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Del. ACLU says few police reforms in 2015, looks to study racial bias in 2016

 

2015 was a year of rising racial tensions between police and the public, and a focus on criminal justice reform in Delaware and nationwide. But in the eyes of state ACLU executive director Kathleen MacRae, the status quo remains the same.

The First State had its share of headline police brutality allegations between white officers and black men this year -- including a not-guilty verdict in the assault trial of Dover Police Cpl. Thomas Webster, and the fatal shooting of Jeremy McDole, a wheelchair-bound black man, by Wilmington Police.

 

MacRae says the Webster verdict surprised her, based on the dash cam video involved in the case. Between that, and a lack of state momentum on widely-requested outside investigations into McDole's death, she says she doesn't think much has changed.

"I think that both of these instances demonstrate the need for transparency and accountability," she says. "And I don't think we have that right now with the police."

In coming years, she thinks the creation of a citizen review board for police-involved shootings would help restore the public trust.

And she says there's work to be done to offset the militarization of police in cities like Wilmington.

"It has shifted the way that they interact with the community, in some cases to the point where they see the people on the street as the enemy to be defeated instead of a community to be protected," MacRae says.

For years, she says, that's been driven by the mindset of the war on drugs.

 

In 2016, she hopes the ACLU can analyze data about arrests in Wilmington to look for evidence of racial bias.

She says they're inspired by an ACLU study in New Jersey that looked at crimes unrelated to drugs or violence, like loitering.

 

"And what the New Jersey study found is that African-American and Hispanic men were 9, 10, 12 times more likely, depending on the community, to be arrested for those very low-level offenses than were whites," MacRae says.

It's what police call "broken windows theory," where easier arrests can yield higher-level offenses back at the station, like drugs or illegal guns on a suspect's person. Broken windows theory also aims to help clean up the streets.
 

But MacRae says it's a problem -- both from a corrections and criminal justice reform perspective, and because more arrests means more times police might have to escalate their use of force, or take a life. That was the case in many high-profile police-involved fatalities that started as low-level arrests or traffic stops around the country.

"The decision for a police officer to arrest is the first step in anybody's involvement with the criminal justice system," she says. "So if we're looking at race and the criminal justice system and the disparate impact on people of color, we've got to start at the arrest level."

 
She says data analysis in Wilmington would be another way to ensure police are being transparent and fair to everyone they serve.
 

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