I met Reginald Lyles in September, 1998 when I was Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Kansas City, Kansas, a mostly white church in an ethnically changing neighborhood. We had called Marcus Goodloe, a young Black man, as Associate Pastor for Community Outreach and Children and Youth Ministry. Marcus was a member of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, where Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr. was pastor. Dr. Smith came to Kansas City to speak at the installation service for Marcus.  Several Allen Temple members came along, Reggie among them. I got to know Reggie over that weekend, and to appreciate his heart for racial reconciliation. So I sit up and pay attention to anything he has to say regarding race relations.

Charles Kiker, Friends of Justice

As a retired 30 year cop (Captain) I was offended by our President’s backtracking in the latest example of racial profiling that occurred to Dr. Henry Louis Gates. I understand the politics.  I realize the track the President is currently pursuing may be best for his political goals.   However, I am still offended that he is being forced to backtrack on his original statement that the Cambridge police officers acted stupidly. 

The officer who decided to arrest Dr. Gates did act stupidly.

Only a Black man can be accused of disorderly conduct (actually insulting a policeman) in his own living room and end up in jail. Dr. Gates, a Black man, eventually identified himself (whether quickly or slowly is immaterial).  That identification proved that Dr. Gates was Dr. Gates, he was in his own home and he was employed as a professor at Harvard University. Yes, Dr. Gates was talking loud and was possibly insulting to the police. That may not be the wisest thing to do on the streets, in the wee hours of the morning, in an isolated area.  But Dr. Gates was in his own living room! Not to mention, Dr. Gates is 58 years old, he has a degenerative hip and he walks with a limp and a cane.

Dr. Gates, while attempting to get the name of the investigating officer, was baited to come onto his own porch.  Ah ha! Once Dr. Gates was on his porch he was not in his home but, in theory, in a public area where he could be arrested for disorderly conduct.

You see how totally disengenous the police officers were acting?  How do you act disorderly in your own home?  How do you disturb the peace in the middle of the day? According to the police officer, Dr. Gates was not disturbing the peace of the community, he disturbed the peace of that particular police oficer. Who in the neighborhood complained of disorderly conduct or of their peace being disturbed? No one!

Fortunately, the law doesn’t have a statute on insulting a police officer. A police officer’s peace cannot be disturbed. That is why the case was immediately dropped.

It is interesting that we do not hear of episodes where Black police officers are accused of arresting White folk for disturbing the peace in their own homes?  Every Black Police officer knows there is no defense for arresting anyone for disturbing the officer’s peace. Nevertheless, Black officers must go along with the decision of this partcular Cambridge officer in order to keep the peace for themselves and to protect their own careers.

The President is a law professor and he was initially right. It was momentarily refreshing for me to hear, for once, a Black male being validated for experiencing the racial profiling we all have to endure.  Unfortunately, by backtracking the President has left American Black males in a worse position. Popular culture now believes that police officers can arrest someone in their own home for disorderly conduct when only the peace of the officer has been disturbed.  If an officer is offended for any reason any action he takes is justified, if not by law then by some street morality.

The police officer in the Dr. Gates matter should apologize and Dr. Gates should consider civil action against the City of Cambridge.

Reginald Lyles

President Obama raised eyebrows across the nation by suggesting that the Cambridge Police Dempartment acted “stupidly” in arresting a Harvard professor after his identity and home ownership had clearly been established.

In a recent ABC interview, Obama softened that comment a bit by calling Sgt. James Crowley, an “outstanding police officer,” and suggesting that the outcome could have been avoided if “cooler heads” had prevailed on both sides. 

Yesterday, while attending a Sojourners event in Dallas, I briefly discussed the Gates affair with Rev. Gerald Britt, a prolific blogger and Vice President of Public Policy & Community Program Development Central Dallas Ministries.    “Black people and white people respond to law enforcement differently,” Britt told me, “because we don’t draw from the same experience.”

Britt is right.  Intellecutally, I generally come down on the “black” side of racially divisive issues, but my white experience bars me from feeling the emotion so eloquently revealed in the eyes of my black and Lationo friends. 

Reaction to President Obama’s initial comment has been mixed.  At the New York Times, Brent Staples argues that Obama’s willingness to take sides in the controversial Gates episode debunks the widespread view that he sidesteps racially divisive issues.  (more…)

In his Grits for Breakfast blog, Scott Henson suggests there is more to Gates’ reaction than the ghosts of racial history. 

Having read several accounts of the incident, I think its root cause may or may not have been racial but was much more definitely the result of basic police training regarding how officers are taught to engage with the public. In this case, even after learning that Gates was in his own home and they’d been called out based on an error, officers still wanted to maintain a “command presence,” in the policing lingo, and Professor Gates apparently was having none of it.

Henson believes the Harvard professor would have faired better had he simply asked, once the identity issue had been resolved, that the officer leave his property. 

Still, the “I’m in charge here” bluster by police heightened tension in a confrontational situation instead of defusing it and the end result was the President calling the cops “stupid” on national TV. To the extent it was “stupid,” though, it’s also worth remembering it’s probably exactly how the officers were trained to behave, whether they’re dealing with a black man caught breaking into his own home or some blogger who’s babysitting while white. (more…)

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

In my first post in this series I suggested that Mississippi State Senator Lydia Chassaniol was in trouble for addressing the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that revels in its hatred of blacks, Jews, Latinos and the civil rights movement.

It appears I misspoke.

Apart from the Greenwood Commonwealth, the Mississippi media has chosen to avert its eyes from the senator’s strange social dalliance.  Even when it was disclosed that Lydia Chassaniol is a proud, card-carrying member of the CCC, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger ignored the story. (more…)

Riot police separated black separatists from white supremacists in Paris, Texas today.  Not a pretty sight.

Not pretty, but certainly popular.  Nothing sells like white folks and black folks exchanging insults.  The rally in Paris has attracted national and international attention.

I can understand the frustration of Brandon McClelland’s mother.  No one wants a tragic story to end with a question mark.  But let’s face facts: the State of Texas didn’t have a strong enough case to prosecute anyone for murder in the McClelland case.  Convicting defendants on shakey evidence would have compounded the tragedy.

It appears that the Nation of Islam wisely decided to give this protest a miss.  I applaud their restraint.  I only wish the New Black Panther Party had done a better job of thinking things through.  Check out the comments section in this story and you don’t get people shouting across the racial divide–everyone is saying “a pox on both your houses”.  That’s the kind of reaction this sort of protest deserves.  What, beyond getting an organization’s name in the regional headlines, is the point here? (more…)

The Boston Globe reports that a District Attorney has decided not to press charges against Henry Louis Gates Jr.  

No surprise there.  As I said in my first post on this story, they picked the wrong man to mess with.  Gates is a highly respected professor and authority on the civil rights movement.  If he had been just another black guy in some small Southern town he would still be locked up.   (Please read this piece of analysis from AP writer, Jesse Washington.  Here is CNN’s take.)

If his first name was “Bill” he would have been treated with far greater deference.

Check out the story in the Globe and scroll down to the comments section.  Most of these people are residents of Greater Boston, but you would get the same range of comments in the Deep South.  Half the readers think Dr. Gates owes Sergeant James Crowley an apology.

An apology?  Really?  If a police officer saw me trying to enter my own home and I presented clear evidence that I owned the place his next move is very simple: offer an effusive apology and to clear off my property.

Had that been done this would be a n0n-story. 

Sure, the initial scene at the front door looked suspicious.  You can’t blame the neighbor for calling the police, nor can you blame the police for checking into the situation.  But don’t expect the homeowner to welcome your intrusion with open arms. 

No one appreciates having to prove that they own their own home.  I would get a bit testy if this happened to me.  I would certainly ask for the officers name and badge number.  If this information wasn’t provided with alacrity I would tell the unresponsive officer what I thought of his non-compliance.  It’s simple human nature. Police officers should understand that when they confront innocent citizens in their own homes a measure of pique is to be expected. (more…)

The Cambridge Police Department has arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., after Dr. Gates entered in own home and produced proof of his identity. 

This story caught my eye because my daughter, Dr. Lydia Bean, recently graduated from Harvard and begins teaching sociology at Baylor next month.  Our family was recently in Cambridge for the graduation ceremony.  Gates’ attorney, Dr. Charles Ogletree, is a Harvard law professor who provided invaluable behind the scenes assistance in the Jena 6 case. 

Friends of Justice generally intercedes on behalf of low-status residents of small southern towns.  You don’t expect to find this kind of crude stereotyping in Cambridge, MA. 

Pasted below you will find Professor Ogletree’s statement on behalf of his client followed by the AP story.  (more…)

July 23, 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the Tulia drug sting.  Early that morning, officers from a dozen Panhandle law enforcement agencies fanned out across the poor end of Tulia, rousting unsuspecting defendants from their beds and parading them before the television cameras.  Although the raids turned up no drugs and no large sums of money, undercover agent Tom Coleman assured reporters that every defendant had been carefully identified. 

Friends of Justice formed a few months later.  We didn’t believe Coleman and we didn’t believe we should have to.  If the deals were good, where was the evidence?  Was it wise, or just, to passively accept the uncorroborated testimony of a man who had been arrested on theft charges in the middle of an eighteen-month operation?

On the tenth anniversary of the Tulia sting the Amarillo Globe-News interviewed several of the key figures on both sides of the controversy for a feature story that ran in the Sunday newspaper.

The woman who interviewed me over the phone had little first-hand knowledge of the controversy and the story is told as if no one from outside the Panhandle played a meaningful role.  In reality, it took the concerted (and sometimes disconcerted) efforts of a massive coalition to win justice in Tulia. 

As Scott Henson suggests in Grits for Breakfast, the key issue in Tulia was the sufficiency of evidence. This point was hammered home in the writ Friends of Justice wrote for defendant Joe Moore.  Gary Gardner argued that, in the absence of corroborating evidence, if the cop says the deal went down and the defendant says it didn’t, you have reasonable doubt.

The presumption of innocence is meaningless if it can be rebutted by “one man pointing”.  (more…)

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

Lydia Chassaniol’s decision to address a group famous for it’s crude racism has Mississippi baffled (thus far, no one else is paying attention).  Why would an astute politician with a reputation for Christian rectitude feel “hopeful” talking to a roomful of unapologetic white supremacists?  This doesn’t sound like political opportunism if you live in Washington DC or even Jackson, Mississippi; but Miss Lydia knows what’s she’s doing.

In the late 1990s, just as Trent Lott and Bob Barr were apologizing for their association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, Governor Kirk Fordice refused to back away from the racist organization.  Lott and Barr had to adapt their rhetoric to the norms of Washington DC; Governor Fordice had only the voters of Mississippi to worry about.

Lydia Chassaniol had little to gain from addressing the CCC.  Only 300 delegates heard her speak and only a few dozen of that number will ever pull the lever in the Senator’s district.  So why bother?

Miss Lydia was sending a signal to the residents of communities like Winona, Greenwood and Grenada:  she feels their pain and shares their anxiety.  That’s a message that gets people elected. (more…)

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

 In fairness, Senator Chassaniol isn’t the only fan of the Council of Concervative Citizens in the Mississippi Legislature.  Bobby Howell, the Republican State Representative from Kilmichael (another small town in Montgomery County) also has close ties with the organization.   Long after Lott and Barr retreated from the group, Bobby Howell was happily speaking at their conferences and attending the annual Blackhawk event supporting segregated private schools (Blackhawkis just down the road from both Winona and Kilmichael).

Senator Chassaniol and Representative Howell did the heavy lifting for a bill that was created to break a legal logjam in Montgomery County.   On July 16, 1996, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m, four people were gunned down execution-style in Winona’s Tardy furniture store: Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees, Carmen Rigby, 45, Derrick “Bobo” Stewart, 16, and Robert Golden, 42.

Six months elapsed with no arrest and local residents were growing restive.  Then the police arrested a suspect.  The theory was that Curtis Flowers, a young man who had worked less than a week for Bertha Tardy, was so upset that $82 had been deducted from his paycheck (to cover damaged merchandise) that he was driven to the most heinous crime in the history of Montgomery County. (more…)