Nobody can remain silent

With the events of the last three days in Atlanta, St Paul and Dallas no other city topic seems possible.

You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.

Bobby Seale

White people in the US who stayed silent when black people got killed by police in stairways in New York, while hawking CDs in Atlanta or standing in the street in Ferguson, or after running away from police in Baltimore (to name only a few instances) because they couldn't relate and imagine it could ever happen to them, were probably right, it wouldn't. 

pro Publica graphic

Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater i, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings. (Pro Publica)

But as far as relating to a driver being pulled over by a cop for whatever infraction? This has happened to almost anybody. But getting shot in the process without any threat being voiced, without belligerence, without as much as a tussle with a four year old child in the backseat? Getting gunned down not by one shot but multiple shots aiming to kill, recovery impossible? This, too, is very unlikely to happen to a white man. Yet, the situation is so familiar that even those who managed to not pay attention to police violence and the obvious uneven treatments based on race in spite of everything everybody could  have known for years, would have to wake up from their stupor. 

Guardian statistics

There is no remaining silent possible because what needs to be seen is not only each individual case, as terrible as they are, but one must see the pattern. This pattern cannot be tolerated in a society that calls itself free, enlightened and democratic. Or stated differently, a society that tolerates such patterns is no longer enlightened, free or democratic.

The pattern of uneven and blatantly unjust treatment of the different races, therefore, cannot stand. It is a moral, ethical and democratic imperative to change it. But what exactly, needs to change?

Clearly, the matter isn't as simple as police officers generally believing that blacks should be shot or killed. But police officers believing that black young men would likely be criminals is not much better, nor is blanket fear of young black men which is rampant among whites. The fact that police officers who kill while on duty, are almost immune from prosecution is not acceptable. To get to the roots of causes and effects will take time and many efforts in many areas but it cannot wait any longer.

Police brutality: lopsided

In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities — most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men — represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt. (Washington Post, May 30, 2016)

The heightened awareness and tension of the injustices of the justice system made things worse for now before they hopefully can become better. The unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore has possibly deepened the prejudices about young black men, has heightened the fear. The new scrutiny under which police operates has apparently rendered law enforcement less effective in fighting crime as rising crime rates in Chicago and Baltimore seem to indicate, two cities in which police work is especially seen under a magnifying glass.

The cold blooded murder of police officers through a sniper we saw last night in Dallas will make things much worse, increase divisions and rightly increase fear on the side of law enforcement. (a similar attempt had also occurred in Ferguson). It is the worst possible response to the issue of racial disparities in the justice system.

Guardian graphic

I belong to the faction of people who believe that a gun in every pocket is a bad things that will make everybody less safe. In support of that argument I look to many other civilized developed countries which have fewer guns and fewer murders. Much fewer police shootings as well. As everybody has seen for years, one apparently can debate for decades what is chicken and egg. I won't extend this debate in this space, except for stating that a gun in every pocket clearly makes the work of those who are supposed to uphold law and order much more difficult.

One obvious and immediate improvement should be better training of police forces around the country. Less confrontation, less ratcheting adrenaline levels up, less conflict escalation, less acting on reflex and gut level.  The Wild West style shoot-outs we are seeing much too often in our cities are a poor pattern of modern conflict resolution.

After Las Vegas police in 2009 adopted a use-of-force policy requiring officers to put the highest premium on “the sanctity of human life,” some other departments followed suit. Four years after the change in Las Vegas, the city’s officer-involved shootings had fallen by nearly half. (Washington Post).

De-escalation, communication, partial withdrawal, gathering additional information is in many cases much better than barging in with a testosterone pumped immediate and direct confrontation. The Wild West approach isn't taught as a way to run a business or treat employee conflicts.  It isn't even an acceptable way of behaving in the school yard. So why do we allow police to approach demented people, addicts, juveniles or even outright criminals in this manner? One problem is a poor recording of facts and data.

The landscape of police shootings is surprisingly thinly explored. The FBI is charged with keeping statistics on such shootings, but a Post analysis of FBI data showed that fewer than half of the nation’s 18,000 police departments report their incidents to the agency.
The Post documented well more than twice as many fatal shootings this year as the average annual tally reported by the FBI over the past decade. The FBI and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics now acknowledge that their data collection has been deeply flawed. FBI Director James B. Comey called his agency’s database “unacceptable.” Both agencies have launched efforts to create new systems for documenting fatalities. (Washington Post)

Vox statistic based on 2012 FBI data

Attempts to reform data collection and policing aren't a new, for sure. Community policing, walking the beat (instead of driving), CrimeStat and many other strategies have been devised to move police towards are more proactive, cooperative and "brainy" approach, one of crime avoidance rather than of confrontation or reaction. In spite of all that, anybody who observes urban police in action can see that way too many cops still act in the "old school manner". Clearly, the fact that our large cities and remote villages both breed large cohorts of uneducated, minimally socialized, unemployed and sometimes addicted young people. Many are roaming the streets in search of something to do with their energy, a fact that makes reasonable police work much harder than in countries with a less bifurcated society. Much of what needs to be done is economic development, education, workforce training and generally giving kids in areas of poverty concentration and inner city neighborhoods pathways to opportunity.

Guardian graphic

It is that last part that should interest urban designers, planners and architects. As I have described in much of my writing, social injustice in the US is so systemic, that it frequently permeates planning and design in a furtive way: innocent looking design tasks can turn into tools of exclusion.

The country in general and cities like Baltimore cannot go on like this any longer. The only way change will come is when every citizen realizes that "Black Lives Matter" just as much as any other life and not only realizes that this isn't the current state of affairs, not only stops to accept this as good enough but fully understands that real peace, real justice and real quality of life never sustained as a privilege but only when it was equally offered to all.


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Links
The Guardian's international comparison of police shootings
Washington Post article about deadly police shootings in 2015
Vox.com about Atlanta shooting and general data on police shootings
Deadly Force in Black and White (Pro-Publica)
To see how the facts can be interpreted from the police side, look at this Daily Wire article

Dallas march and shooting 

Related articles on this blog
Indignation is easy, change is hard
Diversity is key to urban success
The real question for the American City