by Norm Stamper
What if he’d said, in front of the Kensington Inn, a white bar in a white neighborhood, “Go on inside. Pick out the biggest, whitest, meanest motherfucking honky in the place and pinch him”? I probably would have thought something like, Dang, this guy’s off his rocker. Why does he want me to go in there and bust some big white guy? But I wouldn’t have been afraid. I wasn’t taught to fear white people.
A couple of nights later I rode The Heights with another white cop. This guy was different. Jack Pearson had grown up in an African-American neighborhood, had attended Lincoln High, a predominantly black school. We stopped a lot of black men that night, even put a couple of them in jail. Pearson’s respectful, transparently fearless approach to them stood in contrast to the panicky, impulsive white cops I’d worked with. Watching him talk to black men (and women) and observing how he listened to them helped me recognize that I was a member of the panicky white-cop category.
This knowledge ultimately forced me to confront and to work (for years) on my own fears and racism. And to recognize that it was fear of black men (and no small amount of peer pressure) that, in part, drove me to behave during my rookie year as a thug, a brutal, overbearing, menace of a cop.
Good cops experience fear, to be sure. But they perform effectively by working through their fear. Ambrose Redmoon wrote, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” For fearless cops, that “something else” is getting a dangerous and delicate job done—properly, humanely and safely.
Fearless cops perceive their surroundings more accurately, and they make more informed judgments when the work does turn tense or dangerous. It’s not that they don’t register hues of black or white or brown, they just don’t impute anything to skin color. They size up Diallo-type situations—which happen all the time in police work—and recognize in the moment the inherent innocence of such persons. Because these cops are alert, not alarmed or paranoid, and because they assess behavior not pigmentation, they tend to produce routine rather than tragic outcomes. Cops like these, who make up maybe twenty to thirty percent of the force, are inspiring to watch in action.
Legitimate “kill or be killed” events do happen—far more often today than when I was a beat cop. A police officer would be a fool not to be ever vigilant. But I’m afraid this reality has licensed panicky white cops to shoot unarmed black men when they should be talking, or fighting, their way out of a sticky situation.
What to do about white cops who are afraid of black men? First, each “corner pocket” must understand the scope and the nature of racism within its own department. This means investigating the problem. My bosses in San Diego in the mid-seventies ordered the most exhaustive study of police racism in the history of the institution. Although the reports were never published, they produced for at least one agency a clear indication of needed reforms.
Academy and continuing education, focused on “undoing” racism, must be provided. Likewise, practical, theoretically sound courses on fear and how to manage it.
Psychological “trauma treatment” and debriefings should be mandatory for all officers involved in shootings or other harrowing incidents.
Most important, chiefs and other police leaders must set and communicate, systematically and regularly, nonnegotiable standards of nondiscriminatory performance and conduct. They must, themselves, model the same fearless and respectful behavior they expect from their cops. And they must fire any police officer who can’t or won’t refrain from “unprofessional” conduct, which includes those frightened, trigger-happy cops who are a special danger to unarmed black men. These kinds of cops can be located and removed from the force before they kill someone.
Over the years I observed that cops who are the most calm, the most courageous are invariably the most empathetic, and compassionate. Jack Pearson didn’t act like he had a target on his back. He didn’t live in mortal fear that he wouldn’t make it home at the end of shift. He didn’t view his work in the black community as a “kill or be killed” proposition. Pearson would have understood in a heartbeat that black mother’s fears for her two boys—even as he would have been among the least likely to rob her of them.
Finally, let me pass along some advice from Johnnie Cochran. The prominent attorney joined me one Saturday morning in the auditorium of Seattle’s First AME Church to address a joint session of beat cops and hundreds of black youths from the community. “Listen up, young people!” he said. The din and murmur of the youthful audience ceased. “Hear and heed what I’m about to tell you. If you get stopped by the police do exactly as they say. If they tell you to put your hands on the dash, do it. If they tell you to get out of the car, do it. If they order you to step over to the sidewalk, or to spread-eagle yourself in the middle of the street, do it. If they ask for your ID, give it to them. Do not give them lip. Police officers have a hard enough job as it is. So, respect your city’s police officers. Treat them the way you want to be treated. Got that?”
The din and murmur returned, the kids glaring back at Cochran, wondering if this was the real Johnnie—or some cop in disguise. “Now, if they don’t have the right to stop you in the first place, if they disrespect you or violate your constitutional rights or mistreat you in any way, take a good look at their nametags. Get their car and badge numbers. Wait till they’re gone, write it all down, along with the date, time, and location. Then give me a call.” Words to live by.
CHAPTER 9
RACISM IN THE RANKS
IT WAS FIVE MINUTES after midnight. I poured myself a refill of scorched coffee, walked through the archway, down the hall, and into a tiny windowless room where I waited for “Tom,” my first cop of the night. He showed up ten minutes late, rapped on the door, and called out in a voice that could be heard across town, “Captain?”
I let him in, extended my hand. “How you doing, Tom?” He rubbed his own hand on his uniform trousers but I noticed it was still clammy.
“Fine, sir,” he said, almost shouting.
“Sit down, please.”
“Sorry I’m late, sir. Last-minute arrest.” I nodded and took the only other chair in the bare office, behind a gray metal desk. I hoped my expression—I was aiming for grim yet friendly, with just a hint of intimidation, a touch of coercion—would convey the seriousness of the occasion.
“You know what this is about, so I’m not going to play games with you.” He stared at me, a bent smile on his face. “I’m going to ask you a lot of questions,” I said. “I expect you to answer each one of them honestly, and fully.” I paused. “You understand?” From my side of the desk I could tell his legs were bouncing up and down. He nodded. I waited.
“Yes, sir. I understand.” His voice, now just above a whisper, cracked.
“Good.” I picked up a blank legal pad, and told him his statement would be included with those of other officers but that his name would not appear anywhere in my report.
For the next hour and forty minutes Tom told me, in detail, what he thought of black people and other ethnic minorities. And how he and his colleagues treated them.
The “Southeast Investigation” was triggered by allegations of three probationary patrol officers who’d left the department in the spring of 1976. Each had resigned voluntarily, each had worked black and Latino neighborhoods, and each had witnessed stomach-turning events that led them to question SDPD’s commitment to “professional” police work. Previous administrations would have round-filed the reports of these “exit interviews.” But this was the Bill Kolender regime, an administration committed to openness and honesty, community policing, “humanistic” and “nondiscriminatory” police behavior. Between August 13 and October 1, it was my job to interview the thirty-one cops—twenty-seven patrol officers, three sergeants, one lieutenant—on my graveyard patrol squad in Southeast.
When we finished, I thanked Tom for his candor and asked him if there was anything he wanted to add. He’d gotten bolder, progressively more talkativ
e over the course of the interview, and seemed to have been waiting for this moment. “Yes sir,” he said. “Why are you doing this? You know nothing’s going to change. It’s always been like this. Everybody uses racial slurs. Everybody does this kind of shit. And we’re not about to change.” The guy had gall, I’ll give him that. He’d just copped to being a practicing racist, in one of our uniforms. Now he was defying me and the rest of the brass to do something about it.
By that point in the investigation I was no longer surprised by such frankness; most of the other cops had been equally forthright. And self-damning: thirty of the thirty-one personnel (including my lieutenant and two of his sergeants) admitted to using racial and ethnic slurs. African-Americans were niggers, boys, splibs, toads, coons, garboons, groids (from “negroid”), Sambos, Buckwheats, Rastuses, Remuses, jigaboos, jungle bunnies, and spooks. Latinos were greasers, wets, wetbacks, beans, beaners, bean bandits, chickenos, spics.
Most cops said they used the terms among themselves, less often with the public, and then “only jokingly” or to “defuse a tense situation” or when they were “really pissed” at someone. I asked each man to tell me how many cops in Southeast talked this way. Answers ranged from “five percent” to “ninety-nine percent,” but the mean was over ninety percent. “Everyone but the super-religious cops,” was Tom’s reply. “It’s not that these ‘Christians’ lord it over you, they just don’t talk the way the rest of us talk.”
The quality of my officers’ arrests? Not so good:
“About twenty percent are attitude arrests, Captain. About fifteen percent don’t have P.C. [probable cause].”
“I’ve seen maybe ten to fifteen bum arrests.”
“A lot is overdone, overlooked. Search and seizure, you name it. I’m surprised officers haven’t been impeached in court, and I’m only speaking from things I’ve seen.”
“With some it never happens; with others maybe fifty percent of their arrests are bad.”
“I’ve seen a few attitude arrests, maybe twenty percent.”
“I’d say maybe fifteen to twenty percent bum arrests . . . sober drunks, bad tickets.”
“I’ve seen some officers who’ve made arrests that leave me shaking my head. You wonder how they do it. You wind up with that feeling in your gut, you know? I see about two of those a week.”
Tom said he’d witnessed many busts, and had made a several of his own, for what he called “BBN.” BBN? “Busy being a nigger.” (This was years before “driving while black” earned its popular name.)
Seventy-one percent of the officers admitted to using or witnessing excessive force. Frequency ranged from “three or four times in eleven months” to “two to three times a week.” One cop told me that “twenty-five percent of the officers do it on a regular basis,” and that “fifty percent do it on ‘special occasions,’ like when they’ve had a fight with their wife, they’re emotionally upset, or maybe their last contact acted like an ass and they couldn’t do anything about it, so they take it out on the next guy.”
Most cops confessed to “minor” instances of excessive force: slamming people against a wall, ratcheting down on handcuffs until blood to the hands is cut off, twisting arms, kneeing a man in the nuts.
Tom told me he had that very evening choked out a handcuffed burglary suspect.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I was in a hurry.” Seems he had an interview with his captain, and the suspect wouldn’t get into the car fast enough.
Only one of my interviewees said he’d witnessed an “out-and-out beating.” It had followed a high-speed pursuit of a motorcyclist who, when finally stopped, was dragged off his machine and beaten to a paste by several officers. (Where was amateur cameraman George Holliday and his camcorder when we needed him?)
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I went 10-8 [code for ‘back in service’], and got the hell out of there.”
San Diego cops confessed to myriad other acts of discrimination, including additional dehumanizing references to blacks, such as “No humans involved” (on a radio call), “just an 11-13—nigger” (11-13 being code for an injured animal, followed on the air by a descriptor: “dog,” “cat,” “skunk,” what have you). There was the cop who sang all the way to jail, “Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’ . . .” to his black prisoner in the back seat. The half-dozen officers who regularly goaded suspects into taking a swing at them. Cops who made fun of mentally ill people. The beat cop who told me he’d refused to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a black woman. The hassling of white women in the company of black men. On and on and on.
One of the most poignant moments came toward the end, early one morning. I was interviewing the only black officer on my squad. When we got to the subject of racial and ethnic slurs and I asked if he used them, he fell into a silent weeping jag. “Yeah, I do,” he said, finally, tears streaming down his cheeks. He went along to get along, he told me. It had shredded his insides for the five years he’d been a cop. How often did he trash blacks, use the language of white bigots? “All the time, really. It’s kind of a defense. I know the white officers are testing me. Some of them won’t say ‘nigger’ or any of those other terms to my face. But, I hear them anyway. Two bays over in the locker room, or out in the field when they’re rousting some guy. Then they see me and get all embarrassed. So, I’ll throw out a term or two myself, try to make them feel okay.” He was sobbing now. “I . . . I’m ashamed of myself, Captain.”
I can’t pretend I was shocked at what my cops told me. I’d never called anyone a “nigger,” but I laughed heartily at others’ slurs and jokes, made my share of “slim” arrests in the black community, taunted prisoners, goaded individuals into taking a swing at me so I could bust them, choked out more than a few who’d “needed” it but whose actions didn’t justify it. Still, I honestly thought we’d come further than that. It saddened me as much as it angered me. We’d been handing SDPD critics all the ammunition they needed to brand us, accurately, as a racist, brutal, uncaring police force.
Yet my cops had told the truth. That should count for something. It was a hopeful sign. Maybe the real progress of the Kolender administration up to that point had been to cultivate a deeper level of honesty—essential to combating racism. (True, the Southeast cops had been promised no discipline, that the investigation was less an inquisition than an inquiry, an effort to learn what was really going on in our police department.) In any event, we were now in possession of facts, not speculation. There would be no “King’s X” for offending officers, no excuse or free pass in the future. The kind of behavior these cops described would, from that point on, land them in the unemployment line. Or in jail.
Tom was wrong. Our efforts would not be for nothing. We would root out racists, overhaul our policies and procedures, make systemic changes in training and supervision and accountability. The “Southeast Investigation” was, I thought, not the worst but the best thing to happen to our police department since the invention of the two-way radio.
The first order of business was to let the world know what we’d found. At the end of my 114-page report, I wrote:
Having concluded its investigation, the department must now make a decision. Should the results be made public? I think that the circumstances argue for release. What will come as news to the public is not that problems exist (the minority community is acutely aware of them) but, rather, that we care that they exist and are doing something about them. We have nothing to be ashamed of, or defensive about. This is probably the only police department in the country that has undertaken such an exhaustive process of self-examination in the field of race relations.
I never thought the case for making our findings public would turn into a battle, but it did. And I lost it. Kolender ordered all copies of the investigation rounded up and all lips sealed. When I asked him why, he replied, “Because we’d look like fifteen cents if we put that information out.”
“We’ll
look like a dime if we don’t,” I said. “And it’s bound to get out.”
The article that appeared in the Evening Tribune a year later wasn’t that bad. It was obvious the reporter, Ozzie Roberts, had gotten hold of someone’s executive summary, not the whole fifteen-cent can of worms. What he wrote was hardly flattering, though certainly more benign than it might have been. It did not, for example, repeat the litany of racial epithets. And, he did give us credit for taking on the problem ourselves.
Of course, we would have gotten a lot more mileage out of it if we’d only been as forthcoming as our cops.
The Southeast Investigation was conducted over thirty years ago. Three decades may sound like a long time, but in the parallel struggles for racial justice in America and for the “professionalization” of policing it’s little more than the blink of an eye. The fight for racial equality has taken forever in this country, and the battle is far from won, especially in policing.
What would we find today if such an investigation were replicated in San Diego? Or New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, Cincinnati, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle? What have these and other agencies done to combat racism in the ranks? What makes chiefs and mayors believe today’s police officers are all that different from those of the seventies? Do their cops provide equitable service in all communities? Do they respond rapidly and vigorously to crime in black neighborhoods? Do they follow proper procedures in stop-and-frisks, collecting evidence, making arrests? Do they refrain from excessive force? Have they dropped the unwritten law against “BBN”?