Police and YOUth

Everette B. Penn, Shannon A. Davenport

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780429755224
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings the knowledge gained from the Teen And Police Service Academy (TAPS), which has been implemented internationally to create partnerships with at-risk teens and police, proactively addressing some of the most pressing conditions in their communities.

Readers will learn about the nuances of both youth culture and police culture and will better understand the conflict stemming from race and social class. Straightforward solutions stemming from the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing are demonstrated to provide useful strategies for communities struggling with police–youth relations. This book is especially germane to Texas schools and law enforcement, which are to comply with Community Safety Education Act of Texas. It mandates instruction for all peace officers, high school seniors, those applying for their driver's license and those required to take corrective driver instruction.

Police and YOUth is ideal as a primer for students, instructors, police officers, and citizens who stand to benefit from improving police–youth relations. It provides the tools needed to educate all parties and ultimately improve relations between police and the communities they serve.

1The World Is Very Different Now2012–2017

DOI: 10.4324/9780429424519-2

During his 1961 inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy stated: “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life” (Kennedy, 1961). These words were not excitable hyperbole but stood as a warning to a country with nuclear weapons and the financial resources to eradicate both. As this chapter reflects on the years 2012 through 2017 in American policing, the United States was at a powerful time of change. This was a time when policing looked deep within itself to examine the relationship it had with citizens, especially African-American and Latino men. The questions that still exist today are: How deep did we look? Did we look in the right places? What were the conclusions we reached?

There are times when change comes without warning, and an issue touches the United States unlike any other, which is the relationship between citizens and law enforcement. However, years earlier, in 1991, there was Rodney King. King was the African-American taxi driver who was the victim of the March 3, 1991, beating by Los Angeles police officers. This beating, which was filmed by a nearby stranger, eventually led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of three of the officers and failure of the jury to decide on the fourth. In the six days of rioting, 63 people lost their lives, and $775 million of insurance claims were filed, making it the costliest civil unrest in the history of the United States (Mulligan, 1992). The federal government prosecuted the officers on civil charges. Two were found guilty, and the city of Los Angeles eventually awarded Mr. King $3.8 million in damages (Mydans, 1994). Mr. King, author of the book The Riot Within, My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption (King & Spagnola, 2012) drowned in his swimming pool at the age of 47 on June 17, 2012. As an activist, Rodney King is known for his brief but pertinent question: “Can we all just get along?”

The question of getting along is deeply rooted in feelings of connectedness with each other. Sociologist Emory Bogardus developed the “social distance scale” in the 1920s. It was a tool used to measure attitudes, feelings of warmth, hostility, indifference, or intimacy that one racial group had toward other racial groups (Bogardus, 1925). A significant finding was that as contact and familiarity increase, social distance decreased. Our initial ability to get along with others different from ourselves because of race, ethnicity, religion, age, geographic location, or sexual orientation is hampered by our fight-or-flight response for self-protectionism (Penn, 2013). Our desire to protect ourselves is triggered by our own biases, stereotypes, and damaging preconceived notions we hold about a group and specific persons we interact with from that group.

As this book is being written, COVID-19, caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, has resulted in more than 124 million cases worldwide and more than 2.7 million deaths internationally (Worldometer, n.d.), of which more than a half-million occurred in the United States (CDC COVID Data Tracker, n.d.), and the term “social distancing” is being used very differently than when it was formulated in the work of Bogardus (1925). As defined by US government agencies in the coronavirus context, social distancing involves “remaining out of congregate settings, avoiding mass gatherings, and maintaining distance” whenever possible to limit the ability of the coronavirus to spread (Bates, 2020). It should be noted that a more accurate term for removing people from close contact is “physical distancing.” In the way Bogardus (1925) and Penn (2013) have used the term, it is more relevant to understanding social distance as the interweaving of psychological beliefs and social constructs created about a racial or ethnic group that causes people to reduce contact with that group purposely. An example of understanding the term “social distance” can be understood through Penn’s commercial flight travels. He said,

I fly often because of speaking engagements and other business related to the subject of police and citizen relations. One airline (you know, the one where you line up in “A” group, “B” group, and the dreaded “C” group) brings the concept of social distancing to life. Now I must admit I am a big Black guy, 6 feet 2, 300 lbs., so it could be my size that deters people from sitting next to me when only middle seats are available. When I am an “A” lister, I choose an open row and take the aisle seat. I purposely look friendly, make eye contact, and allow the middle space to look inviting by not placing anything on the seat. Yet, more often than not, people will go by my seat and sit next to someone from their own race or gender. Often, I end up sitting next to a middle-aged African-American man, interestingly having the same characteristics as myself. The few times a White man or woman does sit next to me for the short plane ride, there is a constant questioning from my new travel partner: What is your line of work? What book are you reading? Tell me about your family. Are you going home? Is the trip business or pleasure? I answer politely and engage in conversation, but I cannot help but ask myself if this person is asking these questions to separate me from the stereotypes he or she may hold about African-American men. Are the questions and my calming responses a way to counter the fight-or-flight feeling they have? Since we are on a plane, there is no flight (departure) or fight (this would cause unnecessary delay and also the risk of arrest).

(Penn, personal memo)

In October of 2018, this social distance tension was captured on a cell-phone camera as Delsie Gayle, an elderly Black woman, was called “an ugly Black bastard” and “a stupid cow” during a two-minute profanity-filled insult by 77-year-old passenger David Mesher on a flight to London Stansted. In the video crew members could be seen assisting with moving Gayle to another seat, and Mesher was allowed to stay in his seat. Ironically, there was a seat in between them. After Gayle was removed to another seat, the video shows that Mesher calmly stated: “he is all right.” Mesher did an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain where he explained how he “probably lost his temper” as Gayle did not get up when he asked her to move. He stated that he is not a racist and asked to be forgiven by Gayle. Gayle also did an interview and vowed never to fly with that airline again and said that what she went through was “awful.” Gayle also expressed her disappointment with the incident by saying “I just can’t believe in this day and age, this is still going on.” See the video: “Ryanair racist who called woman ‘black b*****d’ says he just lost his temper as he appears on GMB to APOLOGISE for vile rant” (Christodoulou, 2018).

Another example of social distance occurred on the morning of May 23, 2020, in Central Park, New York City. Amy Cooper, a White woman, was walking her dog without a leash. Christian Cooper, a Black man who was birdwatching at the time, asked Ms. Amy Cooper to place her dog on a leash. Christian Cooper started to film the incident. Frantically, Amy Cooper stated: “I’m taking a picture and calling the cops, I’m going to tell them an African-American man is threatening my life” (Ly, Vera, & Ries, 2020).

In the White Man and the Colored Man: Lectures on the Origin and Variety of the Human Races (1871), Lombroso (often referred to as the Father of Criminology) states:

Blacks represent the lowest and most primitive race… Even if he (the Negro) is dressed in the European way and has accepted the customs of modern culture, all too often, there remains in him a lack of respect for life of his fellow men, the disregard for life which all wild people have in common… The mentality is furthered in the Negro by his scorn of his white fellow-citizens, and by bestial sexual impulse” (Carroll, 1900).

A litany of works such as The Negro a Beast: Or, In the Image of God, 1900 (Carroll, 1900); and other celebrated works of post-slavery United States (1870s–early 1900s) presented the newly freed Black as having “unstable character,” “like a baby,” and being non-human, more “akin to apes.”

Gabbidon (2020), building upon the work of “Negrophobia” (Lawrence, 1987; Armour, 1997), describes this concept as the exaggerated fear of being criminally victimized by Black Americans. Because of the fear, there may be pre-emptive action such as shooting to ward off the attack, as Gabbidon (2020) states, “in a situation where a white person shoots a black person who he or she thought [emphasis in original] was a perceived robber, based on statistics and stereotypes that feed into ‘Negrophobia’” (p. 133). The thought goes further with the rationale that the courts and perhaps the entire criminal justice system accepts this claim because Blacks lead in two of the eight Uniform Crime Report (UCR) categories: robbery and murder. Implicit bias becomes a norm of thinking to allow the shooting and even killing of a Black man because he can potentially be a robber or murderer. Gabbidon (2020) states the problem with this premise is that “in the socially constructed minds of many whites and some racial minorities, all blacks and Latinos look like potential robbers” and “… crime becomes racialized or, put another way, crime becomes associated with particular racial/ethnic groups” (p. 134).

Unfortunately, the intersection of social distance, race, and policing made for two more cases of national attention with the deaths of Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020, and George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Breonna Taylor was an emergency room technician and according to the New York Times (Oppel, Taylor, & Bogel-Burroughs, 2021), was shot and killed by Louisville police officers during a botched raid. This event became a national exhibit of the racial injustice that occurs with policing in Black communities. The Louisville police had been investigating two men selling drugs in close proximity to Breonna Taylor’s home. A warrant was signed on the basis that one of the men used her apartment to receive packages. On the night of the raid, the police broke the door off the hinges, and Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired his gun, striking Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in his thigh, thinking he was an intruder. Brett Hanikson responded by firing several shots blindly into the apartment, striking Breonna Taylor five times. According to The Courier Journal, the dispatch log cited that Breonna Taylor did not receive attention for more than 20 minutes after being struck (Duvall & Costello, 2021).

A grand jury in September 2020 indicted one of the former Louisville detectives involved; Brett Hankison pleaded not guilty for wanton endangerment of the neighbors whose apartment was shot into when he fired without a clear sight, hitting the window and glass patio door of Breonna Taylor’s apartment. No charges were announced against the other officers involved, who also fired shots. Four of the detectives received termination letters. However, no one was charged for the death of Breonna Taylor.

George Floyd’s murder resulted in protest and riots, creating international attention to the plight of unarmed Black men dying in police custody. According to The New York Times, on May 25, George Floyd was arrested after a convenience store clerk called the police to report Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. The combined videos from the bystanders and security cameras reconstructed by The New York Times show officers violating department policies with actions that turned fatal. George Floyd was pinned down by three officers, unconscious and unable to breathe, which resulted in his death. The day after George Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis Police Department fired all four officers involved in the incident. On May 29, third-degree and second-degree manslaughter charges were filed against Derek Chauvin, the officer seen on video pinning George Floyd to the ground. On June 3, prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge against Derek Chauvin and charged the other three officers with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes and 29 seconds. There have been some discrepancies with the actual duration of the time that George Floyd was pinned down. This became a national symbol for protectors and a cry for help among the Black community regarding unfair and unequal treatment with law enforcement and Black community members. This incident has resulted in uniting an international community of people, organizations, and corporations demanding fair and equal treatment for all when in police custody (Hill et al., 2021).

The death of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 is another example of the effect of social distance and how Blacks are perceived as a threat. Ahmaud Arbery was a 25-year-old Black man gunned down by White residents while jogging in his South Georgia neighborhood. A video went viral of Arbery walking into a house under construction in the neighborhood and running out of it, alarming residents because thefts had occurred in the previous days. Another video was released, which also went viral, revealing the incident that occurred with Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael confronting Arbery because he looked suspicious and out of place, which ultimately led to Arbery’s murder. A third White man was involved and was responsible for recording the incident, which implicated him as an accomplice to the murder. The killing of Ahmaud Arbery sparked an outcry from protesters who voiced their frustration about the arrest of the men involved in his murder. They went as far as protesting on the McMichael family’s lawn with signs, and some even had weapons. Arrests were delayed because of Georgia’s citizen arrest and self-defense statutes, which contributed to a nationwide protest for Ahmaud Arbery (Fausset, 2021). The men were eventually arrested months later.

Social distance causes stereotyping to occur, thus allowing for unfavorable labels, terms, and remarks to be placed on a group of people. We researched, listened, and even asked people what are some of the negative terms used to describe people from other races and ethnicities. See Table 1.1.

...

TABLE 1.1 Street Names for Police and Race

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The World Is Very Different Now: 2012–2017
• 2 American Policing: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
• 3 Youth Is Never Wasted on the Young
• 4 Responding to the Need: The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
• 5 Teen and Police Service (TAPS) Academy
• 6 Policing by TOTALS
• 7 The Community Safety Education Act of Texas
• 8 Future: Building the Field of Study for Youth and Policing Studies
• 9 Resources to Reduce the Social Distance between Police and YOUth
• Appendix 1: TEEN POL
• Appendix 2: Evaluation Results
• References
• Index