Can the Police Oversight Commission Change Our Community?
The Police Oversight Commission strives to improve relations between police and the public, but success will depend on people in the community making changes as well
—By Saintphanie Porcenat
On November 9, 2014, Aura Rosser was shot and killed by an Ann Arbor police officer. Rosser reportedly came at the officers who responded to the call for a domestic disturbance with a knife. One pulled out his taser. The other, Officer Reid, pulled out his gun.
Rosser had been a troubled 40-year-old-woman, convicted of shoplifting and believed to have a history of mental illness. Her fellow African Americans in the Ann Arbor community are insisting she needed help, not a bullet. It had been the first fatal shooting by an Ann Arbor officer in over thirty years and there hasn’t been one since. Speaking with MLive about the case in 2015, Leslie Stambaugh, then chair of the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission, said, “There are a lot of people who don’t understand why this case resonated so strongly with the people of Ann Arbor, especially—but certainly not only—with members of our black community.”
It’s a story that many students here at U of M, even African American ones like me, haven’t heard. It’d be hard to lure in certain students of color to boost diversity by broadcasting the avoidable death of one from their own community. It may have only happened once, in comparison to the 1,146 victims of police violence in the US in 2015, but for this community, once was more than enough.
The shooting of Aura Rosser, as well as accusations that the City Council members do not understand the fear and struggle black people face when it comes to dealing with the police, led to the formation of the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission. The commission will be comprised of 11 residents who represent the city’s diverse population and the positions will be appointed by the mayor himself; their duties will be to receive complaints against police, scrutinize the investigations, follow up with complainants, make policy recommendations, and question police officials. However, given that no one on the commission will be able to actually enforce or discipline any officers, merely monitor, can it actually be effective in changing the way black people feel when encountering the police and the way the officers treat them?
It has to start with the community
Criminal Defense Attorney Robin Stephens, a member of the advisory task-force that created the ordinance for the commission, has little faith in its success. Stephens has been a public defender at the city center building in downtown Ann Arbor since 1999. Eight of their attorneys, including Stephens, are African American. The majority practice in Ann Arbor. She was asked by the mayor to join the task-force for the commission and spent the summer arguing over its policies, purpose and, ultimately, its necessity. Stephens refers to herself as the “lone wolf” and suggests an alternative way of approaching the issue.
When I first walked into her office, “lone wolf” definitely fit her well. After a firm handshake and brief introduction, she marched me into a conference room, ready to jump right in. “The push for the Police Oversight Commission,” explained Stephens, “started because Aura Rosser was killed by a police officer several years ago. Rather than treating this like the isolated incident it was, public officials, mostly white, tried to make it an epidemic that it wasn’t, in a city where police brutality and racist killings weren’t an issue.” Her sigh and the ease with which she explained her stance, made it clear it’s one she’s conveyed repeatedly, which she confirmed, explaining she had expressed it when she was completely against the ordinance, back when it was first issued. It was an unexpected stance, considering she’s a public defender and not someone most would expect to have sympathy for the police department.
Now, she’s simply skeptical of the current purpose and direction of the commission. “If it’s to retrain them not to be racist against black people, that’s ridiculous.” I agree that there is an issue with how police officers treat people of color: talking down to them, making certain assumptions they wouldn’t necessarily make with a white person, etc.
However, the commission should be looking at community norms, how they treat African Americans and then how the police respond based on those norms. It’s the community itself that needs to be retrained. Stephens passionately expressed, “It’s the culture we need to be working on.” To explicate she used an example of a common issue in Ann Arbor. Often in this city, the cops are called on homeless people who linger outside of downtown Ann Arbor restaurants because they presumably ruin the aesthetic and drive away higher paying customers. Instead of calling the police and creating a potentially violent situation they could call the community center or a shelter and try to help.
Mayor Taylor has high hopes for the commission. “This commission will provide a place for civilian oversight, a public and powerful check and balance,” he told MLive last year. Stephens on the other hand, scoffed as we ran through the commissioners’ duties as liaisons, interviewers and information collectors. “If I’m on the commission I’d like for them to analyze what it is that we expect the police to do and then question: is that reasonable?” Then she posed a question directly to me. “What is it that police officers do?” After my hesitant answer of “to serve and protect,” she shook her head. Stephens explained that most people nowadays don’t really know or understand what it means to have the job, what’s required of them. It truly is one of the worst possible jobs to have in today’s social climate; the job has changed so much with new developments like body and car cams. “We as a society need to understand their job,” she stated. I suggest that, before people are given the power to monitor the police and tell them how to do their jobs better or change the way they do it, they need to learn and understand. That’s a task the commission is going to have to come face to face with once the appointed members begin to take action.
Stephens is also skeptical of the plan to include a youth member on the commission. “The position reserved for the youth on the commission, it’s actually for a high schooler, they are seeking black young men for that position. This is insane because they’re just teenagers! They are looking for homeless people, people with mental illness, African Americans, especially those who have encountered the police, and black young men to serve on the commission. How can you expect people like this to sit for hours and discuss some of these cases and complaints that may be triggering for them as well?” She laughs again and shakes her head. To most it would seem she is completely against the commission. Stephens clarified that while she is not completely for it, the potential is there. But, she emphasizes, unless they address all these issues and implement changes that affect the Ann Arbor community as well as it’s officers, the relations between the police and people of color are not going to change.
There’s work to be done
Torisa Johnson, an African American Studies major at U of M who was raised in Ann Arbor, hadn’t even heard of the commission until I knocked on her bedroom door and explained it to her. After being roommates for two years, I’d been privy to many rants on white privilege and expected her to readily approve of the commission. I gave her a brief rundown of what the commission’s purpose and duties were.
“How is that different from what’s going on now?” she questioned. In her opinion, the proposed commission seemed too weak, and not enough of a change. Torisa took a second to get over her brief disappointment and we acknowledged that a major difference and improvement was who would be doing the monitoring. The idea of the citizens having the power seemed to give her hope until I mentioned the position reserved for a high schooler. “What?” she gasped, “You have got to be kidding me!” Torisa laughs and adamantly says no. “I remember thinking I knew everything in high school and I definitely did not. There should be 20 years or older age requirement.”
On the idea of the committee as a whole and its goal to make black people feel safer in their interactions with the police, Torisa took her time to think. “I like the idea of it but it might affect the police—their pride. That’s what makes them hostile towards black men. I honestly probably won’t feel 100% safe but I’m willing to give it a chance.”
Justice is on the horizon
As an African American on U of M’s campus, students like me face being unheard by those who run this campus and officials who run the city. Despite marches, protests on the Diag, demonstrations, and seminars, minorities are still subject to racial slurs on dorm walls and bathrooms. Black student-athletes are still urged not to take a stand and protest for their beliefs during the national anthem. Police may not be shooting us in the streets the way they are in D.C. or Oklahoma but we are being repressed by the culture of white privilege that has a tight hold on this city. That was a task of the commission, according to Mayor Taylor, to eliminate the “stress and uncertainty that has been created by the legacy and continued endurance of white supremacy and the stain of privilege.”
However, I think this task has been pushed to the side, the primary focus on finally having a body of people able to delve into and investigate complaints lodged by members of the community. There is also more attention towards trying to reframe the relationship between Ann Arbor residents and the police force. A relationship that has been destroyed by the ongoing racial discrimination in America today and the history of policing as a mechanism for social control through racial bias, disparities in police use of force, and the impacts of officer-involved shootings. The commission is a huge step in responding to demands for more police oversight from black members of the community but in order for true change to occur and for our voices to be heard, we must first tackle racial disparity. As Council Member Jack Eaton, D-4th Ward, encouraged community members after the vote, “I hope that you don’t give up. This is a worthy project to continue working on. For decades, activists have sought an oversight process and we are now started in that direction. We will have a commission who can come back to council and advise us to do better, so I believe that justice is worth the long struggle.”
There may be an adjustment curve on who to allow on the commission, depending on how well those who are first appointed proceed. Regardless, black people are being put in the position to help the people of color within the community, to give them a voice and make strides on taking charge of the best interests of people for whom they have true understanding. “White liberals are the most dangerous animals because they believe what they’re doing is right. They’re more dangerous than Republicans,” cautioned Robin Stephens. “They sit there and say we know what’s best for black people.” While the Commission needs improvement, I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s giving us the platform to say we know what’s best and the power to act on it.
Photo by Daniel Tafjord on Unsplash