Editor’s note: This commentary is by Paul L. Kendall, of Braintree, a retired government, corporate and not-for-profit executive who has served as a trustee of Gifford Medical Center and of the Vermont Association of Health and Hospital Systems. He was a founding director of the Vermont Care Organization in 2016-17.
I have been pulled over several times for non-serious traffic infractions – going 36 mph in a 25 mph zone, a nonfunctioning taillight, not full-stopping at a stop sign, etc. Most of the time it was no big deal. The police officer told me why I had been asked to stop, checked my driver’s license and the car registration, gave me a warning or issued me a ticket, and let me proceed. But once I was afraid of the consequences, and I ran.
It was in the summer of 1964 when I was a civil rights worker in Mississippi. Living and working in an African American community to register voters for the new Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, I witnessed how people were frequently stopped for minor “offenses,” arrested, and jailed. On this particular occasion, I had rented a car in Memphis and the next day was planning to drive a delegation to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to witness the historic results of our voter registration effort at the Democratic National Convention.
I had just picked up some co-workers from our office and was pulling away from the curb when a local patrol car came down the street behind me. Unfortunately, a seat belt was partially stuck in the passenger door — I could either stop to fix the problem or continue driving and hope that the policemen would not notice it. I chose to stop at the next corner.
As soon as the passenger door was opened, the patrol car flashed its lights for me to pull over. The obvious “offense” was that I had neither used the distress lights to signal a problem nor pulled over to the curb before opening the door, even though it was a narrow two-lane neighborhood street with no other traffic. Knowing that I would be arrested and detained for several days if I stopped, I ran.
Quickly turning several corners, I jumped out of the car. When the police arrived, I was surrounded by friends who would testify that I had been there for hours. The police could do nothing, so they left the neighborhood. I left Mississippi early the next morning.
The difference in my behavior between this incident and the others? Fear. At no other time have I ever been asked why I was in a neighborhood; how I could afford a nice car, or who was the young lady with me. I have never been asked to step out of the car, to permit a search of it, or to open its trunk. I have never been concerned that I might be physically searched, handcuffed, thrown on the ground, or arrested. Why? Because being white I was not the subject of racial discrimination and because the “offense” did not warrant any of these actions.
However many persons with varying skin colors live with these fears daily. In the Jim Crow South of the 1960s, the vigilante “justice” of the Ku Klux Klan was being institutionalized by making “legal” the unaccountable actions of the police. The same has happened here in the more subtly racist North. Vigilante “justice” has become police “protection.” If you do not like the Black guy in front of you, just call 911.
White people have historically trusted what police officers say, giving deference to them in court. We now know that such trust has been grossly abused, especially when it comes to testimony against African Americans and Latinos. We now know that such minor offenses as passing a fake $20 bill, sleeping it off in your car, walking in a street where there is no sidewalk, or simply asking an officer “Why?” can quickly escalate to body slams, beatings, arrests and death – all with police impunity.
The pervasive police bias towards stopping persons of color, their disproportionate response to minor infractions, their lack of accurate reporting, the reluctance of their superiors to penalize misbehavior, the lack of transparency in police complaint reviews, and the judicial hurdles preventing convictions – these are all failures in police accountability. And without body-camera recordings to replace the unreliable verbal testimony of arresting officers, none of this will change.
Yes, limiting the use of chokeholds is an important policy change, but funding the purchase of body cameras and the storing of their recordings is just as important. There is no better way to assure compliance with that policy, to motivate better police behavior, or to rebuild public trust in those who are sworn “to serve.”
Unfortunately, the recently passed police reform bill (S.219) leaves funding decisions to some indeterminate future legislative action. That is not acceptable. The Legislature needs to do it now, as soon as it returns from its summer recess in August. A failure to do so would make the policy change a meaningless victory.
