While researching past articles on police behavior we came across this in the DC Gazette:
Excerpts from the DC Black United Front’s position paper on police-community relations issued in 1968
It
is clear that official violence against the black community is increasing.
In no instance in the history of the D. C. Police Department has a white
policeman ever been convicted, indicted or dismissed for killing a black man.
"Justifiable homicide" has become the official phrase of the District
police department for whitewashing the killing of black men by white police
officers.
The Black United Front, the most representative black group in the nation's
capital, has been charged with the responsibility of presenting the facts of
white police actions and non-actions in the black community with
recommendations for change in the form of possible legislation to be enacted by
the City Council.
To this end, the Black United Front held public hearings in six police
precincts.
The D. C. white policeman is seen by the majority of black citizens in their
communities as the perpetrator of violence rather than as the protector of the
peace. The slaughter of black citizens by white policemen must either be
brought to an immediate and final end or the ultimate horror of a full-scale
civil war in this city will be realized.
The proposals which the Black United Front presents in this paper is an effort
to prevent such a violent confrontation.
As a result of the hearings and testimony taken by several hundreds of
witnesses, the Black United Front offers the following recommendations to be
enacted by the D. C. City Council.
- All District policemen must be required to live in the District. This is both
a logical and healthy requirement. It would have the double effect of involving
the police in the protection of their own community and making them more
sensitive to the needs of District residents.
- All-white patrols in black communities would be prohibited. An unwritten law
now exists that all white patrols are assigned to certain predominantly white
sections of the city. In the alternative, all black policemen should be
assigned to the black community.
- Establish Precinct Citizens' Selection
and Review Boards. Each Precinct Board will be made up of residents of the
respective precincts. The Board members will be elected by the citizens in the
corresponding Precincts. These Boards will have the power
- determine and establish the criteria for the
policemen assigned to their Precinct and present such criteria to a city-wide
Citizens' Police Personnel Board,
- approve or disapprove the assignment of all
policemen in their Precinct (receive applications from the city-wide Citizens
Police Personnel Board),
- act as a complaint and review board for all
confrontations between the police and citizens and recommend disciplinary
action against such officers where it deems appropriate.
- Establish a city-wide Citizens' Police
Personnel Board. This board would be composed of the Chairman of each Precinct
Citizens' Selection and Review Board. This city-wide board would have the power
to: a) recruit, process, approve, and hire all policemen— in accord with the
criteria presented it from the Precinct Citizens' Selection and Review Boards,
and b) act as a trial board on each case brought before it by the Precinct
Citizens' Selection and Review Boards for disciplinary action.
This
city-wide Citizens' Police Personnel Board would have its own staff of
investigators and attorneys. In each case brought before it for disciplinary
action, one of the city-wide Board attorneys would act in behalf of the
complaining citizen(s). The police officer(s) involved and brought before the
Board for discipline would be represented by an attorney provided by the
District Government. Each such case brought before the city-wide Board would
have to be heard by the entire city-wide Citizens' Police Personnel Board.
This Board would have final say on the dismissal of an officer.
- Establish a mechanism for the
selection of each Precinct Captain by each corresponding Precinct Citizens'
Selection and Review Board. This could perhaps be done through the use of
lateral entry from other agencies.
- A psychologist should determine if a person is racially prejudiced.
- Stop all outside-the-District
recruiting now.
- Eliminate the procedure of not allowing those with police records to become
policemen and judge each case on its merits.
- Cease all promotions in the Police Department and upgrade present black
policemen.
- Develop a mechanism to get rid of those undesirable hard-core establishment
police presently on the force.
EARLIER ARTICLE ON POLICE BEHAVIOR
- A different kind of cop story
- Recovered history: A 1968 Black United Front plan to improve the DC police department
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