Resolution to End Profiling Passes
By Henrietta J. Burroughs
East Palo Alto Today
Posted on November 11, 2008
It was an emotional night—for those who came to testify and for the Palo Alto City Council members who responded to the testimony they heard. Many in the city council chambers were there to speak to the issue of racial profiling and it was the task of the council to decide on the “Adoption of a Resolution Expressing its Condemnation of Racial Profiling and Affirming a Policy of Zero Tolerance for Racial Profiling.”
At the end of the more than two-hour discussion of the issue, the resolution passed unanimously, with the council reaffirming the position the city had taken in the past to oppose and condemn racial profiling.
The majority of the 17 speakers, who addressed the council during the oral communications portion of the meeting, talked about their own experiences or the experiences of those they knew who had been stopped because they were “driving while black.”
Betty Ann Bryant told how her son was ticketed by Palo Alto police officers when he was 18, after he received a car on his birthday and was driving for the first time. During her remarks, she repeated several times, that Palo Alto had a “dirty little secret that can no longer be swept under the rug.”
East Palo Alto resident Eric Stuart said that he was a living example of what Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson was talking about when she made her controversial comments about instructing her officers to make “consensual contacts” with African American men. Stuart related how he had been stopped four times, unnecessarily, as he drove through Palo Alto to his job at Stanford University.
In telling the council that it should be ashamed of itself if it kept her as the chief of police, Start said, “It is not about policies, it is about people. “Chief Johnson should have been fired a long time ago.” Stuart said that he wanted to thank Johnson for opening up a can of worms.
Jamillah Wright related how she had been stopped every single night when she drove to Palo Alto at one o’clock in the morning to pick up her brother at the train station on University Avenue when he got off from work. “I don’t think you realize that it’s a serious situation here. It happens to us all the time,” she said.
Gail Noble, who lives in San Jose told the council that she moved from Palo Alto to protect her children. “Our sons have records because of profiling. You guys cannot continue to keep your eyes closed,”
The council heard speaker after speaker, including East Palo Alto residents Michael Francois, William Webster and Glenda Savage. Francois told the council that the problem starts at the top and that he believed that the council would make the right decision. William Webster said that he was surprised at all of the hullabaloo, because racial profiling was not a surprise. He spoke of his friend who had moved from the city 15 years ago to save her sons. Glenda Savage recommended that the council bring in an ombudsman to assist them in finding solutions, since the problem had happened and would continue to happen until concrete steps were taken.
Chief Johnson did have her defenders during the public testimony, including former North County Supervising District Attorney Jay Boyarski, who praised Chief Johnson for her professionalism in responding to whatever complaints that he brought before her. He said that it would be unfortunate if the council ignored all of the positive things that she had done. Council member Jack Morton said that Johnson misspoke just as President-elect Obama had misspoken when he talked about some Americans who leaned on their guns and their religion. Just as Obama had stumbled, Morton said that Chief Davis stumbled and should not be condemned.
Councilmember Sid Espinosa disagreed. He said, that Johnson’s statement was not just a mistake of words, but represented a persistent problem in the Palo Alto community.
After asking and receiving an answer to a technical question, City Council member Yoriko Kishimoto was so touched by the public testimony she heard that she wiped away tears as she thanked the speakers for the stories they shared.
Councilmembers John Barton and Pat Burt said that they regretted not speaking up or taking any action in the past when incidents of racial profiling had been brought to their attention.
In the end the Palo Alto City Council agreed that it was not necessary to engage in racial profiling to fight crime. Mayor Larry Klein said “People can be guilty of racial profiling even when they think they’re not. We’re going to have to do a lot of work to be a larger community.”
All on the council agreed that the resolution was only the beginning. In taking concrete steps to address the issue, the council at the urging of Council member Yiaway Yeh, agreed to examine the data collected with police stops on a quarterly basis. Palo Alto’s new city manager Jim Keene said that he would present more detailed information to the city council regarding additional steps that can be taken to combat racial profiling by December 17.