Last week, the Austin Police Department had a chance to be nationally famous - now it's on the verge of national infamy.
City officials recently refused to let camera crews with Fox's television show "Cops" ride along with Austin officers, but when the U.S. Department of Justice decided to investigate APD, city officials said they welcome an outside review of the department's policing methods. Acting police chief Cathy Ellison said, "Bring it on. We have nothing to hide."
But bringing on this investigation of how officers are trained, how they document incidents and how they use force may prove damning - especially after the shooting of 25-year-old Kevin Brown early Sunday morning by an officer who had previously been suspended for excessive use of force in 2002.
According to a 2007 report by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, APD officers are more than three times as likely to perform a consent search on a black person than a white person. A 2004 Austin American-Statesman study showed that Austin police are twice as likely to use force against blacks than whites. Twelve of the 14 people killed by APD since 1998 were black or Hispanic.
Widespread scrutiny has, in the past, helped mobilize APD's efforts to conquer racial profiling. In 2004, it was the first department in the state to implement a policy requiring written consent before searches at traffic stops, resulting in a 63-percent decline in consent searches. Enforcement officers in Texas can legally conduct a search at any traffic stop without having a legal basis such as probable cause or a warrant, as long as the citizen provides consent for the search. Since many people don't realize they have the right to say "no" to a search, Austin's written consent policy provided a necessary means of informing citizens of their rights.
Despite Austin's efforts, Gov. Rick Perry vetoed SB 1195 in 2005, which would have required written or recorded consent to search vehicles at traffic stops throughout Texas. He suggested the issue be revisited in the 80th Legislature, but no bill of this sort passed when the session came to a close last week. We hope the Department of Justice's critique of Austin's police department can, at the least, further mobilize efforts to enact change statewide.
Although a national investigation may spark scrutiny and bring our police department's flaws to the table, the heart of APD's problems can't be solved through mandates or policy reform. The way police departments handle communities of color is institutionalized, and the everyday routines of officers add to less-than-compassionate attitudes toward the citizens they are charged with protecting.
Regardless of how well records of traffic stops are kept, there is no way to record how often officers unfairly mistreat people of color. The relationship between acts of violence against minorities and racist behavior cannot always be quantified and tabulated, but violence against marginalized minorities only intensifies resentment against law enforcement. The 2005 APD exchange of messages in which officers said "Burn baby, burn," as a nightclub in a predominately black neighborhood went up in flames is a case in point.
On June 11 and 12, the five finalists for Austin's vacant police chief position will participate in a series of forums, meeting with community groups and city residents. Feedback from these meetings will be used by the city manager in determining the recipient of the job. The memory of Sophia King, Jessie Lee Owens, Daniel Rocha and the latest police shooting victim, 25-year-old Kevin Brown, will certainly hang heavy over the meetings, their deaths emblematic of the problems that have plagued APD for years. The next police chief will step into a position under intense pressure and must immediately tend to an angry community.
Yet the many blemishes on APD's record, widespread perception of racial profiling and tangible problems of violence will not go away with the hiring of one leader, but must be abolished by a forthright campaign against racist and violent behavior in all forms.
"Cops" viewers won't be watching APD this year, but the eyes of the U.S. Justice Department, the eyes of Austin's residents and the eyes of the families who have lost loved ones to the police's excessive use of force will, or "To protect and to serve" will forever be an empty formality.
The police chief forums will be held Monday, June 11 at 6 p.m. and Tuesday, June 12 at 8:30 a.m. and noon at the Lester E. Palmer Events Center, 900 Barton Springs Rd.
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