Racial issues surrounding law enforcement have been leading the news since August. On Thursday night, Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union-Colorado, spoke about racial bias in the criminal justice system.
It was the final talk of the spring Lifelong Learning Series sponsored by the Professional Associates of Fort Lewis College.
“Racial bias is a tough topic, but it’s one we must face as a society,” he said. “It’s very real. A lot of people approach it with a sense of exhaustion, ‘Look, we elected a black president,’ ‘We don’t have colored drinking fountains,’ suggesting we don’t have racism anymore. But it is real, and it matters.”
Not only are people’s lives at stake, so are constitutional issues such as due process and equal protection.
Issues in law enforcement harken back to the earliest days of policing, which were slave patrols, he said. And the statistics show that whether through explicit bigotry or implicit bias, it’s prevalent in policing.
Perhaps the most stark statistic was that male black teenagers are 21 times more likely to be fatally shot by police than male white teenagers, while there’s virtually no difference in the likelihood they’ll commit crimes.
“In Colorado, Boulder County, which is supposed to be the most liberal, they arrest black people five times more often than white people,” he said. “The police don’t believe it, don’t believe that they’re racially profiling, instead saying they’re just going where the crime is, or they’re focusing on people they’ve had to arrest before. They’ll say they have a policy against it, but the statistics don’t lie.”
His talk was not all bad news, although Woodliff-Stanley said everyone – society, law enforcement and us as individuals – have work to do.
“We can consciously not want to be biased, but none of us are exempt; it’s throughout our whole culture,” he said. “I’m amazed at how defensive people are around this. It’s not to accuse you of being a racist; it’s to learn and see what your biases are so you can work on them. It affects us all the time.”
Law enforcement faces some particular challenges, he said.
“We have the best-trained police force in the world,” he said. “The worst part is what they’re trained to do – they’re taught to protect themselves, taught that hesitation kills, that it’s better to shoot first and ask questions later. And when is implicit bias the strongest? When we don’t have time to think.”
Woodliff-Stanley said a big misconception is that policing is an incredibly dangerous job.
“It’s less dangerous than being a garbage truck driver or a commercial fisherman, which are just a few of the jobs that are more dangerous,” he said. “But when a white man carrying a gun is exercising his Second Amendment rights, and a black man holding a toy gun is a threat, we’ve got a long way to go.”
