Police Overreach Haunts Southern City: Racial Profiling, Quotas and Secret “Conviction Bonuses”

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/shocking-police-overreach-haunts-southern-city




In the late afternoon of Jan. 3, Robin Dean, a 50-year-old county employee, pulled into a Durham, N.C., Burger King parking lot to give a friend a package of frozen chitlins that she had cooked over the holidays. After the transfer was complete, the pair said goodbye and parted ways. Both were subsequently pulled over by Durham Police.

Dean says an officer told her that there was evidence that she had just engaged in an illegal drug transaction, searched her car without her consent, and called for backup. When Dean worried aloud that she had been racially profiled, she says the white officer called her an “idiot,” although the nearly hour-long stop revealed nothing illegal apart from a window-tinting violation that was later dismissed.

In recent years, stories like this have come to epitomize heightened concerns that, as Durham becomes a regional center for sophisticated culture and cuisine, the drug enforcement strategies of its police increasingly assign second-class status to the city’s minority communities. Over the past several months, protesters alleging police misconduct have pummeled the city’s police headquarters with rocks and met tear gas along the usually amiable streets of this city of 240,000.

In seeking to understand the roots of the city’s divisive policing, lawyers at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice were astonished by what a recent round of public records requests produced. Not only was a federal grant subsidizing what they regarded as the most perniciously targeted drug enforcement operations of the department, but the grant — with a key “performance measure” emphasizing police report their sheer volume of arrests — also appeared to be incentivizing the department to raise its overall number of drug arrests, which overwhelmingly affect the city’s black community. SCSJ attorneys add that recently revealed evidence also indicates that the federally funded program included an illegal system of secret payments law enforcement made to witnesses who delivered successful drug prosecutions — another sign, they say, that the city’s policing has flown off the rails.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

1. What? Corrupt cops? Never. They're good, they just have a tough job, so the badge sniffers say

remember, one brought someone two gallons of milk once.

[paleotn]

3. Don't stereotype....

...it shows a lack of understanding, better suited for wingnuts. There are good and bad in every profession. Remember this is a federally funded program and the Feds set the metrics and incentives. Last I checked, it's the Dems who are currently running executive branch of or government which includes the DOJ.

African Americans in poor neighborhoods are considered soft targets for drug enforcement since on average they lack the resources necessary to adequately defend themselves legally and get stuck with overworked, underpaid and down right awful public defenders. Notice one of the metrics mentioned convictions, not arrests. As opposed to white distributors who more often have the means to hire private attorneys and such. Particularly in a college town like Durham, home of Duke University. Now, throw in a good helping of racism and you've got the situation over there. It's one thing to deal with some racist Cops, but more importantly, the Feds have got to stop incentivising this behavior. Are you listening, President Obama?

[Nanjing to Seoul]

4. Yes. . .and the good coverup the bad because of hazing and possibly getting suicided.

Good cop, bad cop. . .still a cop.

I've been calling blind defenders of police badge sniffers for years.

[elias7]

5. No one is blindly defending anything here

Sometimes police need to be defended because of people who blindly attack. That's not what is going on here.

I will say that the police officers on the street are not being given much of a choice here. You might be setting your sites on the wrong enemy.

[A Simple Game]

7. Blindly attack? This thread is a reaction to what is most likely illegal police activity.

The police that pulled over and illegally searched the persons cars didn't have a choice whether to stop the person or not, so they weren't responsible for their actions? Then who was?

Those police no doubt witnessed a transfer of a package and hoped it was drugs, not feared, hoped. Police everywhere, long ago went from prevention mode to punishment mode. They stopped both parties, obviously they soon knew what was in the package but still pursued a crime, why do you defend that?

[paleotn]

11. Yes, but said illegal police activity...

...is funded and incentivized by a FEDERAL program, administered by Eric Holder's Department of Justice. Did you get that? You know, the same Eric Holder that works for President Obama? Please read, and comprehend the entire article. It's a bad program, coupled with arrest happy cops, incentivized to meet the metrics on arrests and convictions set forth in the federal program. That's a bad mixture, and you can't, in all honesty, JUST focus on one part of it.

THAT'S my point!

[A Simple Game]

13. No not "said illegal activity", illegal activity.

I could make more money by robbing banks, but I know it's illegal and I also have morals that won't allow me to do so.

Do you say that the police you are defending are too stupid to know they are doing something illegal?

These police hoped for a drug bust to the point that when the evidence showed there were no drugs they continued to search.

If these police can be bought for a small incentive, can they be trusted not to take bribes from criminals?

In my eyes there is no way you can paint this into a pretty picture of law abiding police, concerned about the citizens and community but duped by the evil "Eric Holder's Department of Justice".

As for Eric Holder, I doubt many of these probably racist police could give a care what he says or wants.

[99Forever]

6. Given...

... police policies and VIOLENT actions against lawful citizens exercising their Constitutional rights, in blatant disregard for the law of the land, AND their complete failure to police themselves, they have made themselves into enemies of We the People and tools of the 1%.

I trust none of them and avoid them as much as possible. I know which side of their "us or them" bully mentality I fall on.

I didn't always have this opinion, the brutal, immoral, and illegal crap they do made it so.

[paleotn]

9. Wow....

... a lot of police hate here and I do get what your saying. I just don't like lumping all into one category. Like similar groups, they run the spectrum. The bulk maybe lean one way or another, but they're certainly not automatons. I've known cops who are quite liberal in their thinking, even more so than me and that's saying something, but also those who would fit nicely into the East German Stasi.

[99Forever]

10. When they honestly start cleaning up their own...

... and act in the interests of We the People, get back to me. Till then, I'll consider them what they have shown themselves to be.

[paleotn]

12. I do agree, there's a lot that needs cleaning up. (nt)

[socialist_n_TN]

8. Police in the service of oppression are not workers.....

but are just bourgeois cops. That paraphrase of Leon Trotsky is just as apt today as it was almost a century ago.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. 90% give the rest a bad name...

seriously, when the good cops refuse to do anything about the bad cops in their ranks, are they really good?

[etherealtruth]

2. Sickening-yes

Surprising-no

[JJChambers]

14. Alternet (still) isn't credible. (Nt)