By Raynard Jackson
BlakPAC Blogger
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report
on the state of the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) as a part of
its civil rights investigation following the death of Freddie Gray.
The press release about the report stated,
“The Justice Department announced today that it found reasonable cause
to believe that the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) engages in a
pattern or practice of conduct that violates the First and Fourth
Amendments of the Constitution as well as federal anti-discrimination
laws.
BPD makes stops, searches and arrests without the required
justification; searches and arrests; uses excessive force; and
retaliates against individuals for their constitutionally-protected
expression. The pattern or practice results from systemic deficiencies
that have persisted within BPD for many years and has exacerbated
community distrust of the police, particularly in the African-American
community. The city and the department have also entered into an
agreement in principle to work together, with community input, to create
a federal court-enforceable consent decree addressing the deficiencies
found during the investigation.”
I have been stunned by the muted reaction by both the Black community and the media.
Let me remind you that at the time of Gray’s death last year,
Baltimore had a Black mayor, a Black police chief, a Black prosecutor, a
Black president of the city council, a Black congressman and an almost
fifty percent Black police force.
Juxtapose that with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a few years ago. The Justice Department, led by then-Attorney General Eric Holder, went to Ferguson and did a similar investigation
and found identical results to Baltimore. The Ferguson reports are very
similar to the report issued about the Baltimore Police Department.
The media narrative about Ferguson was that the police force was
racist. White cop kills unarmed Black man. According to the 2010 U.S.
Census, Blacks make up roughly 70 percent of the population in Ferguson
and more than 20 percent live in poverty. When Michael Brown was shot
and killed in Ferguson, the mayor was White, there was only one Black on
the six-member city council (.096 percent) and only three Blacks out of
53 policemen (5.6 percent) and was listed as the sixth most segregated
city in the U.S.
The NAACP’s president and CEO, Cornell Brooks basically copied and
pasted the statement he issued after the Ferguson reports and reused it
for the Baltimore report.
The NAACP is “supposed” to be the nation’s premier civil rights
organization, but time after time they have been shown to be huge
hypocrites. Upon the Justice Department’s release of their damning
report on Ferguson last year, Brooks said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “the mayor needs to resign.”
Strangely enough, Brooks never called for the resignation of the
Mayor of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is a Black Democrat.
I am really trying hard to understand what is going on here. Ferguson
and Baltimore were both run from top to bottom by Democrats, both
cities had an unarmed Black male killed at the hands of their police and
both cities erupted in violence after the incidents. The Justice
Department came to the same conclusion about both cities: that the
cities and their police forces were incompetently run and employed
policemen who violated a plethora of federal and civil rights laws.
The only difference between the two cities comes down to race.
Ferguson was run by all Whites and Baltimore was run by all Blacks.
So, if Ferguson was a “racial” issue, what do you call Baltimore? Why
have our Black civil rights leaders and activists reacted differently
to the Justice Department’s report on Baltimore’s police department?
Where are the cries for Rawlings-Blake to resign? She also serves as
the secretary of the Democratic National Committee and president of the
U.S. Conference of Mayors. Why is she not being asked to resign from
those positions?
Most of the violations listed by the Justice Department happened
during her time as mayor. Is she not also a racist? Americans, in
general, and Blacks specifically must be consistent in their calls for
justice and equality, whether the mayor of a city is Black or White.If they preside over a law-breaking, corrupt police department and
allow that type of culture to fester, shouldn’t that elected official be
forced out of office?
We, as Blacks, lose the moral high ground when we are not consistent
in our quest to make America a better nation. Whites lose the moral high
ground when they constantly try to minimize the role that race plays in
our society. Both approaches are equally as wrong, but we both must
strive to be equally right.
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