AlabamAlum wrote:Baltimore is an interesting situation. It doesn't really present as a systemic institutionalized racist situation; rather, just a core of bad cops.
From last month in the Baltimore Sun (before the Freddie Gray killing):
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... tml#page=1
Baltimore leaders agree: City has a race problem
Twice in recent weeks, Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has made a startling statement to national audiences: Baltimore is still dealing with 1950s- and 1960s-era racism.
The statement, which comes as the city is seeing population growth for the first time in decades, could have been viewed as a step backward, a self-inflicted wound. Instead, it has triggered a wide-ranging discussion of the issue around Baltimore — and met with relatively little disagreement.
"I agree with him wholeheartedly," said attorney A. Dwight Pettit, an African-American lawyer who has been a fierce critic of the police force and has represented a number of residents in police brutality lawsuits. "Baltimore is still in the Dark Ages in terms of racial and economic disparities."
Even some who maintain sunny views of the Baltimore's future praise Batts for bringing an ugly subject to light — even if they feel he is using hyperbole to do so.
P. David Bramble, a black developer whose firm owns Eastpoint Mall and is working on a 20-acre project with apartments, shopping and a hotel in East Baltimore, has seen potential investors react to the wide divide between prosperous and run-down neighborhoods.
"You go feast to famine in a matter of blocks, and it's very stark for people who are from out of town," said Bramble, managing partner of MCB Real Estate LLC. "I certainly don't think that we're dealing with '50s racism, but I can tell you we're dealing with a massive socioeconomic gap of the haves and have-nots."
Batts' comments come as racial issues have leapt to the forefront in many parts of the nation. Last week, several incidents served as flash points.
In Missouri, two police officers were shot in the town of Ferguson, where the killing of an unarmed black teen has sparked months of protests.
At the University of Oklahoma, a fraternity was shut down after video surfaced of members chanting a racist song.
And in Baltimore County, the community of Bowleys Quarters was under scrutiny after the discovery of racial threats on a community Facebook group.
To be sure, Baltimore no longer has the obvious signs of the Jim Crow era: separate water fountains, segregated lunch counters and balcony seating for blacks in theaters. Many other racial barriers have been breached — the city has had a number of black officials, including congressmen and mayors, and Batts is not the first black police commissioner. Meanwhile, inner-city churches of black and white congregants volunteer in AIDS outreach programs, and cultural groups such as Center Stage are capturing more diverse audiences.
But many city leaders say the city remains as segregated and racially polarized as ever.
Batts told The Baltimore Sun that his comments were designed to shake up the city and start conversations to create solutions — not malign Baltimore's image.
"I'm sorry if people are upset," he said. "These are things that the citizens here have said to me and are echoing from many different parts of the city. ... I think we need to be honest on how to move our city forward."
It's a bold position for a police commissioner who grew up on the West Coast and has been on the job for less than three years — a time in which his department has come under fire and federal scrutiny for police brutality that many say is part of the problem.
Racial segregation has a long history in Baltimore. In 1911, Mayor J. Barry Mahool and the City Council passed the country's first racially restrictive zoning law. It prohibited members of one racial group from buying a house in a block dominated by another race. When the Supreme Court struck that down in 1917, Baltimore had another response: Neighborhoods such as Roland Park required homeowners to sign covenants barring African-Americans.
"We're the genesis of where there was the apartheid practice in the United States," said Lawrence Brown, an African-American community activist and professor of health policy and management at Morgan State University. "Baltimore is a city that has not escaped the legacy of these very restrictive apartheid-type legacies."
Roland Park is still largely white, Brown pointed out, and city neighborhoods remain largely segregated.
Last month, Batts referred to such divisions as he gave a task force convened by President Barack Obama his perception of the city.
"When I go to Baltimore, on the East Coast, I'm dealing with 1950s-level black-and-white racism," he said. "It's taken a step back. Everything's either black or everything's white, and we're dealing with that as a community."
In a C-SPAN interview two weeks later, he said moving from California to Baltimore "was like going back in time."
In his interview with The Sun, Batts said that when he arrived in Baltimore in the fall of 2012, his command staff warned him that if he promoted a white officer he needed to balance the decision by also promoting a black officer. He said, "That hit me and I said, 'Why?' Shouldn't we promote based on merit?"
As he began visiting neighborhoods, he saw stark differences between well-to-do communities populated mainly by whites and dilapidated neighborhoods occupied mainly by blacks. Black mothers complained about the lack of food, let alone opportunity for youths. Businessmen asked what could be done to lower the homicide rate.
Batts believed the issues were connected and could only be addressed by getting Baltimoreans together to talk about citywide inequalities instead of worrying about neighborhood problems.
He said he has taken steps to transform the Police Department, urging more officers to volunteer in city reading programs and requiring patrol officers to spend part of their shifts on foot getting to know residents. He wants to double attendance at a Police Explorer camp that provides meals for children. And he has proposed creating teams of mental health workers and officers to respond to disturbances when a suspect's mental illness could be a factor.
Now he hopes his bold statements about Baltimore's racial climate will trigger a broader discussion about healing the city.
"There's a little bit of a spark here," he said. "Now's the opportunity to make that happen."
Brown is glad someone took the lead in addressing such entrenched issues.
Batts "probably says some things that aren't politically expedient, but they are social truths, they are social realities," Brown said. "And I think he's strong and courageous for saying these things."
But Brown said the police commissioner also needs to find ways to recondition officers who come into the city with an "implicit bias" that blacks are dangerous.
A six-month Baltimore Sun investigation last year found that more than 100 people had won a total of nearly $6 million in court judgments or settlements related to allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations. Some residents were beaten while handcuffed during questionable arrests; others were thrown to the pavement. Most often, the victims were African-Americans.
(There's a lot more in the article . . .)