Black Citizens Say Distrust of Officers Would Ease If Police Showed Signs of Greater Respect
By Patrick Flaginan, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (New York)
Despite improvements under a widely respected chief, the Rochester Police Department continues to struggle with perceptions of “institutional racism” and the appearance of officers not differentiating between citizens and suspects.
Incidents in 2001 and 2002 of police using deadly force against African Americans and Rochester’s high homicide rate have marked the department’s otherwise steadily improving relationship with the community, according to the authors of Pathways to Better Police-Community Relations in Rochester, a report released Thursday.
“There’s no question the relationship between the police and the community is better than it was 10 years ago,” said former Family Court judge and report co-author Michael C. Miller at a news conference. “Can it get better? Is there room for improvement? Absolutely.”
Miller joined the Rev. Lawrence Hargrave, the report’s other author, Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. and Police Chief Robert Duffy to announce the report’s release.
The 157-page report, research for which started in March 2003, is based on more than 100 anonymous interviews with community residents and police officers. Johnson called it the most comprehensive outside look at the Police Department since the Crimi Report in 1976. That report, named for lead author Charles Crimi, was commissioned after a police officer shot and killed an 18-year-old African-American woman during a family dispute.
The current report, dubbed the Hargrave-Miller Report, was prompted by the deaths of an African-American teenager and of four African-American men in 2001 and 2002. All five died during or shortly after contact with police officers.
Hargrave said that many of his fellow members of Rochester’s African-American community consider the report “a long time coming.”
“We have had a number of people who have anxiously awaited this moment,” he said. “As an African-American man, I considered this to be an awesome responsibility.”
Hargrave and Miller said they initially intended to hold public hearings to gather information for the report. But they later decided such meetings could lead to grandstanding, so they opted to hold private interviews with more than 100 people. These included police officers, elected officials, clergy members, neighborhood leaders and private citizens. The interview subjects were granted anonymity to foster frank and candid discussions.
Room to improve
From those interviews, the authors determined that the relationship between the department and the community is generally good, with most respondents giving it a score of 7 or 7.5 on a 10-point scale. While that relationship is much better than it was 10 years ago, Miller and Hargrave said there is still a sense of distrust of police among minority residents in city neighborhoods with the highest rates of crime. That distrust is more severe among young minority residents. Residents also feel that the trust and respect exhibited by Duffy has not worked down to the street-level officers.
The report found that residents, particularly older ones, want an aggressive police force in the fight against crime. But they want officers to treat people with respect as they conduct that fight.
The report noted that most residents seem to be supportive of aggressive community policing and believe that RPD officers stay on the proper side of the line between appropriate aggression and inappropriate intrusiveness.
But authors also noted that just a few incidents of police displaying verbal or physical abuse of a minority have reversed those efforts and confirmed stereotypes.
“In many areas of the city, the historical perceptions by neighborhood, clergy and agency leaders of ‘police as an occupying force who don’t distinguish citizens from legitimate suspects’ remain barriers to effective, aggressive policing.”
The report found that some residents don’t trust police or come forward to support them because of “institutional racism and attitudinal problems that are reflected in occasional inappropriate behavior.”
Joan Roby Davison, director of Group 14621, said the Police Department is like any organization, where a few examples of bad behavior can taint the reputation of the entire agency.
“When you’re dealing with that many people, you’re dealing with all different kinds of people,” she said. “Some people were raised to treat people with respect regardless of the color of their skin, and some weren’t.”
Clothilde “Tillie” Gamble, a longtime community activist who has pushed for a Citizen Review Board to monitor police actions, said the study needed to involve more people “on the streets” - not those who, she said, had a “vested interest” in making things sound better than they are.
Gamble, an African American, said there still are problems, including the way police treat patrons of African-American clubs at closing time. Gamble said those clubs and patrons are hassled more than white crowds and bars in the East Avenue-Alexander Street area.
Gamble of Durnan Street said Duffy was “doing a tremendous job in the beginning.”
City Councilman Adam McFadden, who had a well-publicized run-in with police, said the report didn’t go deep enough because the authors did not want to incite the community.
“If you want to address police-community relations, you have to address the things that are weak, and they didn’t do that,” said McFadden, who was charged with harassment following an encounter with a bar owner on Alexander Street in October. “They never acknowledged any of the deaths in the African-American community at the hands of police in the past few years. The thing that bothers me, we get so afraid to talk about stuff, it almost negates the issues.”
Ways to change
The report includes recommendations to improve the relationship between the police and the community through changes to such functions as police training, the complaint process and discipline of officers.
But it also addresses issues beyond the relationship by seeking to identify ways to improve policing in general.
Miller and Hargrave have also taken the community to task, calling the relationship a “two-way street.”
There are suggestions for members of the clergy, the local bar association and the media to take part in the effort to improve relations.
Duffy said he welcomes the report. He said he’s looking forward to reading it carefully and finding ways to implement the recommendations.
“I have no fear of the truth,” Duffy said. “I welcome every opportunity improve this department. That’s the whole point of this.”