Image is everything

Back in December, the SF Chronicle revealed that San Francisco arrested blacks faster than did other major cities in California. I considered the ideas the police advanced and concluded, based on my own lifelong knowledge of the City, that the police were probably correct: San Francisco is a liberal white City across the Bay from two large, crime-ridden, largely black cities, making it likely that the citizens of those latter cities will see SF as easy pickings. In other words, SF gets commuter criminals. (We have a similar, albeit much small commuter crime fallout in my neck of the woods, near SF.) What this means is that SF cops probably aren’t racist; they are simply responding to real crimes committed by real African Americans preying on real white people in the always slightly-unreal City of San Francisco.

Nevertheless, in politics, image is everything, so San Francisco is being told to change its practices to make the cops look less racist (never mind the facts on the ground):

The San Francisco Police Department needs to adopt broad reforms to avoid racial profiling or the perception of it, and it runs the risk of outside intervention if it does not do so, a national expert reported to Mayor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday.

Newsom hired criminologist Lorie Fridell to evaluate the department’s practices in December after The Chronicle reported that San Francisco arrests African Americans at a higher rate than any other major city in the state.

Fridell, a racial-profiling expert who is an associate professor at the University of South Florida, concluded that arrest disparities such as those found by The Chronicle cannot answer the question of whether policing in the city is racially biased.

All the same, she said, “San Francisco needs to implement reforms in this realm on its own initiative to reduce the risk of outside intervention, such as an investigation or lawsuit by the Department of Justice.”

The expert is, of course, right. The SFPD cannot function if it bears the pejorative “racist” label. It’s just that, as I reach this point in the article, I’m really wondering what the SFPD is supposed to do given the criminal demographics in the area: Catch and release Whites and Asians who haven’t committed crimes, just to make the numbers look better? Willfully ignore crimes committed by African-Americans to lower those arrest numbers? Decriminalize the types of activities for which African-American commuter criminals are most likely to get arrested?

If you thought of any of those, you’d be wrong. What the department needs to do is “re-educate” the police and cull new applications for latent racism. Thus, these are some of the expert’s 28 recommendations:

Racial-profiling expert Lorie Fridell’s key recommendations:

— Implement state-of-the-art practices aimed at “producing fully fair and impartial policing.”

— Revamp police training to include material to help officers be aware of unconscious biases.

— Develop new training for sergeants, lieutenants and field-training officers to give them tools to promote fair and impartial policing by those they supervise.

— Revise background checks of police applicants to include exploration of the candidates’ attitudes toward and interactions with members of other racial or cultural groups.

— Set up department-conducted focus groups around the city “with resident stakeholders” to discuss topics of mutual concern, including racially biased policing and perceptions of how it is practiced.

— Create an advisory board to help Chief Heather Fong implement the reforms and hire a consultant to help push needed changes.

— Have the chief regularly report to the Police Commission on the progress of the reforms.

As I said, the SFPD has a real problem, because its perception as racist will destroy its ability to be effective. Nevertheless, I’m deeply uncomfortable that the approach to a real problem (commuter criminals preying on SF citizens) is to engage in the Orwellian task of purifying the thoughts of every individual cop.

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