Police policy a wedge issue in mayoral race

Mayor Martin Walsh offers remarks during the groundbreaking of the Michael L. Bivins basketball courts at Ramsay Park on Washington Street in lower Roxbury. (Photo: Mayor’s Office photo by Don Harney)

On the campaign trail, Mayor Martin Walsh claims credit for reducing arrests, improving relations between police and community residents and diversifying the department’s ranks. Mayoral challenger Tito Jackson has slammed Walsh for his administration’s response to an increase in murders and claims the department is becoming less, not more diverse.

Whoever takes the seat next year will have to confront police-community relations strained at times by perceptions of racial profiling as well a majority-white police force that operates in a majority-people of color city.

As the election approaches, candidates spoke with the Banner last week on their visions on making Boston a safer and more equitable city, touching on crime prevention and resolution, hiring and promotions, community relations and body cameras.

“We’ve completely changed the way we do policing in the city of Boston,” Walsh said during a City Hall interview with the Banner. “In the last three-and-a-half years, the number of complaints has gone down. The number of arrests in the city has gone down.”

“On day one, I will have a violence prevention plan for the summer of 2018,” Jackson said during a Banner phone interview. “The Walsh administration has no comprehensive violence prevention plan for the summer and that’s unacceptable.”

Violence prevention

Walsh recently announced plans for new youth summer jobs focused on 12- to 14-year olds, as well as engaging street workers to enroll at-risk teens in youth center programs, in a bid to get them off the streets and away from situations that could provoke violence. Speaking with the Banner, Walsh also pointed to Operation Exit, a job training and placement assistance program for at-risk or re-entering residents that launched in 2014 and served 26 people in its first year.

Meanwhile, Jackson criticized Walsh’s youth initiative as providing only 200 jobs, and says that if he’s elected, he could produce 5,000 summer jobs for 2018. This would involve partnerships with the private sector and organizations such as College Bound Dorchester. Better funding schools also will keep kids from falling off track, he said.

Case clearance

Walsh says he has seen the personal devastation of violence and is working hard to reduce it to the lowest possible levels.

“People talk about ‘violent neighborhoods’,” Walsh told the Banner. “Those ‘violent neighborhoods’ have good, hard-working people living in them. This is one area I don’t play politics — in violence.”

Jackson says too many perpetrators go unpunished, a dynamic he would like to change. Among his plans: hiring detectives to staff a night shift and providing more resources for the investigations of nonfatal shootings. Funding for this already is there, he says, but needs to be directed into increasing hiring, not paying staggering amounts of overtime — something that amounted to $60 million this year, he says.

“We have 4 percent clearance rate in Boston under Walsh for nonfatal shootings. That is too low. It means that there are people who shot multiple residents walking around free in the city,” Jackson said.

Jackson acknowledged that the changes would require negotiations with the police unions. The patrolmen and detective unions in their latest round of negotiations with the city reached an agreement that included an 8 percent pay raise. It is unclear if Jackson will be able to attain the same rapport with police Walsh seems to: In the month following the contract resolution, 70 police officers donated to Walsh’s campaign, for a total infusion of $30,000. In the same reporting period, Jackson received not one contribution from a donor listing “Police Officer” as his or her occupation.

Jackson says another critical step to case clearance is better community relations so that residents feel safe contacting the police when they have tips. That entails a police force more representative of the populace as well as improving internal culture and external reputation regarding race — something that came to the fore recently when an officer-created video that demeaned black residents caught media attention. Jackson says Officer Joseph DeAngleo, Jr.’s six-month, unpaid suspension for making the video was so light as to condone such activity, while Walsh says it was a pretty hard penalty and carefully thought-out response to a problematic incident.

Hiring officers of color

Currently the Boston Police Department’s gang and homicide units have no people of color, and while the Walsh administration’s recent Resilient Boston report stated that the proportion of blacks and Latinx in the 2015 BPD recruit class was representative of citywide populations and was 36 percent female, specific numbers provided to the Banner contradict that statement. Walsh spokespeople told the Banner the 53-person recruit class was 17 percent black, 13 percent Latinx and zero percent Asian. Meanwhile, the city is 25 percent black, 19 percent Latinx and 9 percent Asian, not accounting for people who are mixed race, according to the American Community Survey 2011-2015 estimates. The Walsh administration also revised its number downward on female representation from 36 percent to 26 percent.

The picture painted by the Walsh administration is that blacks currently are slightly underrepresented among current uniformed BPD officers, comprising 22 percent of the force, not 25 percent, and are less represented among incoming officers, at 17 percent. Latinx presence is among current officers is almost 9 percent, versus 19 percent of the city at large. There is a higher share of Latinx among recruits, although still not on par with the population. Asians, who are 9 percent of the city, constitute 2 percent of the current uniformed force.

The state Civil Service law gives near absolute hiring preference to veterans and many advocates point to it as a major barrier to diversifying the BPD. When asked about the relative merits of the law, Walsh declined to speak, and Jackson said it should be tweaked.

Both mayoral contenders identified other remedies that can be pursued without overturning the veterans preference. Among these are a language hiring preference, a goal long sought by groups such as the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. Michael Gaskin, Walsh administration police diversity officer, said the next hiring cycle now will preference skills in Haitian Creole, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Spanish.

Another move toward inclusion: City Councilor Michael Flaherty in 2014 filed legislation proposing that the Boston residency preference be extended to three years. Walsh vetoed it at the time, stating an intention to re-file. Now, three years later, Walsh administration officials claim it is on his next legislative agenda. Jackson also advocates for this residency extension

Other strategies Walsh cites aim to draw more people of color into the applicant pool — either by recruiting more veterans of color or using a method that does not involve veteran preference. In 2016, the Walsh administration revived the police cadet program, which does not have a veterans preference. One-third of each police recruit class now may be comprise cadets. Currently there are 39 cadets, of whom 27 are of color. Walsh said the next police cadet class would consist of about 20 people, while Jackson proposes increasing the cadet class size. Jackson also suggested national outreach to organizations for veterans of color — a strategy the fire department currently is pursuing — and collaboration with the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (MAMLEO), the Urban League, the NAACP and other community-based organizations.

Even if the applicant pool expands, obstacles may persist: Both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice and MAMLEO report instances in which applicants of color were informed they were being bypassed or were counseled into withdrawing their applications due to trivial marks on their record, such as old speeding tickets.

Walsh says he has effectively tackled a major concern raised by critics when he first ran for office — that the command staff lacks diversity. His administration appointed the first black police chief and superintendent, he said.

Discipline, promotions and body cameras

Many who are critical of the department’s efforts to diversify cite the Walsh administration’s stands on lawsuits challenging discrimination in promotions. Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, says the city appealed a 2015 federal court ruling that the 2008 test used to determine promotions to lieutenant was not predictive of job success and was racially discriminatory. Walsh said he could not comment on it.

The Lawyers’ Committee also has raised concerns about what many say is a record of discrimination in disciplinary policies that push out people of color. The Walsh administration is continuing to fight a superior court ruling against its use of a hair-based drug test — a test that a federal court ruled in 2005 disparately often generates false positives when assessing African American hair. Courts also ruled in 2013 and 2014 that the test was unreliable. Jackson says he would discontinue use of the hair-based test. He also said he would ensure there is implicit bias training for all officers, both incoming and old-timers. The Walsh administration says that all current officers have received bias training.

Jackson promotes body cameras on all officers, both to provide transparency to the public and protect the BPD from expensive lawsuits. Body camera advocates have pushed for years for such a program. Now a pilot at last is underway. Walsh says if the pilot’s results show a reduction in crime, he’s “all in.”

Community policing

In 2015, the BPD was nationally recognized as one of the top ten cities making the most improvements in its community policing. Walsh recently highlighted work such as peace walks and efforts to engage with youth.

But Carl Williams, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said many touted bridge-building efforts, such as ice cream trucks and basketball games with police, do not address the heart of what strains relations between people of color and police: Namely the perception that some cops racially profile. Williams and others in the community have long complained about what they say is a pattern of racial profiling in police stops.

“If people in the communities felt they were not being racially policed, I’m sure it would dramatically improve community relations,” Williams said. “You can give as many ice cream cones as you want, but if I think my brother was stopped because he was a black person in a black neighborhood …”

Williams says the solution is for the BPD to acknowledge that, regardless of the reason, a problem with race exists, and then to take actions. These could include retraining and as changes in how police are deployed, respond to incidents, and target crimes. He also suggested that the community engagement process be more open, as opposed to situations in which the police department handpicks community members with which it will speak.

Espinoza-Madrigal said another way of increasing community willingness to engage with police, as well as the department’s ability to recruit candidates of color, is to reform the BPD’s image and culture. He cited the recent incident in which a police officer made a racially offensive video.

“What people hear about the police department is a video that says, ‘Black people have met their match.’ Do you think people will turn around and go to a precinct to say, ‘I saw this about the shooting?’” Espinoza-Madrigal told the Banner. “[And to hire people of color,] you need to do work internally to make sure you are perceived as a viable place to go and be hired and promoted and succeed in your career.”

Jackson said it is important to have the same officers regularly assigned to a neighborhood in order to build relationships and trust, as well as allow officers who then know the area to be proactive to developing situations. He also said the BPD needs better monitoring of feedback.

Jackson said the city’s current civilian review system — a soon-to-be five-person Civilian Ombudsman Oversight Panel — lacks teeth. In its place, he says there should be a comprehensive civilian review board with subpoena power, better resourcing, and review of all cases, not just a 20 percent sampling. When asked about making a more robust civilian review entity, Walsh said he was unaware of requests for it and that the number of complaints has declined and that new procedures make it easier to file complaint. In 2015,the three board members of the Civilian Ombudsman Oversight Panel proposed to Walsh that he create a separate office with more staff, resources and authority than the COOP to independently investigate complaints. The proposals came in response to Walsh’s pledges to reform the entity.