Detective Lynn Hampton is a 22-year black veteran of the Cleveland Police Department, and currently is the president of the Black Shield Police Association, the union comprising black Cleveland cops. The fact that over 50 years ago black men wearing blue uniforms — and carrying badges and guns — felt the necessity of forming their own union because they weren’t welcome in the still virtually all-white Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association speaks volumes in regards to the racism that existed then, and the fact that two separate unions are still necessary today speaks even louder to the racism that still exists.
However, Hampton’s goal isn’t to integrate the two unions, his goal is more pragmatic: he wants to see more minority and female officers on Cleveland safety forces, and he’s attempting to make that happen — but more on that later.
Certainly black cops weren’t the only professionals that felt it necessary to form their own organization: Black lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants — professionals in virtually all fields — felt excluded by the white-dominated and -controlled groups and banded together to assure their concerns were met and addressed. Indeed, there truly — and sadly — still are two Americas.
But efforts to keep blacks out of a particular profession have always been strongest in policing, both locally and nationwide. In fact, the Cleveland Division of Police first came under a consent decree back in the ’70s, when the NAACP filed and won a federal lawsuit that forced the city to hire more black cops. The city was at that time 33 percent black but the police department was only 13 percent black. Nonetheless, the minute the consent decree ended in 1994 the exclusionary practices once again reared their ugly head. The very next cadet class was once again virtually all white (and male), as have all of the classes since the decree was lifted.
Many — certainly not all — whites have always felt that policing should be the exclusive domain of white males. And if you want to see this played out in a quasi-police agency, simply look at the dearth of black faces wearing uniforms of Homeland Security at the airport the next time you fly out of Cleveland. And due to reactionary court decisions, there’s not one damn thing that can be done about this gross inequality.
However, the Black Shield under Hampton’s leadership is attempting to change things in Cleveland. In conjunction with the Vanguards (the black firefighter’s union) and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s office, a Public Safety Minority Recruitment Fair is being held on the Tri-C Metro Campus at the Jerry Sue Thornton Building, 2500 E. 22nd Street, Sat 10/3 from noon-3 pm. Interested parities can sign up for pre-civil service training classes for police, fire and EMS departments.
Getting minorities to go into a field of work that for centuries attempted to bar them is no small task. Indeed, up until a decade ago, it was unusual to see white and black cops assigned to the same patrol car, and the fire department is still racially segregated, with separate “houses” (the term used for fire stations) for each race. Blacks work out of “black houses” and whites out of “white houses.”
But clear evidence exists that when communities are policed by cops that are of the same race as the citizens being policed, the number of confrontations — and more importantly, deaths at the hands of cops — reduce, and in many instances dramatically. Crime in these communities decreases also when respect increases between cops and citizens. This makes all of the sense in the world since cultural and background differences are primarily the root cause of police/citizen conflicts. Some white guy from the suburbs, even those with the best of intentions, simply is not going to be as sensitive to the needs of minority communities as someone from that community is going to be.
That’s why Hampton came up with the slogan, “Be the Cop You Want to See in Your Community.” Indeed, if blacks are sick and tired of reports of police brutality and young black males dying from shots fired almost exclusively by white cops, then we need for our young people of good moral character to give back to their community by becoming a police officer — at least for five years.
We as a race can no longer simply complain about police brutality and the evidenced self-genocide among urban youth; we have to do something. And we can start by telling everyone of color who thinks they can qualify to carry a badge and a gun — and dispense justice in a fair and evenhanded manner — to show up on October 3. That would be an excellent first step in the long and arduous journey of creating a safe and sane society for all Americans.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.