Town hall meeting held on racial profiling in Torrance
Community Contributor | 6-25-2010 | Comments |
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By LaMonica Peters, executive producer, "The Hutchinson Report" on KPFK 90.7 FM
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) called on South Bay residents to come out to a town hall meeting Thursday night to express their experiences and concerns about the alleged racial profiling by the Torrance Police Department. Located at the United Steel Workers (USW) Local 975 Union Hall in Carson, the event was moderated by Earl Ofari Hutchinson. Hutchinson is a well known local activist, political analyst, national columnist, and radio show host for KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles. He began with some startling statistics on racial profiling making it clear that even in this day and age racial discrimination in the form of profiling is very much alive. For example, he stated that statistics in Seattle, WA showed that although African Americans make up only six percent of the population, they account for 21 percent of the stops made by the police in that city. Hutchinson later reminded the audience of an incident just last year in which 33 African American students were detained on a local Los Angeles college campus because Sheriff's deputies were looking for drugs. The deputies also detained one Latino student who attempted to record the incident. While drugs were never found on any of the students, the Sheriff's Department did have to pay a settlement to those students unlawfully detained.
Peter Bibring of the ACLU/SC spoke about the organization’s mission as well as some of the things they have accomplished in regards to racial discrimination and police departments all over Southern California. He stated that in 2008, the ACLU/SC released a report by Yale economist Ian Ayres showing that African Americans and Latinos were disproportionately stopped by the Los Angeles Police Department. As a result, they urged the department to make improvements to the complaints process and begin prevention training as well as establishing a system that would help identify officers engaging in racial profiling early on.
However, the man of the hour was Robert Taylor, an African American Torrance resident who says he was discriminated against by the Torrance Police Department in March of this year. Taylor, an ex-police officer and local reverend with no criminal record, has lived in Torrance for 10 years. While taking his 15-year-old daughter home from school, he was pulled over by Torrance police officers a few feet from his home. He was asked to step out of his vehicle, frisked and had his car illegally searched for about an hour in front of his neighbors. After demanding to know why he was being subjected to this treatment, he was told that the system showed that there were four arrest warrants for a person named Robert Taylor. The Sheriff suggested that he go to the DMV to check his record and when he did, he found no warrants in the last 10 years on his record. Taylor was later told by the police that he was really stopped because his car resembled that of a robbery suspect who was in his 30s and stood 5 feet 5 inches tall. Taylor is in his 50s and stands 6 feet and 1 inch tall. He immediately filed a complaint with the Torrance Police Department but — four months later — has heard nothing from Internal Affairs.
Hutchinson went on to make it a known fact that Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto had been invited to participate in the town hall meeting but declined. It was Hutchinson’s view that the elected officials and higher ups in Torrance had created and allowed a hostile environment to exist for minority Torrance residents and visitors out of fear of a demographically changing city. After the incident with Taylor in March, Hutchinson mobilized a march on a Sunday morning near the area where Taylor was pulled over and to his surprise, was met with opposition by an all-white group of supporters of the Torrance Police Department who carried their own signs reading, “We support Torrance PD” and hurled racial epithets at the Taylor supporters. In Hutchinson's opinion, this was clearly orchestrated. This demonstration was chronicled in the Daily Breeze as well as the L.A. Times.
The evening closed with those in the community sharing their own experiences with the Torrance Police Department. The stories all held a common thread: African American, male, wrongly identified and detained by the police. Gary Stepter (pictured right), a man in his late 40s and who lives in and works for the City of Torrance, described being held at gunpoint outside of his apartment by several police officers because they thought he was a suspect. The victim later identified him as the wrong man. He was made to lay face down on the concrete, told not to make eye contact with any officer for several minutes, even after it was determined that they had the wrong man. An African American male audience member asked if racial profiling was even illegal because it was done so frequently in his opinion. Bibring clarified that it is indeed illegal and violates the equal treatment clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well as the Fourth Amendment which guarantees the right to be safe from illegal search and seizure without probable cause. In the end, it was concluded that continuing to be silent about racial profiling is not the answer but a joint commitment from the community at large as well as organizations like ACLU is needed to continue the fight for racial justice — even in the 21st century.
Tags: earl ofari hutchinson kpfk lamonica peters racial profiling the hutchinson report torrance