Court Finds Running is Reasonable Response to Police Harassment and Racial Profiling

Walter Scott unarmed black man was chased and shot by a police officer in South Carolina
Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, was chased and shot by a police officer in South Carolina

By Jeffery Robinson

In 2004, University of Virginia football player Marquis Weeks returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown. After the game he described how he did it: “That was just instinct,” Weeks said with a laugh. “Kind of like running from the cops, I guess you could say.”

It’s funny until it isn’t. The “instinct” exists for a reason. Black and brown people have been running from people with badges for generations, going all the way back to the days of the slave catchers, who were predecessors of modern-day police.

Despite his obvious speed, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court caught up with Mr. Weeks this month. The court found that the facts of the case, including that the young Black male suspect tried to avoid the police, did not justify a stop and search of the young man. The court, referring to an ACLU report on “Field Interrogation Observations (FIO)” used by the Boston Police, wrote:

“Rather, the finding that black males in Boston are disproportionately and repeatedly targeted for FIO encounters suggests a reason for flight totally unrelated to consciousness of guilt. Such an individual, when approached by the police, might just as easily be motivated by the desire to avoid the recurring indignity of being racially profiled as by the desire to hide criminal activity.”

Whether you call it FIO or stop and frisk does not matter because they are the same thing. In plain English, the court said that innocent Black people may be reasonable in thinking that the best thing to do when approached by police is to run. The facts about stop and frisk in Boston confirm what Black and brown people have known for years.

In between 2007-2010, people of color accounted for about 75 percent of those stopped by Boston police, 63 percent of them Black in a city where less than 25 percent of the population was Black. In more than 200,000 FOIs, Boston police seized weapons, drugs, or other contraband only 2.5 percent of the time. These disparities aren’t exclusive to Boston, far from it. The ACLU found similar records of police discrimination in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Newark.

Reducing crime will never be accomplished by stopping and harassing innocent people in a racially disparate fashion, and those who suggest FIOs or stop and frisk as a crime solution are advocating policies that we know will fail — they have before and they will every time they are used. What will be accomplished if this practice continues unchecked is that innocent people of color will continue to learn that all too often the police are not there to serve and protect them.  And sometimes the innocent may feel a strong instinct to run from the police to avoid the indignity and interference of being stopped for no justifiable reason.

The truth about our criminal justice system is harsh. To accept the truth about the criminal justice system will require us to challenge assumptions about the fairness of the system that we have comfortably made for decades. Our challenge is to deal with a system that has evolved to a point where racially based police harassment of innocent people is offered as a legitimate criminal justice solution. Race-based policing is a cancer on our justice system. And like any other disease, we must understand the true nature of the disease to cure it.

William Burroughs wrote his book “Naked Lunch” about the horrors of drug addiction. He said the title, suggested by Jack Kerouac, referred to “the frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had a “Naked Lunch” moment regarding the true nature of racially biased policing in Massachusetts: They did not like what they saw on the end of the fork, and neither should the rest of us.

Jeffery Robinson is ACLU Deputy Legal Director and Director of the ACLU Center for Justice

About The Author

Disclaimer: the views expressed by guest writers are strictly those of the author and may not reflect the views of the Vanguard, its editor, or its editorial board.

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14 Comments

  1. Napoleon Pig IV

    I’m not surprised the court made this call. After all, running from bullies is a logical tactical response. So is fighting back, a tactical response unlikely to be every objectively reviewed by a court when a cop is the bully.

    However, it is also not logical to ignore the fact that there is a disproportionately high density of criminals in areas that are predominantly black. Yeah, I know – the usual commentary on historical, social, economic, educational, etc. reasons. . . But, since stop and frisk methods don’t work well in the here and now, and neither do educational and social programs, what are the here and now solutions?

  2. hpierce

    Running from bullies is only logical then they “out gun” you… but wait, if they out gun you, you’re dead meat anyhow.  Hard to out run a bullet.  One would be an idiot to try.

    Bullies can only be defeated by confrontation.  The degree of confrontation needs to be intelligently ‘measured’.

        1. Biddlin

          Old white guys get away with a lot. I almost always have a video recorder with me and conspicuously use it when I see police making a contact in public. If approached by the police, I am polite, if somewhat avuncular. If they pretend to have some “right ” not to be filmed, I politely tell them that’s bs.

  3. tribeUSA

    Does a white guy have the right to run from the police in order to maintain his dignity; or is this a privilege reserved only for colored people? Does this law not discriminate against the handicapped? What about the elderly, or those with bum knees who cannot run, or those in wheelchairs; does this law not discriminate against them? Perhaps they have the right to simply ignore the police, and the police must let them go their way?

    Actually, I do not understand this judicial finding. How is it determined if an arrest constitutes harassment or bullying, and who makes that determination on the spot? Is it enough for the suspect to claim to ‘feel’ they are being harassed or bullied, and that is sufficient to force the police to let them go?

     

    Re: “In between 2007-2010, people of color accounted for about 75 percent of those stopped by Boston police, 63 percent of them Black in a city where less than 25 percent of the population was Black.” Were the rate of stops for each racial group commensurate with the rate of crime for each racial group?–without such minimal knowledge, it is not possible to assess whether or not there may have been bias. I would suggest that instead of cataloging people by race, try cataloging them by economic status. I think you will find that poor people of all colors tend to have the highest crime rates; explaining most of the racial differences in arrest rates (since colored people generally have higher poverty rates in most cities), and helping to moderate the unhealthy obsession with race that is serving to drive a wedge between the races–there are opportunities to communicate that abuse of force by police disproportionately affects poor people of all races, and this helps to promote unity among all racial and ethnic groups in a common goal of finding ways to decrease the rate of abuse of force by police (which I believe can be done without vilifying the police, by the way).

    1. Tia Will

      tribeUSA

      Perhaps they have the right to simply ignore the police, and the police must let them go their way?”

      If there is no overt evidence that the individual detained is involved in the commission of a crime, then this is exactly what I think should happen.

       

  4. PhillipColeman

    Innumerable instances of recorded confrontations have been displayed, revealing none of the participants acted reasonably (or responsibly). So it fell to the courts to set a standard of reason.

    When they don’t and courts have to rule, the court solution usually has quite a few flaws. Sometimes the court decision can make the problem even worse. But the courts can justifiably retort, it never should have been given to us.

  5. Tia Will

    SOD

    Running from the cops is always a bad idea”

    Perhaps, but  sometimes so is lying down exactly as directed with your arms in the air as Charles Kinsey ( the caretaker of a man with autism) learned in Miami. The fault does not always lie with the choice made by the individual of police interest, but with the police themselves.

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