On Oct. 3, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 953, a bill aimed at curbing racial profiling by police in California. The bill requires police officers to report perceived racial data about everyone they stop — the first time such data will be collected and made public statewide.
Dignity and Power Now, an L.A.-based organization that advocates on behalf of incarcerated people, and which co-sponsored the legislation, helped spread the word online with the hashtag #ImagineNoRacialProfiling.
But according to the San Francisco Police Officers Association, there's no need to imagine because racial profiling doesn't occur in this city.
"San Francisco police officers do not racially profile," announces the first line of a 44-second radio spot the city's police union has been airing on KCBS. Mayor Ed Lee agrees: "No, I don't believe there's racial profiling going on, but I know there are going to be mistakes," the mayor told KPIX.
The POA spot deems racial profiling a "catchphrase for every anti-law enforcement zealot," adding, "Politicians and the media need to stop vilifying our officers."
Zealots among us
POA president Marty Halloran says these "zealots" include "some members of the Board of Supervisors, such as John Avalos, who were trying to pass a resolution that painted all of law enforcement with a broad brush based on what happened in Ferguson."
That resolution, introduced to the Board of Supervisors last November, would have "recognized" bias in policing and in the criminal justice system at large, and "urged" state and national politicians to look into reforming judicial practices, although it mandated no specific changes in city governance.
The resolution failed, 7-4, following harsh POA opposition, including an email from former POA head Gary Delagnes to the resolution's co-sponsor, Supervisor Malia Cohen, stating "my thought is that you must have lost your mind...I am astounded that you would involve yourself in this absolute bull shit."
Halloran identifies other "zealots" as the Democratic County Central Committee and the San Francisco Labor Council, both of which also faced strong POA opposition this year — the Labor Council for considering endorsing the longshoremen's union's participation in a Black Lives Matter protest (the vote on the endorsement was tabled), and the DCCC for considering supporting a plan for police reform put forth by the city's Racial Justice Committee. (A heavily amended version of the DCCC resolution did eventually pass.)
Racial unrest in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, Oakland, and cities across the country wasn't the only inspiration for these proposed resolutions. In March, a highly publicized FBI probe into San Francisco Police Department corruption uncovered racist text messages between officers, and in June, the San Francisco Reentry Council released a report finding "a disproportionate number of black adults represented at every stage of the criminal justice process," from arrest and booking, to conviction and sentencing.
According to the report, "black adults are 7.1 times as likely as white adults to be arrested, 11 times as likely to be booked into county jail, and 10.3 times as likely to be convicted of a crime in San Francisco."
Black Lives Matter
Halloran denies that the POA's radio ads have anything to do with Black Lives Matter, noting, "I have not mentioned Black Lives Matter in any of my printed responses or verbal responses."
However, Black Lives Matter has cropped up in local news coverage. Reporting on the POA's ads, KPIX (both KPIX and KCBS, the radio station airing the ads, are owned by CBS) quoted Hallaron saying, "There seems to be an anti-law enforcement rhetoric that's sweeping this country." KPIX illustrated this point with footage of a Black Lives Matter protest.
Thea Matthews, a student at UC Berkeley and an activist with Black Lives Matter, says the POA ads implicitly target the movement.
"Their ad is coming out in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Maybe it's not necessarily limited to Black Lives Matter, but...clearly a nerve has been touched," Matthews says.
She adds that the POA could have addressed that tension by acknowledging "there has been some police activity that has caused an uproar in various communities." Instead, she says, the ad is divisive.
"I think this tactic is, one, propaganda and, two, trying to strengthen the divide between the people and the police," Matthews says. "And on top of that, it's denial. It's shifting the attention. And when you shift the attention, that means the problem still exists."
The problem is proof
Anecdotal evidence indicates that racial profiling is a problem that does indeed exist. As Patrisse Cullors, founder of Dignity and Power Now and a Black Lives Matter co-founder, told the Los Angeles Times, "Our communities have lived experiences with biased policing — ranging from racial profiling, to excessive, and sometimes lethal, use of force. This inevitably breeds distrust in law enforcement, which in turn undermines the safety of all Californians."
But there's no definitive method for proving (or disproving) racial profiling using statistics.
In 2014, USA Today tried to measure racial profiling by analyzing FBI arrest data. They found that African-Americans are "more likely to be arrested in almost every city for almost every type of crime," but cautioned that "those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain."
Halloran has an explanation — at least for San Francisco.
He points to a Police Commission report that analyzes cases from 2009 to 2014 in which crime victims informed police of what they believed to be perpetrators' races. In that subset, perpetrators were identified as African-American 43 percent of the time, which, Halloran says, is why African-Americans make up about 40 percent of those arrested in San Francisco (despite comprising less than 6 percent of the city's population).
But that's not the whole picture, says Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild Bay Area Chapter, which, last week, released data suggesting rampant racial profiling among Berkeley police officers.
"How do police in San Francisco generally police the city? Where do they patrol most? What communities do they focus on?" Villarreal asks. "This idea that racial profiling isn't happening is something you would need some really strong evidence for."
California's new legislation could help in marshaling such strong evidence. Meanwhile, the POA is moving on, but not toward less controversy. The next topic they plan to address via PSA: police body cameras.
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