Policing and Race Relations: What the Country Can Learn from Boston

• Story by Alex Newman and Alison Bauter, Patch staff

Baton Rouge, St.Paul, New York City, Baltimore, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Ferguson.

Despite a history of racial tension, Boston has so far escaped its own firestorm that surround police killings of black men in these cities and others. It could be police policy, and it could be the diligence of the city's community and faith organizations. Or, it could simply be luck.

The Boston Police Department has received national recognition for making strides in community relations, and statistics illustrate the improvement - even if incremental.

Boston could well be one viral shooting away from "exploding," according to the head of one police partner organization. Unlike many cities, though, police here have procedures in place to work with black community leaders to mitigate the fallout and, they hope, safeguard what trust they have built.

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'The Major Difference'

Last week, national tensions ratcheted still higher after citizen videos captured one police shooting and broadcast the aftermath of another live. Then on Thursday, a black man in Dallas fired on police, killing five and wounding more as he targeted white officers.

Police arrested hundreds over the weekend during protests in Baton Rouge, St. Paul and elsewhere in the country. Twenty-one officers were reportedly injured during a standoff on a Minnesota freeway.

In Boston, hundreds marched in a peaceful protest and staged demonstrations this past weekend, with no arrests or injuries reported.

It's one sign of changed times in a city where police and black residents have a fractious history.

Protests over school busing desegregation exploded into riots in the 1970s. As recently as 2009, local headlines spread from Cambridge to the White House after a black Harvard professor arrested outside his own home was later referred to as a "jungle monkey" in a widely condemned mass email sent by one Boston police officer.

Boston has also seen officer-involved shootings, roughly two per year in recent history, but none sparked the viral outrage of other cities' killings. Some believe due credit goes to the strides made by Boston Police.

"I think that a major difference between Boston and many other large cities is the close relationship that has been built between the police and the local community leaders and the local clergy," said Kenneth Anderson of Boston firm Byrne & Anderson LLP. Anderson serves as union attorney for the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association.

Anderson credits current and former police commissioners, mayors, and leaders in the black community for cultivating and maintaining those relationships.

"The community leaders and ministers calling for peace and patience goes a long way in preventing violent protests," he said by email. "So far, all of the police involved shootings that I have been involved with in my eighteen years of defending Boston patrol officers have been very clean and clearly justified, so by having the Commissioner quickly meet with these leaders to get this information out to the community, the police department has been able to gain the community’s trust."

Darnell Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, is among the leaders reviewing those cases in partnership with police.

He said the relationship between officers and their communities in Boston has improved, but it's not at "100 percent."

He credits a coalition comprised of some of the Boston Police Department's top brass, including the commissioner, superintendent-in-chief and command staff, as well as community leaders such as clergy, members of the State House, the Urban League, NAACP, and lawyers from the Committee for Civil Rights, as establishing a dialogue between law enforcement and civilians.

"I reached out to the commissioner and superintendent after Dallas," he said. "And they've reached out to me after officer-involved shootings."

The group has reviewed four or five videos of officer-involved shootings to determine if a different outcome was possible, according to Darnell Williams. During these reviews, coalition members have the opportunity to offer commentary, ask questions, and provide feedback.

"That does not happen in every municipality across the nation," Williams said. "It's a developing process, but it's been beneficial to develop the rapport to deal with these issues so that they won't blow up."

According to Mapping Police Violence, an online data project that tracks police shootings and demographics, Boston Police have shot and killed seven people since January 2013. Of those seven, six were black and one was Latino. Of the six black men, all were reportedly armed with either a knife or gun, and five allegedly attacked police.

Based on that data, Boston's six deaths are among the lowest recorded number across the 100 largest metro areas, and Massachusetts ranks 45th nationally in number of police shootings. (More on Mapping Police Violence project's purpose and methodology here.)

Rush to Judgement

As viral videos of police shootings elsewhere in the country flash across millions of screens, union attorney Anderson's concern is on the murkier cases. He worries about a communication breakdown - a push for accountability or explanation without the necessary time for thorough and appropriate police investigation.

"If there is a shooting with a questionable video, I am afraid that there could be a rush to judgment based on the precedent that has been set in the past," he said.

Williams believes preemptive dialogue could prove beneficial in addressing an incident like Baton Rouge or the shooting outside St. Paul.

"We're further along than many of the other cities around the nation in terms of this conversation and dialogue," he said. "We're not out of the woods, because we are one shooting away from exploding or imploding, but I think we can get out in front of that because of the nature of the dialogue that is in fact transpiring."

Tough to Trust

On Saturday, hundreds gathered outside of the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury for a rally in support of victims of police violence, as well as the officers killed and wounded in Dallas.

The rally coincided with a panel discussion on public safety organized by the group Determined Divas.
Julia Mejia, one of the six "Divas," said her group holds community dialogues based on issues ranging from housing to education.

Mejia believes racism persists in Boston, but the policing is different than what's been occurring on a national scale. Still, she remains concerned both about the prospect of police violence and violence being perpetrated by members of her community. She worries for her daughter.

"I'm living in fear in my own community, and I’m living in fear in all different types of spaces," she said. "I’m concerned and it's not just about police violence against our people, but it’s also our own people against our people."

When they visit the neighborhood bodega, Mejia said she'll stop her daughter before leaving to double-check whether it's safe outside. When they drive, Mejia said she's worried about getting pulled over "for no reason."

"I have my daughter [in the car]. I don’t want to be disrespectful, and I don’t want to act like I’m afraid of the police in front of my daughter," she said. "I don’t want her growing up thinking that we have to be afraid of the people who are supposed to protect us."

In 2015, The Boston Globe reported complaints against Boston police officers were down to 386 in 2014, compared with 527 just one year before. "Use-of-force complaints are at a more-than-two-decade low," the paper reported. "Now, most complaints allege disrespectful treatment."

The paper notes that complaints are concentrated against officers in South Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain, who "have been the subject of complaints regarding untruthfulness, use of force, disrespectful treatment, unbecoming conduct, and criminal violations."

Working Together

Carlos Henriquez, who spoke at the event organized by Mejia's group Saturday, praised the current police administration in Boston for its transparency in working alongside the community.

Showing public shooting video to community leaders, "That’s a step forward in progress; we’ve never seen that before. And that’s great because it quells your concerns and you have some transparency," he told Patch.

Henriquez, a former state representative whose political career ended following two misdemeanor convictions, now works as a community organizer. He said that while concrete action is being taken on both sides, he hopes for more transparency in the daily encounters between law enforcement and civilians.

In addition to those efforts, police, state and city leaders consistently engage in prominent outreach efforts to Boston's black community, hosting Peace Walks and coffee hours with officers.

But Dorchester resident Carl Williams believes that without specific policy changes, those relationship-building efforts are largely for show.

"I don't think it's just photo ops and ice cream trucks and Coffee with a Cop. We need to do things [to build trust] like not doing racially biased policing," said Williams, an ACLU attorney who has lived in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood for the past two decades. "We're policed for these tiny, tiny, tiny infractions. And then, what it breeds in you, is an absolute disrespect for the law."

A black man, Williams cites numerous personal examples -- being stopped, he said, for alleged traffic infractions or roughly handled by police over an alleged parking violation -- and those he's seen in his professional capacity, like a Roxbury domestic abuse victim hauled into court over an outstanding fine noticed by police when she called for protection from her violent husband.

Policy Proposals

A police database released earlier this year and pushed by an ACLU lawsuit estimates that 58.5 percent of subjects stopped or observed by police from 2011 through April 2015 were black males. That's down from an estimated 63 percent of encounters in a similar analysis between 2007 and 2010.

The number is still disproportionately high when black residents comprise only 25 percent of the city's total population.

That previous study "did show some racial disparities that must be addressed," according to a police press release at the time. Since that time, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans has said his department has retooled its procedures on stopping residents and introduced new training to address racial profiling and bias.

Evans said in 2014 officers focus on high-crime areas and on individuals with gang affiliations and criminal records. In the latest database, roughly 87 percent of all individuals encountered or observed by police had a criminal record; 26 percent were stopped for actual crimes, such as trespassing or a drug investigation, and 60 percent were non-specifically documented as "investigate person."

Henriquez said increased transparency is not enough if young people still learn to fear police.

"It still needs to move forward and have that be the norm -- not just in extreme situations, but also in a day-to-day interaction. If I ask some of the teens in this room who are half my age, some of them probably have the same experience of looking down a police officer’s barrel," Henriquez said. "That’s the experience that you want to remove if you want to really build trust."

Carl Williams, too, worries about the impact on kids and teens who he said have come to distrust police because they've seen friends stopped without cause or their parents pulled over on a pretext. The Massachusetts ACLU has advocated for a reduction in "stop and frisk"-style policing, and for the institution of mandatory body cameras for Boston police, which recently implemented a body camera pilot program.

Police have disputed the efficacy of the body camera program and many, including Evans, have pushed back.

The Urban League's Darnell Williams said some policy changes within the department, such as body cameras, have been discussed during the community coalition meetings.

"In the past, if there was a pilot that the department was going to introduce, they would implement the policy and receive feedback," he said. "In the case of body cameras and dash cameras, we recommended they explain to the community that we have this technology, this is what it's going to look and feel like and we want your input prior to the execution or implementation."

Ultimately, Henriquez believes both police and civilians need to look at each other as human beings, especially in the current climate.

"If you see your son as that boy you’re gonna act differently, and vice versa," Henriquez said. "If you just see a uniform, you’re gonna treat that uniform differently than if you see that as a father and a husband wearing a uniform."

>> Top photo by Alex Newman, Patch staff