account for approximately 3% of all colleges and universities, <a href="http://www.uncf.org/sections/MemberColleges/SS_AboutHBCUs/about.hbcu.asp">but well over 20% of black Americans</a> continue to earn their degrees at these schools. </p>
<p>And about 25% of black Americans earning STEM degrees do so at HBCUs. </p>
<h2>Why we need black colleges today</h2>
<p>So, I find it troubling when people question their contemporary necessity. </p>
<p>Also, doubts about these schools’ continued relevance underestimate the relationship between HBCUs and the struggle for black liberation within America that continues to this day.</p>
<p>Students of these schools have been at the forefront of peaceful protests. Learning from past efforts that <a href="http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2980#.VcoprHh7B94">used art as a tool</a> for black liberation, students at Morgan State University created a <a href="http://news.morgan.edu/morgan-students-look-from-the-inside-out-to-show-the-value-of-black-lives/#.VaUteZNViko">large-scale photo installation</a> around the theme of “Black Lives Matter.” </p>
<p>Students from Howard University gathered in front of the White House to protest the <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/11/26/hbcu-students-unite-protest-ferguson-grand-jury-decision/">grand jury decision</a> in the Michael Brown case. Likewise, Morehouse College students staged a march and, in conjunction with students from nearby Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College, also held a peace rally protesting the decision.</p>
<p>The contemporary <a href="http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/RacialWealthGap_1.pdf">economic</a>, <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-rights-act-resource-page">political</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1">social precariousness</a> of black life in America indicates that we need more settings like HBCUs, not fewer. </p>
<p>If we as a society come to recognize that black lives matter, then we must do the same for the venues that cultivate and nurture these lives as well.</p>
<p>In fact, no set of institutions better exemplifies the American ideals of civil rights and equality than historically black colleges and universities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa E Wooten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Historically black colleges account for only 3% of all colleges and universities. But, even today, 20% of black Americans earn their degrees at these schools.Melissa E Wooten, Associate Professor of Sociology, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459302015-08-11T20:32:50Z2015-08-11T20:32:50ZWhy Ferguson erupts<p>Peaceful demonstrations designed to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-accused-of-trading-shots-with-police-in-ferguson-charged/article_1b2ea8e3-2386-565a-8184-c74c1eac8319.html">turned violent</a> on Monday.</p>
<p>With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that conditions there – and in many similar communities across the country – remain ripe for violent encounters between the police and citizens. </p>
<p>Given the fragmented and exploitative structure of governance in St Louis County, we believe the community upheaval and sporadic violence following Michael Brown’s killing are not surprising.</p>
<h2>A few miles from the border</h2>
<p>We are criminologists who have studied crime and social conditions in the St Louis area for several decades. Our university, the University of Missouri - St Louis, is located just a few miles from the Ferguson border. </p>
<p>Ferguson is not a ghetto. It is an established, solidly working-class suburban municipality on the outskirts of St Louis. Ferguson saw significant demographic change during the 1990s, going from a majority white to majority black population. The <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/29/2923986.html">racial makeup</a> of the town has since stabilized at roughly two-thirds black and one-third white.</p>
<p>Ferguson has benefited in recent years from the establishment of large corporate operations on its borders, including the headquarters of Express Scripts and Emerson Electric, which have been <a href="http://www.fergusoncity.com/120/Business-Development">a boon</a> to local businesses. The downtown is not thriving, but it is not dying either. There are specialty shops, a brew pub, a wine bar, and several restaurants. In many ways, Ferguson has more in common with suburban and small-town America than it does with the nation’s disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods. </p>
<h2>Not a ‘risky’ place</h2>
<p>There is some poverty and some crime, though not as much as in the rougher parts of St Louis or even many other <a href="http://ucr.mshp.dps.mo.gov/ucr/ucrhome.nsf/">inner-ring suburbs</a>. </p>
<p>No one can reasonably label Ferguson as being an especially risky or dangerous place. That is part of what made the Michael Brown killing so shocking – it might have happened in any number of American suburban communities. But that also may help to explain why it happened in Ferguson. </p>
<p>It is in places like Ferguson that the chances of a deadly misreading between the police and the citizenry may be most likely to occur, precisely because neither the police nor citizens expect that their encounters will turn take a lethal turn. When a violent encounter does occur, the police may lack the experience or training to defuse it and resort to deadly force.</p>
<p>But why did the Ferguson shooting erupt in violent protest when most other police killings in places like Cincinnati and Staten Island have not? </p>
<h2>Fragmentation and fees</h2>
<p>Part of the answer lies in the peculiar <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2015/04/02-ferguson-fragmentation-fiscal-disparities-katz-kneebone">fragmentation</a> of St Louis County into dozens of small municipalities, most of which have their own police forces and courts. Many of them were created by whites fleeing St Louis after World War II who used racial covenants and zoning ordinances to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/10/st-louis-county-a-year-later/">keep out</a> African Americans. Today, many of these municipalities rely heavily on traffic fines and court <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/28/new-report-details-the-disastrous-municipal-court-system-in-st-louis-county/">fees</a> to stay afloat. </p>
<p>This patchwork of speed traps is a bad joke among more affluent inhabitants of St Louis County. </p>
<p>But it is no joke for those who accumulate traffic fines they cannot afford to pay, miss court dates and are jailed on outstanding arrest warrants. As the Washington Post’s Radley Balko has documented, that is an all-too-frequent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/10/st-louis-county-a-year-later/">experience</a> for the county’s disadvantaged black residents, convinced they are <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf">harassed by the police</a> and abused by uncaring white prosecutors.</p>
<p>During the past year, the Missouri legislature has <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-commission-approves-calls-to-action-prepares-to-finish-work/article_6ec7dc0c-9407-5483-a4a2-0cb7fb322b03.html">capped</a> the portion of municipal budgets that can be derived from traffic fines, and the governor established a commission to recommend other reforms to mend broken police-community relations. </p>
<p>Only time will tell whether such efforts can undo years of political neglect and economic exploitation in St Louis County. We should expect continuing community unrest anywhere that similar conditions are allowed to continue to smolder. That may be Ferguson’s most enduring lesson.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Wright has received funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to study street crime in and around St. Louis.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Rosenfeld has received funding from the National Institute of Justice to study the effect of policing on crime rates in St. Louis.
He served on a committee established by the Ferguson Commission to examine law enforcement practices and police-community relations in Missouri.</span></em></p>Two criminologists long associated with the University of Missouri – St Louis dispel myths about Ferguson, a community that borders the campus, and explain what’s behind the violent protests there.Richard Wright, Chair, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Georgia State UniversityRichard Rosenfeld, Founders Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/458152015-08-10T10:12:43Z2015-08-10T10:12:43ZHow Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter taught us not to look away<p>One year ago, on August 9 2014, then-police officer Darren Wilson shot and <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/calm-returns-to-scene-of-ferguson-shooting/article_04e3885b-4131-5e49-b784-33cd3acbe7f1.html">killed Michael Brown</a> in Ferguson, Missouri. </p>
<p>Wilson estimated during the grand jury hearings that the entire incident lasted <a href="http://www.nicholasmirzoeff.com/2014/one-minute-of-white-supremacy-the-ferguson-transcripts-and-the-murder-of-michael-brown/">“less than a minute”</a> from start to finish. </p>
<p>From that minute has grown a movement, reinforced on a seemingly daily basis by new violence. The people in that movement are determined to keep our attention focused on these killings and the system that has produced them. It is a movement organized around hashtags, not leaders, above all #<a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/">BlackLivesMatter</a>. </p>
<p>It is part of a worldwide transformation I describe in my recent book <a href="http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/how-to-see-the-world/9780141977409/">How to See the World</a>, an exploration of how visual media are making social change. Call it visual activism.</p>
<h2>A global transformation</h2>
<p>Today #BlackLivesMatter is part of an ongoing global transformation. Since 2008, <a href="http://blog.euromonitor.com/2012/02/special-report-the-worlds-youngest-populations-.html">more than half of people</a> worldwide are under 30. The <a href="http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/en/">majority</a> now live in cities for the first time in history. And close to half the world’s population has <a href="http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/">access to the internet</a>. The urban young are using the worldwide web to circulate astonishing numbers of still and moving images. Three hundred hours of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html">YouTube</a> video are uploaded every minute. Shared photographs are uncountable, at least one trillion in <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/number-photos-taken-2014-approach-1-trillion-thanks-013002154.html">2014</a>. </p>
<p>These new conditions are producing a new politics. Eighty-five percent of African Americans aged 18-29 have <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/01/us-smartphone-use-in-2015/">smartphones</a>, several points higher than their white counterparts. The young, often queer, often female, black activist generation that has come into being <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32039-rev-sekou-on-today-s-civil-rights-leaders-i-take-my-orders-from-23-year-old-queer-women">since Ferguson</a> relies on social media to make these protests, and the actions that cause them, visible in new ways.</p>
<h2>The danger of ‘reckless eyeballing’</h2>
<p>“Not looking” was part of slavery and Jim Crow for the enslaved and segregated, respectively. Violating this code became known as “<a href="https://wp.nyu.edu/howtoseetheworld/2015/05/30/auto-draft-46/">reckless eyeballing</a>.” It is still operative in America’s immense prison network that has been called the “<a href="http://newjimcrow.com/">New Jim Crow</a>” for its disproportionate number of African-Americans. Prisoners can be accused of reckless eyeballing just for looking at guards.</p>
<p>On the other side of the color line is what scholars call “the gaze,” a means of asserting power through surveillance, whether actual or implied. Looking back at that gaze was to risk violence, even death. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/">killed</a> for allegedly wolf-whistling at a white woman.</p>
<p>The #BlackLivesMatter movement that began after <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/02/26/trayvon-martin-was-shot-and-killed-three-years-ago-today/">the death of Trayvon Martin</a> in 2012 insists not just that we sneak a sidelong glance, but that we pay full attention to the repeated deaths of African Americans. This looking is not a gaze, because it does not claim power over the victims. Rather, it creates the digital form of what Martin Luther King Jr called “the <a href="http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy#sub4">beloved community</a>.” </p>
<p>The civil rights movement looked above all for <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YRJ1f4g39JQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=television+Civil+Rights+Movement&ots=Hv8ZkLDHGt&sig=XOxzfupdZbvVOHCd1FWdrxcq6OY#v=onepage&q=television%20Civil%20Rights%20Movement&f=false">mainstream media coverage</a>. In 1965, the television broadcast of the events in Selma convinced many of the need for the Voting Rights Act, passed later that year. </p>
<p>Today’s movement is directed at social media, using Twitter, Vines and Instagram as forms of protest and means of information. Police are now claiming that the likelihood of being recorded, the so-called “<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-nationwide-crime-wave-1432938425">Ferguson effect</a>,” is limiting their actions. The body-cam <a href="http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/watch-body-cam-video-released-in-sam-dubose-shooting">video</a> taken during the killing of Sam DuBose in Cincinnati led to a rapid indictment on murder charges because it contradicted the officer’s story.</p>
<h2>Forms of protest</h2>
<p>All #BlackLivesMatter protest memes call attention to time and duration. The chant “Hands up, don’t shoot,” performed with raised hands, repeats a version of what activists believe were Michael Brown’s last words. It freezes time in that crucial moment before he died and defies the imaginary police to shoot.</p>
<p>The second major form of protest adapts the “die-in,” long a staple of environmental, antiwar and AIDS activism. Activists created several means of timing the die-ins. A participant might count out “I can’t breathe” 11 times, as Eric Garner did. Or the die-in might be timed to last four-and-a-half minutes to symbolize the four-and-a-half hours that Michael Brown’s body lay in the street. </p>
<p>Or the intention might be to disrupt the circulation of goods and people on which everyday city life depends. Each time, the protests refuse to go away, refuse to move on and insist on being seen.</p>
<p>In these performances, activists made themselves vulnerable. “Hands up” performs the act of surrender. During a die-in, participants lie on the ground, unable to see, open to any attack or to arrest. But other participants “livestream” the events to the internet for others to watch. </p>
<p>And so police often do not intervene, as if recognizing the moral force of the protests. That situation changed on December 20 2014, when the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/two-police-officers-shot-in-their-patrol-car-in-brooklyn.html?_r=0">murder</a> of two New York City police officers seemed to create a moral equivalency for the police side, reinforced by their dramatic <a href="http://time.com/3652979/deblasio-nypd-funeral/">turning of backs</a> to Mayor Bill de Blasio. The police refused to look – and won.</p>
<p>For many commentators, that victory signaled the failure of #BlackLivesMatter. But as the violence has continued, the social media coverage has been sustained, and changes have come. There was no indictment for the deaths of Michael Brown or Eric Garner, but indictments have come swiftly in the cases of Walter Scott, Freddie Gray and Sam DuBose. </p>
<p>With the outcry over the death of Sandra Bland in Texas, the longstanding need to #SayHerName – meaning to pay as much attention to the deaths of women as men – has been achieved. <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hillary-clinton-addresses-u-s-racism-problem-s-article-1.2301952">In a recent speech</a>, Hillary Clinton adopted the slogan #BlackLivesMatter. </p>
<p>Even the Confederate flag has suddenly lost its legitimacy as a symbol, a visible gain for a visual activist movement. </p>
<p>What happens next? Keep looking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas D. Mirzoeff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A movement grew out of Michael Brown’s death one year ago. The people in #BlackLivesMatter want us to fully witness violence against black youth. Their tools are cell phones and social media.Nicholas D. Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/352372014-12-12T11:32:41Z2014-12-12T11:32:41ZWith identity crisis in police, more Fergusons inevitable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66779/original/image-20141209-32140-6yo2d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Does this look like community policing? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Police_sharpshooter_at_Ferguson_protests.jpg/1024px-Police_sharpshooter_at_Ferguson_protests.jpg">Flikr/Jamelle Bouie </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent social unrest across the country protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York has reopened wounds and revealed deeply rooted tensions between citizens and police, especially in ethnic minority communities. </p>
<p>These incidents of real or perceived police misconduct followed by social unrest and riots are not new. In the 1960s there were the <a href="http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome">Watts Riots</a>. In the early 1990s there were five days of rioting in reaction to the videotaped <a href="http://www.southcentralhistory.com/la-riots.php">Rodney King beating</a>. </p>
<p>An examination of the history of policing shows that this cyclical pattern can be explained by fundamental changes in policing over the past century. </p>
<h2>The first century: the political era of policing</h2>
<p>In fact, the relationship between police and citizens in the US was not always contentious: it was quite the opposite. </p>
<p>Prior to the mid 19th century in cities like New York and Boston, a rag tag group of loosely formed community members, known as “<a href="http://www.nleomf.org/museum/news/newsletters/online-insider/2012/April-2012/early-days-american-law-enforcement-april-2012.html">night watchmen</a>,” patrolled the streets. These men were very different from the police officers we see today. They were men who had other occupations and volunteered their services – often at night. </p>
<p>With no training or weapons, these watchmen’s primary role was to keep the peace. This mandate was perfectly fine with early Americans, who were wary of a standing army. Moreover, since the watchmen were from the community and relied on community members for backup, they ended up simply enforcing community norms regardless of them being legal or illegal.</p>
<p>By the early 20th century, the night watchman model had been replaced by an independent 24-hour organization that looked to prevent crime - not just react to incidents. But the subsequent intertwining of police and politics, such as the (established in 1845) New York Police Department’s association with <a href="http://mcnyblog.org/2013/11/05/power-corruption-and-tammany-hall-sketches-of-lesser-known-new-york-city-mayors-1869-1913/">Tammany Hall</a>, was being criticized for corruption. This ushered in an era of professionalism by police. </p>
<h2>Professionalization and a change in attitude towards civilians</h2>
<p>A handful of police reformers, who included Berkeley Police Chief <a href="http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/police/history/history.html">August Vollmer</a>, the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, and an early President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_H._Sylvester">Richard Sylvester</a>, spearheaded the changes designed to establish standards similar to those in prestigious and respected professions like medicine. </p>
<p>According to these police reformers, the new officer was to be highly trained, uniformed, armed, and most importantly, incorruptible. By design, the new officer was guided by bureaucratic policy and procedures. Instead of relying on community members for backup during the night watchman model, the professional officer, aided by the implementation of patrol vehicles, call boxes, and eventually two-way radios, were to rely on each other during emergencies. Their performance was to be based on crime-control measures, such as the arrest rates found in the FBI’s ubiquitous <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr">Uniform Crime Reports</a> that date from the 1930s.</p>
<p>These structural changes had an immediate impact on how police viewed citizens. To the reactive crime fighter who responded to calls for service from patrol cars, citizens were no longer generally considered friends and neighbors but potential liars and criminals who are often out to get the police in trouble. This perspective was documented in particularly vivid fashion by MIT professor John Van Maanen’s 1978 <a href="http://jthomasniu.org/class/377a/Readings/vanmaanen-1978.pdf">article</a> about the meaning of the “asshole” among police officers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I guess what our job really boils down to is not letting the assholes take over the city. Now I’m not talking about your regular crooks. They’re bound to end up in the joint anyway…What I’m talking about are those shitheads out to prove they can push everybody around…They’re the ones that make it tough on the decent people out there. You take the majority of what we do and it’s nothing more than asshole control.” A veteran patrolman </p>
</blockquote>
<p>An “us versus them” mentality began to develop, where police saw themselves as the moral order that is under constant attack by politicians, criminals, and ungrateful citizens. </p>
<p>Given the ever present potential for danger in their work, police officers drew closer to each other and developed an informal code of conduct that includes the so-called “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/nyregion/new-york-police-officers-face-retaliation-for-reporting-corruption.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">blue wall of silence</a>,” whereby police misconduct is tacitly accepted. It is never acceptable to snitch. For example, when a female <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/gone-viral/os-trooper-sues-police-agencies-harassment-20140213-post.html">Florida State Trooper</a> pulled over and arrested a Miami Police Officer (fully uniformed in a police car) for driving approximately 120 mph (193 kmh), she was harassed and threatened by over 100 other officers around the country. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SW1ZDIXiuS4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The beating Rodney King on primetime TV news.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Manifestations of this group mentality and its attendant cover-ups have been documented and revealed through a number of high-profile cases. The 1991 Rodney King case is perhaps the best example. Official reports and recorded audio recordings implicated the involved officers as covering up for each other. One radio transmission from one officer stated, “Oops…I haven’t beaten anyone this bad in a long time”; an admission not indicated in any initial report (See Christopher Commission Report). </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.parc.info/client_files/special%20reports/1%20-%20chistopher%20commision.pdf">Christopher Commission Report</a> that came in the wake of the case cited the police subculture as a major contributing factor to a pattern of brutality and cover ups and also included racial bias, sexism, and homophobia. An examination of Mobile Display Terminals (MDT) data by the Christopher Commission showed patterns of open racism, such as “Sounds like monkey slapping time” (See Christopher Commission Report). </p>
<h2>The call for community policing</h2>
<p>All these factors are part of the urban African-American experience.They have contributed to deep-rooted mistrust of the police. No surprise then that calls for <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Photocopy/134975NCJRS.pdf">reforming the police</a> have been focused on restoring community-police trust and relations. What’s happened over the past few decades have – ironically – focused on reestablishing some version of the early night watchmen model. </p>
<p>Virtually all police departments today claim that they are implementing some form of community policing, an approach based on community-police partnerships that includes open information sharing, community-directed issues, and other proactive collaborations focused on disorder, fear of crime, and crime prevention. More officers in large departments today are placed on walking and bicycle patrols. According to the <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd07.pdf">Bureau of Justice Statistics</a>, over 95% of departments in large populations utilized some form of walking or bike patrol in 2007. </p>
<p>Look at almost any police recruitment brochure in the past few decades and you will see women and minority officers, a move that better reflects increasingly diverse communities. <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71">In 2007</a> one in eight officers were women compared with 1 in 13 in 1987 and one in four officers were from racial minorities compared to one in six in 1987. Despite these efforts, incidents like the ones in Ferguson and New York remind us that this is not enough. </p>
<h2>A 21st century identity crisis</h2>
<p>Police today have an identity crisis. Despite efforts in community policing and the hiring of a more representative force, the future of policing is one that is based on information gathering. Instead of working with the public to collect and share information, much of the time police are gathering information <em>about</em> the public.</p>
<p>In order to better manage risk and minimize the danger, the police must gather, process, and interpret as much information as possible. One could say that they are like soldiers gathering intelligence about the enemy. </p>
<p>Take this scenario: An officer stops a vehicle based on an automated license plate scanning. Before he or she gets out of his patrol car, the driver’s full history with law enforcement and personal information appears on the car’s computer screen. The officer then approaches the driver based on this information while dash-mounted cameras, body cameras and so on collect more information for future use. </p>
<p>Moreover, police have sought to access information from smartphones and other private data sources. For example, it was recently exposed that <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/10/virginia-police-secretively-stockpiling-private-phone-records/">Virginia Police</a> have been secretly collecting phone data. In contrast, Apple and Google drew criticism from law enforcement around the country when their latest software updates essentially made it technically impossible to extract user data by law enforcement. </p>
<p>Today’s and tomorrow’s officers have advantages over suspects with the latest crime control technology, often adapted from the military. Officers responding to dangerous situations are dressed in military tactical gear carrying military-grade weapons while riding in military vehicles with helicopters and drones circling overhead, as was evident from the massive response to the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 (minus the drones). </p>
<p>In Texas, one sheriff’s office <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/03/12/want-to-see-the-aerial-drone-police-could-soon-deploy-in-your-town/">purchased </a>the controversial ‘Shadowhawk’ drone, which can perform surveillance but can also be armed with impact rounds, chemical munitions, and tasers. </p>
<p>These tactics and images makes one wonder who the typical policeman of tomorrow will be: the minority officer sensitive to the needs of the community (for the sake of restoring community trust) or the oppressive fully-armed standing army (for the sake of officer safety)? Until the police resolve this bipolar identity, future Fergusons are, I would argue, inevitable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johnny Nhan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent social unrest across the country protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York has reopened wounds and revealed deeply…Johnny Nhan, Associate Professor, Criminal Justice , Texas Christian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/351342014-12-08T11:01:44Z2014-12-08T11:01:44ZWhy it’s time for pervasive surveillance…of the police<p>Michael Brown’s recent shooting death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson illustrates the pressing importance of digitally documenting police activity, while Eric Garner’s case illustrates the limits. Had Officer Wilson been wearing a body camera, we would have a far better understanding of just what, exactly, triggered Brown’s death. But the existence of a video capturing Garner’s death-by-chokehold was not enough to persuade a New York grand jury to indict. So what does this tell us about the value of recordings? </p>
<p>We need recordings, and we need them not just to investigate high-profile shootings. There is a growing demand for accurate recording of the entire spectrum of police activity, making greater transparency of policing an urgent priority. However, recordings by themselves are not a magic bullet. </p>
<p>The need for more recording is undeniable. Unless a bystander has a cell-phone camera ready, our knowledge of contested facts too often depends solely on the reports of police officers and the citizens with whom they interact. Although we know that most police officers do make a good faith effort to accurately report the facts, we also know that some officers do not. For instance, according to a recent survey one out of every seventeen Denver police officers has been subject to administrative discipline for “departing from the truth” in matters related to their <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/ci_18448755">official duties</a> That figure counts only those who have been formally sanctioned. </p>
<p>Concerns about police dishonesty extend throughout the evidence-gathering phases of criminal procedure. Police officers have been found lying about observing suspects engaged in illegal activities, where and how contraband was recovered, and whether suspects consented to searches, were given <a href="http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6013&context=law_lawreview">Miranda warnings, or confessed</a>.</p>
<h2>The mind can play tricks on us</h2>
<p>Even when police make good faith efforts to comply with the law, unintentional bias, poor memory, and sloppy procedures can undermine the accuracy of arrest reports, interview reports, and testimony. This leads investigators and courts to make incorrect inferences regarding the reliability or admissibility of evidence or even, in some cases, about a defendant’s substantive guilt. </p>
<p>Problems of this sort arise because the investigatory process occurs in a black box. Absent blind trust in the accuracy and honesty of first person accounts, we cannot be confident that we know what really happened.</p>
<p>While there are limits, digital recording technology presents a promising solution. Although some jurisdictions have begun to experiment with new recording technology, no jurisdiction has implemented a comprehensive digital recording requirement for all police activities. But it could be done. The technology now exists to cheaply and easily document all aspects of a police investigation. </p>
<p>Stationhouse questioning and lineup administration could be easily handled through use of conventional video recording devices. Dashboard cameras already record highway stops in numerous jurisdictions. For encounters in the field, as President Obama recent urged, so-called “body worn video” could cheaply and easily be used to document police-citizen encounters. </p>
<p>There are numerous reasons to use technology to monitor police activity. Visual recordings provide far more complete and accurate evidence of key evidentiary events, such as police-citizen confrontations, confessions and eyewitness identifications. Without recording, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and juries are all left reconstructing the key events of an investigation based on often conflicting hearsay accounts from police, the defendant, and eyewitnesses. Given the ease of making a digital recordings, it is simply crazy to expect juries routinely to accept police officers’ hearsay accounts when they could instead be presented a real-time recording of the event.</p>
<p>Given the obvious advantages, the question is not whether we should routinely record police activity, but why such recording technology hasn’t already been more widely adopted. </p>
<h2>Police have their own reasons for objecting to video</h2>
<p>There are four main reasons. First, police departments believe, rightly or wrongly, that secrecy is vital to their effectiveness, and that courts and the general public will misperceive or misinterpret their conduct if they are caught taking shortcuts. Second, even entirely by-the-book police officers resist pervasive recording because of privacy concerns. Third, figuring out how to handle massive amounts of digital data presents real hurdles, and courts are reluctant to devote the resources needed to sift through the massive amounts of data that would be produced by pervasive recording, nor have they mastered how such data can be presented to jurors cheaply, efficiently, and consistent with traditional rules of evidence. Finally, police departments point to tight budgets as a reason not to invest in digital recording. </p>
<p>While these are real concerns, they are not insurmountable. Jurors are surprisingly sophisticated when it comes to understanding, and tolerating, legitimate but deceptive or devious investigative strategies. The police need for tactical secrecy must, at some point, give way to the need to deter police misconduct and document facts that might be critical to the determination of guilt and innocence. </p>
<p>Likewise, police officers’ potential privacy concerns, while understandable, are overstated. Employers generally are free to surveil their employees as long as they provide adequate notice. Police officers, moreover, are uniquely public actors and are routinely expected to perform their duties in front of spectators. (Of course, privacy concerns are not limited to police, and may be even more acutely felt by citizens who interact with them. Protections would need to be developed for them.) Finally, neither court procedures nor police budgets should stand in the way. The expense of digital cameras is relatively small. If using cameras prevents even one one major civil rights lawsuit, it would more than cover the costs. And whether or not we move toward widespread recording, big data is coming, and lawyers and courts will have to learn to handle it. The justice system will adapt.</p>
<p>Of course, cameras are no panacea. The Eric Garner case is only the latest reminder that people can see an event for themselves and still disagree about what happened. The difference, however, is that with the video, we have a basis for discussion. Like the Rodney King beating before it, the recording is the prerequisite for the conversation that followed. Factual knowledge is needed to figure out how, or whether, things must change. And increased transparency is needed not just in force cases, but at every stage of criminal justice. As both the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases so tragically demonstrate, we need to know the facts. That much is obvious. Figuring out what to do with that knowledge is more difficult, and even more essential.</p>
<p>_</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Dean Covey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michael Brown’s recent shooting death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson illustrates the pressing importance of digitally documenting police activity, while Eric Garner’s case illustrates the limits…Russell Dean Covey, Professor of Law, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/348572014-12-01T20:36:15Z2014-12-01T20:36:15ZExplainer: The grand jury in the Darren Wilson case and beyond<p>Now that the grand jury has decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old man, there remain many questions about this grand jury and generally about the use of grand juries in the United States. </p>
<h2>The legal basis: federal and state</h2>
<p>The fact that twelve randomly picked impartial citizens played such a key role in the matter is a unique feature of the criminal justice system in the US.</p>
<p>The US Constitution and all state constitutions provide for grand juries. In federal criminal cases, federal grand juries consisting of sixteen to twenty-three members make all decisions to indict, and at least twelve grand jurors are necessary in an indictment, commonly called a “true bill.” </p>
<p>Provisions in state constitutions vary in terms of the size of grand juries. The Missouri Constitution calls for a twelve member grand jury, nine of which must concur in an indictment. </p>
<h2>The make up of the Ferguson grand jury</h2>
<p>Grand jurors in St Louis County are chosen from the same jury pool as trial jurors. A judge selects the grand jurors, and the judge tries to ensure that jurors are representative of the community. </p>
<p>The grand jurors who heard the case involving Michael Brown’s death were chosen in May, long before his death in August. </p>
<p>The judge chose nine white jurors and three African American jurors. Seven jurors were men and five jurors were women. They were from all parts of St Louis County, and the percentage of African Americans (25%) on the grand jury roughly equals the percentage of African Americans (24%) in St Louis County. The grand jury’s term was originally four months long – the normal term – but a judge extended the term in order for the grand jury to consider possible charges against Darren Wilson.</p>
<h2>The work of the grand jury</h2>
<p>In all felony cases, there must be a “probable cause determination” that a crime has been committed. Probable cause means that there must be some evidence of each element of the offense. Most serious criminal cases usually begin with the prosecutor charging a person with one or more felonies. After the person is charged, the prosecutor has the option of bringing the case to the grand jury for the probable cause determination or to go before a judge for a probable cause determination through a preliminary hearing. </p>
<p>At a preliminary hearing, the accused is present along with his or her lawyer who can cross-examine witnesses. In the grand jury, however, only the prosecutor is present along with the grand jurors: both the prosecutor and the grand jurors can question each witness. </p>
<p>The grand jury process excludes the suspect and the defense attorney because it is not supposed to be a mini-trial but rather solely determine if there is some evidence to support felony charges. Like a preliminary hearing, it is a check on whether there is probable cause to support felony charges but is a secret proceeding that is usually much quicker than a preliminary hearing. </p>
<p>In St Louis County, prosecutors usually bring serious felony cases or cases with numerous witnesses to the grand jury rather than a preliminary hearing because a police officer who has investigated a case can summarize his or her findings and witness statements to present the case more quickly than at a preliminary hearing where witnesses would be examined and cross-examined.</p>
<h2>What happened in the Darren Wilson case</h2>
<p>In this case, the prosecutor did not bring charges against Darren Wilson. Instead, the prosecutor used the grand jury in an investigative role to determine whether to indict Darren Wilson. Under existing law, the prosecutor has discretion to proceed in this way. Unlike a regular grand jury hearing where a prosecutor presents just enough evidence to support probable cause, the grand jury heard all of the evidence that the prosecutor had on the case as it considered. </p>
<p>Using a grand jury in this way is unusual. Prosecutors go this route in cases involving possible excessive force by police or possible charges of corruption against elected officials. For example, a grand jury in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/29/grand-jury-decision-eric-garner_n_6240348.html">New York City</a> has been investigating the chokehold death of Eric Garner by a police officer since September. In August, a grand jury in <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/15/grand-jury-indicts-texas-gov-rick-perry-/14138843/">Texas</a> indicted Texas Governor Rick Perry on two felony counts for abusing his official power and coercing a public servant in an effort to force a district attorney to step down after she was arrested on drunk-driving charges.</p>
<p>In St Louis, Darren Wilson was permitted to testify, and he injected the defenses of a justified use of force and self-defense. The testimony by Darren Wilson is very unusual, because normally the suspect or, if charges have been filed, the accused, does not have an opportunity to testify before a grand jury. Indeed, in <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1972.ZO.html">United States v. Williams</a>(1992), the US Supreme Court observed that the accused neither has a right to testify nor to have the prosecution present exculpatory evidence (favorable to the defendent) to the grand jury. </p>
<p>Like any other witness testifying before a grand jury, Darren Wilson was not permitted to have an attorney present. The transcript of his testimony indicates that he was permitted to tell his version of what occurred. There were few hard questions put to him by either the prosecutors or any of the grand jurors.</p>
<p>Before the grand jury began their deliberations, the prosecutors instructed the grand jury that to return an indictment against Darren Wilson they had to find probable cause that he committed an offense. They were also told that to indict they would have to find <em>no</em> probable cause that either he acted in self-defense or that his use of force was justified under the law. These instructions likely led the grand jury, who heard conflicting testimony about what occurred, to decide not to indict Darren Wilson.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34857/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter A. Joy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Now that the grand jury has decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old man, there remain many questions about this grand jury and generally…Peter A. Joy, Henry Hitchcock Professor of Law, School of Law, Washington University in St LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347712014-11-28T13:44:25Z2014-11-28T13:44:25ZThere’s no escaping the data: African Americans face injustice at every turn<p>Following the decision by a grand jury not to indict St Louis police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting teenager Michael Brown, it has been suggested that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ferguson-is-not-a-special-case-34655">incident</a> is far from a special case. I agree entirely. Ferguson is completely consistent with longer term trends in data about crime and the criminal justice system in the United States. </p>
<p>A variety of studies show that there continues to be disproportionate maltreatment of African Americans at different points within the criminal justice system, including <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet">stop and search, arrest, conviction, sentencing, and killing</a>. </p>
<p>This disproportionality occurs over and above the long-term trends in black crime rates. Arrest rates are higher, conviction rates are higher, custodial sentences are made more often and for longer durations, and confrontation with the police results in a higher rate of killing.</p>
<p>Arguments that African Americans commit more crimes miss the point. Even when they do commit more crimes, their treatment by the justice system is markedly worse than for other groups in society who also commit crimes.</p>
<p>A recent study from <a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_Race_and_Punishment.pdf">The Sentencing Project</a> provides a number of disturbing findings that support this view.</p>
<p>The study showed that white Americans have a much stronger “punitive mindset” and are more likely to favour the death penalty. On top of that, they overestimate the amount of crime that is actually committed by non-whites. The study also shows clear evidence of the unequal enforcement of laws and a media bias that leads to greater coverage of crimes against white victims.</p>
<h2>Behind the numbers</h2>
<p>This tells a story of systemic problems in American society and the criminal justice system. These problems serve as inconvenient truths in a country founded on principles of equality, the protection of fundamental rights, and the rule of law.</p>
<p>Those who recognise this statistical portrait of America see within the data a story of endemic racism and discrimination, where the underlying patterns suggest intention to treat black Americans differently than others (the study also shows a similar set of findings for Hispanic Americans). </p>
<p>Data of course cannot show intentionality but the kinds of patterns that are observed could not be produced by mere chance alone. Michael Brown and Darren Wilson were not brought together by random chance which then resulted in a coincidental outcome of Brown’s death. There are systemic and individual factors at play, which make the Brown case much like other cases that produce the kind of data analysed by The Sentencing Project.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65713/original/image-20141127-19180-uhud4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ferguson is in the eye of this storm but this happens all over the US.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those who do not embrace the data or agree with the statistical portrait of America prefer to blame the victim and focus on the the personal drivers and motivations for criminal behaviour. They then claim the outcome of confrontation with the police is unfortunate but not surprising. On this view, it is Brown who is wrong. It is Brown who was the criminal and it was Brown who should not have not behaved like <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ferguson-decision-officer-darren-wilson-describes-michael-brown-as-like-hulk-hogan-and-a-demon-in-published-testimony-9881464.html">Hulk Hogan</a> or <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/11/michael-brown-demon-ferguson-2014112672358760344.html">a demon</a>.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>In the despair over the grand jury decision, protesters have called for a judicial response. It was welcome news then that Attorney General Eric Holder and the President Barack Obama have ordered the Department of Justice to continue to investigate the case. But wider reform is also needed, including education, social welfare, police training and re-balancing of what is perceived as an unjust and unfair system.</p>
<p>I have seen similar patterns of abuse in many countries outside the US, and I have seen attempts at judicial reform to redress the worst forms of abuse.</p>
<p>Brazil, for example, has had notorious problems with police brutality, where patterns of abuse have shown remarkably disproportionate use of force. <a href="http://skogan.org/files/Use_of_Force_and_Police_Reform_in_Brazil.PPR_2013.pdf">A new study</a> shows that reforms aimed at increasing levels of career satisfaction, greater diversity within the ranks, and community-based policing have reduced the propensity to use excessive force. <a href="http://www.bd.undp.org/content/bangladesh/en/home/operations/projects/democratic_governance/police-reform-programme-phase-ii/">Capacity building and training programmes</a> can also have a positive impact.</p>
<p>Such reform efforts are <a href="http://fordhamlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/Vol_82/No_6/Rushin_May.pdf">not without their problems</a>, but I do hope that Brown’s death and the movement it has sparked provide a renewed opportunity for the US government to tackle inconvenient truths in a way that paves a better future for all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Landman receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, Innovate UK, the European Commission and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.. He is affiliated with American Political Science Association, Political Studies Association, and the Royal Society of Arts.</span></em></p>Following the decision by a grand jury not to indict St Louis police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting teenager Michael Brown, it has been suggested that the incident is far from a special case…Todd Landman, Executive Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347392014-11-27T09:28:20Z2014-11-27T09:28:20ZFerguson: a tale of two competing narratives<p>Before the ambulance even came to collect the body of 18 year-old Michael Brown from the streets of Ferguson, it was clear that this case would be tried in the court of public opinion. Was Brown a “gentle giant” or a common thief? Had he attacked a police officer who had never before shot anyone, or been shot down by an intimidated cop before he had a chance to surrender?</p>
<p>Three separate autopsies agreed that Brown could have survived five shots, but not the one to his head that killed him. Was he surrendering, or charging a cop who was shooting at him? By the time Saint Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch walked to the podium, in the middle of Monday night prime time television, to announce that a grand jury had decided there was no reason to blame Darren Wilson, it was clear that this case would not resolve as easily as an episode of “Law and Order.”</p>
<p>“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation,” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2014/nov/25/ferguson-grand-jury-decision-annotated?CMP=share_btn_tw">McCulloch said, </a> “has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something – for anything – to talk about.” </p>
<p>That cycle is increasingly fed by social media, and in the last several days the back and forth had reached a fever pitch. But McCulloch’s statement belies the fact that both law enforcement supporters and civil rights advocates spread disinformation, while in the days leading up to the grand jury announcement, cable news networks used that online debate to fuel ratings. </p>
<p>Indeed a close examination of the Brown case reveals the growing interactivity among media, and how any given photograph or video can both reveal, yet conceal context. It is helpful to go back to the beginning. </p>
<h2>Let’s start at the beginning</h2>
<p>Reporting the story on August 10, the day after the shooting, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/teen-killed-missouri-officer-after-physical-confrontation-police-n177206">NBC News used a photo</a> of an unsmiling Brown flashing either a peace sign or a gang sign, depending on your point of view. That gave rise to a meme, <a href="http://www.onthemedia.org/story/if-they-gunned-me-down/">#IfTheyGunnedMeDown</a>, in which black men showed pictures of themselves as family men and in “Thug” poses, questioning which the media would use. </p>
<p>Two days later, Don Lemmon on <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/12/us/missouri-teen-shooting-social-media/">CNN interviewed Brown’s parents</a>. Brown’s mother called him “a gentle giant,” intimidating at 6’4" and 300 pounds, but not a fighter. Then, a week later, when Ferguson Police chief Thomas Jackson finally identified as Darren Wilson, he simultaneously gave <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkOfqIXkBRE">FOX News a video</a> that immediately went viral on You Tube. It showed a man, apparently Brown who appeared to be stealing a handful of cigars and pushing the owner of the store out of the way as he walked out the door. </p>
<p>That narrative, of a thief being chased by an outstanding cop, would frame the story and eventually led to Wilson’s exoneration. This week, the story belongs to the cop who was trying his best to save his own life. But throughout, there have been so many competing narratives that no one entity seemed capable of sorting them out. </p>
<h2>Mistakes were made on both sides</h2>
<p>Anonymous, a group of hackers who operate under one Twitter handle, <a href="http://csglobe.com/anonymous-reveals-ferguson-officers-name/">posted a picture of a policeman</a> who didn’t even work in Missouri. A picture of a woman <a href="http://twitchy.com/2014/08/14/wife-of-ferguson-police-chief-attacked-for-allegedly-calling-black-people-feral/">who was identified as Wilson’s wife</a> was “overheard” complaining about the way “feral black Americans kill themselves and each other, then claim they’re the victims. What insanity is that?” Although Wilson wasn’t even married at the time, that alleged exchange was seized by Wilson supporters to justify his actions, along with a picture of someone who resembled the officer lying in bed with a fractured orbital socket “beaten to a bloody pulp.” That picture helped Wilson raise $500,000 on GoFundMe (a similar fund, set up by supporters of Brown, raised only about $300K). </p>
<p>As cable news parsed out these debates, they seemed to spend more resources stoking ratings than informed analysis. The nadir was probably <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-jones-lemon-rip-into-each-other-over-ferguson-protests/">the on-air debate</a> Tuesday night between CNN’s Don Lemmon and contributor Van Jones. They were both tear-gassed at the same march, but couldn’t agree whether it had been “peaceful protestors” or whether any “leaders” had been present.</p>
<p>Prosecutors jumped in on both sides, second guessing McCulloch’s decision to dump all the evidence into the grand jury’s lap, instead of parsing it themselves. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/ferguson-grand-jury-findings/">The Washington Post</a> did an analysis the hewed closely to the prosecutor’s report, while <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2014/nov/25/ferguson-grand-jury-decision-annotated?CMP=share_btn_tw">The Guardian</a> parsed the subtext. The latter, I would argue, helped readers better understand the story.</p>
<p>A viewer would be well-advised to explore <a href="http://thenewsliteracyproject.org/NewsLitBits/misinformation-about-ferguson">The News Literacy Project</a>, which has posted a series of misinformation about Ferguson along with some tips for those trying to sort fact from fiction. They include examining the sources for news stories, cross-referencing stories, and noting the disparities.</p>
<p>Anyone who does will discover that the truth is slippery and ephemeral, and that even forensic evidence conceals the motivation of the actors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>June Cross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before the ambulance even came to collect the body of 18 year-old Michael Brown from the streets of Ferguson, it was clear that this case would be tried in the court of public opinion. Was Brown a “gentle…June Cross, Professor of Journalism, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346552014-11-25T17:31:06Z2014-11-25T17:31:06ZFerguson is not a special case<p>Last week on ABC’s This Week, President Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-theres-no-way-to-say-race-relations-are-worse/article/2556562">said</a>, “My own experience tells me race relations continue to improve,” and “There’s no way to say race relations are worse than 20, 50 years ago.” </p>
<p>It’s impossible to ignore this assessment spoken by the leader of the free world, who just happens to identify as African American. It’s an attention grabber, especially because his assessment came just days in advance of a grand jury decision to not indict a white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri.</p>
<p>Anxiety has been sky high there since the shooting three months ago and civil unrest shows the depth of pain and misunderstanding, and police action shows the depth of fear. </p>
<p>The nation’s attention is now focused on the St. Louis suburb and its handling of the situation. It should come as no surprise that some may not see as much improvement in race relations as does President Obama. There were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/latest-news-ferguson-protests-defense-department-university-of-virginia.html?_r=0">violent protests</a> in Ferguson after the grand jury’s verdict: a dozen buildings were badly damaged; cars were set on fire; 29 people were arrested. In fact, many blacks disagree completely with Obama’s assessment. As do some whites. How could this be true?</p>
<h2>A legacy of disparities</h2>
<p>A serious read of history demonstrates that black lives have been treated as less valuable than white lives, and that well-meaning whites have, on the whole, failed to appreciate the origins of racial-ethnic disparities in health, wealth, education, and incarceration – or to see them as a problem. Many believe in justice, but feel perfectly comfortable when and where racial-ethnic inequality is the norm. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, belief in justice does not necessarily engender frustration with the status quo or empathy for the marginalized. Regardless, the present moment presents an opportunity to address three social facts that guarantee it won’t be long before the nation’s attention focuses on another divided community or telling videotape/audiotape or insensitive Tweet or heart-wrenching statistic or incredible news story that yet again reveals the permanence of racism. </p>
<h2>Numbers never lie</h2>
<p>The first social fact, to paraphrase the ESPN show, is that numbers never lie. The black-white disparity in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/10/us/infant-mortality-rate-drops-but-racial-disparity-grows.html">infant mortality</a> has grown since 1950. Whereas 72.9% of whites are homeowners, only 43.5% of blacks are. Blacks constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million people <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet">incarcerated.</a> According to Pew, white median household wealth is $91,405; black median household wealth is $6,446 – <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/news/economy/black-white-inequality/">the gap</a> has tripled over the past 25 years.</p>
<p>Since 2007, the black median income has <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2013/09/18/census-report-black-income-dropped-astounding-15-8-percent-since-2007-recession/">declined</a> 15.8%. In contrast, Hispanics’ median income declined 11.8%, Asians’ 7.7% and whites’ 6.3%. </p>
<p>Rather than focusing on race relations – or the degree to which individuals of different races appear to be civil and friendly toward each other, and to a lesser extent, the degree to which black and white lives remain segregated – it seems more sensible to talk about parity. On that score, there is evidence of an unfinished civil rights agenda.</p>
<h2>Institutional inequality</h2>
<p>The second social fact is that improvement in race relations is not about asking apologetically: “can’t we all just get along?” There are powerful structural forces that organize our nation and its institutions such that white lives are considered more valuable than black lives. There is institutional inequality that happens without the ill-will of any one individual. The question becomes a matter of apportioning the race problem to past inequality (that we prefer to forget) versus the contemporary actions of schools, real estate agents, hospitals, banks, elected officials, corporations, the prison industrial complex, etc. whose rules of operation seem to further entrench existing disparities. Consider, for example, the police. The shooting of unarmed men (mostly black) by allegedly well-trained policemen (mostly white) has become a depressingly frequent occurrence. Indeed, in an October 2014 <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter**">study</a>, the investigative journalism organization, Pro Publica, discovered that “young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater.” </p>
<h2>Required listening</h2>
<p>The third social fact is that tear gas should not be the preferred response to tears of frustration, angst, and disappointment shed by blacks and other marginalized groups. </p>
<p>In situations like Ferguson, people on both sides of the issue need to reflect carefully on and express openly their divergent views of why Brown was shot. Repression of either side of the story is counter-productive. But truly hearing both sides of the story requires empathy. Racism thrives in part because whites suffer from what I would call social <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23245426">alexithymia</a> – they literally cannot imagine the lives of blacks and the burdens of social dislocations and criticism heaped upon the black community. The mere mention of racism or racial inequality, it seems, causes many whites to go deaf – whereas civil unrest seems to restore their hearing. </p>
<h2>The symbolism of Ferguson</h2>
<p>Ferguson is not a special case. It’s just evidence that race cleaves our nation, tensions simmer just below the surface, and far too many people who believe in justice are comfortable watching its miscarriage. </p>
<p>That does not mean that the white officer who shot Brown dead should have been indicted – apparently the evidence did not support such. But it does mean that everyone should be outraged because blacks are not yet full citizens of this nation. We need indignation. We need to take a stand. </p>
<p>Otherwise we are, in effect, accepting the permanence of racism: no longer the white-sheet-wearing KKK member, Archie Bunker type, but instead the type that allows polite neglect of racial and socioeconomic inequality, and permits sanguine assessments of progress discordant with the experiences of everyday people who feel abandoned and invisible and worthless.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony N. Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Last week on ABC’s This Week, President Obama said, “My own experience tells me race relations continue to improve,” and “There’s no way to say race relations are worse than 20, 50 years ago.” It’s impossible…Tony N. Brown, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Sociology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.