Wilder School hosts symposium on race, policing tactics

Photo by: Andrew Crider
Photo by: Andrew Crider
Photo by: Andrew Crider

The Wilder School of Government and Public Policy hosted the first in a series of symposiums on policing in America on March 24.

The symposium, which focused on the issue of race, featured professors from the University of Missouri, Rutgers University and Morgan State University, alongside VCU Police Chief John Venuti and Police Chief of the Metro Washington Airports Authority Scott Booth.

“The issue of race and policing is obviously important,” said former patrol officer and professor of criminology at University of Missouri David Klinger. “And it’s been important for a long long time before Ferguson.”

In his studies, Klinger said he found that St. Louis, a city which has suffered from white flight since the 1950’s, has become racially divided with African-Americans living in the north of the city, and other races primarily living in the south end of the city.

Klinger found that the concentration of violence occurred in several parts of the city, but police-involved shootings occurred primarily in the north.

“Race overwhelming drives officer-involved shootings,” Klinger said.

Klinger pressed for a need for a national database on police shootings and more reporting on when shots are fired and not just when someone dies from police gunshots.

Currently, news publications such as the Guardian and the Washington Post are compiling data of individuals killed by police. However this data does not include when shots-fired were or were not fatal. This makes a difference, according to Klinger.

“Of 239 shootings only 39 were killed,” Klinger said. “If you looked at dead bodies, you would miss the lion’s share.”

Rutgers criminal justice professor Andrews Rengifo presented on his study of New York crime in communities, and said he found high concentrations of negative interactions between the police and the community are detrimental to fighting crime.

“For youth in our sample, there is a overwhelming fear of crime,” Rengifo said. “But there is also fear of the police.”

Rengifo said he found there is a tradeoff between avoiding police and avoiding crime, where communities that developed negative relationships with police would be more difficult to police given the lack of citizen support.

Morgan State University professor Natasha Pratt Harris described how personal stories can be powerful to tell stories of bad policing.

“A lot of the frustration in Baltimore and nationally centers on that fact,” Harris said. “It is a fact that the system does not prosecute bad officers. A lot of the persons harmed by law enforcement were not shot by law enforcement.”

Harris indicated problems with the police originate with slave patrols and the police’s historical role in harming African-Americans.

Harris said there needs to be more community dialogue to fix these problems, otherwise young people may believe that problems with the system are just natural for the system.

Both police chiefs at the symposium added there is a need for police to adjust their goals to serve the community.

“Every minute of every day should be spent restoring trust in policing,” Venuti said.
Venuti, who heads one of the largest university police departments in the country with 92 sworn officers, stressed the importance of community involvement in policing.

“The police department does not make VCU a safe place, the entire community coming together makes VCU a safe place,” Venuti said. “We need to deploy based on the needs of the community. “

Booth indicated that police sometimes face difficulties with policing high crime communities and they needed to rise to face these challenges.

“Some of those neighborhoods where I would deploy officers would have the least amount of trust for officers,” Booth said. “Many of the things we’ve run from for years have surfaced and they will make us better.”

The next Wilder School symposium will discuss terrorism and radicalization and will occur on April 14 in the Student Commons Theatre from 3-5 p.m.


Staff Writer, Andrew Crider

Andrew Crider, photo by Brooke MarshAndrew is a junior economics major who has written for student newspapers since he was in high school. Andrew is interested in political history, aviation, photography and running. He has a tendency to refer to his peers, coworkers and bosses as “ma’am” or “sir,” but is getting better about referring to his friends at the CT by their first names instead. // Facebook

crideraa@commonwealthtimes.org

 


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