Chair of communication studies puts police forum comments into perspective

To the Cigar,Recent letters to the Cigar, as well as personal correspondence that I have received, have made clear to me that my remarks regarding arming campus police - as represented in the Cigar - were not well- received.

Of course, the article that quoted me did not have space to provide the complete remarks I made at the forum. I hope that more context will make my position more clear, though it may not make it more popular.

First, let me restate what I said at the forum: I am grateful for campus police. They are colleagues that I value; they have always been there when I needed them, and have always been professional and effective.

I went on to say that we, as a nation - all of us, me included - live in a culture influenced by skin color. I believe this is no more and no less true of our police officers than it is of the rest of us. However, the subject at hand and the root of my concern is how this cultural influence affects policing.

Research (which has been replicated in numerous states, such as New Jersey and Maryland) shows that drivers of color are almost five times as likely to be stopped by the police as white drivers committing the same traffic violations.

They are also more likely to have their vehicle or person searched than white drivers are, although statistical data shows that contraband is found in the vehicles of white drivers and the vehicles of drivers of color at the same rate (28 percent.)

This research suggests to me that police officers, like everyone else in our culture, have been acculturated to seeing people of color as a particular threat. If we extrapolate from traffic stop behavior to other encounters with police, our students of color may be almost five times as likely as a white student to be perceived as such a threat when they are engaging in the same behaviors as white students.

If guns are introduced, a misunderstanding could become fatal.

Our current students may be too young to remember the shooting of Providence police officer Cornell Young, a black man, in 2000.

Officer Young was off-duty when he was shot by an on-duty officer who misinterpreted the situation. The officer who shot Young had been his classmate at the Police Academy.

Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old black man, was shot and killed early on New Year's morning of this year by an officer from the Bay Area Rapid Transit police force in Oakland, Calif.

Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old black man, was shot and killed in the Bronx on Feb. 4, 1999, by New York City police officers.

Each of these cases involves a young black man whose behaviors were misinterpreted by police officers.

Anyone in circumstances similar to these might have made the same misinterpretations, but it was the presence of guns that turned each of these incidents into tragedy.

Again, I believe campus police officers to be no more influenced by skin color than any of us; we all live in a culture that, too often, defines people by it.

As an academic community, we are obligated to try to change that, just as we are obligated to protect our students to the best of our ability. I believe we must find better ways to protect our community than by introducing guns.



Lynn Derbyshire

Chair of Communication Studies