An article in Saturday’s Indianapolis Star said that community leaders are trusting the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) in the wake of police misconduct and scandals.
The article said that “when IMPD targeted cruising on East 38th Street, officials told pastors and community leaders in advance, activating a partnership that spread the word on the radio and from pulpits.”
That sentence and this quote from a local Black minister caught my eye.
“They’re (IMPD) keeping the leadership in the Black community in the loop and informed,” the minister said.
Unfortunately, as with most Star stories about our African-American community, the truth is somewhat different.
Regarding the cruising crackdown, many in IMPD wanted to keep Black media out of the loop, as police leadership regularly does on issues directly impacting our Black community.
I first heard about the cruising crackdown in a conversation, about something else, with an eastside community leader who said police were planning a crackdown and would tell the community about it in a Thursday late afternoon press conference.
Thursday press conferences are major problems for your Recorder (and the Herald) because they happen after we go to press. Black broadcasters hate afternoon press conferences because they occur after this community’s talkshow goes off the air.
Did IMPD think of informing the Recorder and Herald in advance about their planned curfew crackdown so the information could be in that week’s newspapers when they hit the streets on Thursday? No.
Did IMPD think of talking about the plan with Indy’s Black radio leadership and coordinate coverage on WTLC and WHHH, which combined reach 88 percent of the city’s Black community? No.
After I publicly complained on our “Afternoons with Amos” program about IMPD not wanting to give our community adequate notice of their crackdown, a mid-level IMPD official, in charge of the cruising crackdown, contacted me and said he’d talk on Black radio about the crackdown.
But top IMPD brass didn’t want that mid-level official doing the interviews. Instead an IMPD Deputy Chief and a Public Safety Department official went on the radio to inform the community.
IMPD’s made strides improving community policing, but they continue to interact with community leaders and institutions that don’t fully reach the community’s masses.
IMPD continues an over reliance on ministers and community associations to reach and impact a quarter million large African-American community.
The dirty little secret of neighborhood associations is that most people don’t belong to theirs. And most associations don’t communicate well with their residents.
Three neighborhood associations supposedly serve my integrated Washington Township neighborhood. I belong and pay dues (mostly for snow removal) to my homeowner association. The other two neighborhood associations have never asked me to join, nor do they send out newsletters or communications. If IMPD’s talking to them, that information doesn’t get to my snail mail or e-mail address.
It seems IMPD still believes they patrol the same geography that 40years ago encompassed 95 percent of Indianapolis’ Black community. Today, the pre-merger IPD patrol areas are estimated to contain barely half of Indianapolis’ Black population.
The 2010 Census is expected to confirm that a majority of the Black community lives in the old township areas. In neighborhoods where neighborhood association communication with their Black residents is spotty at best; in neighborhoods where traditional Black leadership is diffuse and unproductive.
I don’t know why the police department is reluctant or hesitant to treat Black media, print and electronic, as the community servant/leaders we are. It wasn’t this way under past mayors, or when Sheriff Frank Anderson ran the police.
But it is now.
IMPD’s Keystone Cops (pardon the pun) way of communicating with our quarter million large African-American community must end. True community policing means interacting with all of our community’s servant/leaders; not just ministers and neighborhood leaders, but with the institutions with the proven ability to reach the mass of our diverse, dispersed Black community – Indianapolis’ Black media.
It’s way past time IMPD, and the public safety director and mayor who commands them, understands that simple fact!
What I’m Hearing
in the Streets
Senate Republicans have scuttled Governor Mitch Daniels’ boneheaded scheme to merge the functions of running the City-County building, various county jails, garages and vacant lots and Indy’s sports stadiums and Convention Center. Daniels’ plan died in part because of Mayor Greg Ballard’s vacillation and because Ballard’s staff ran the numbers and found Daniels’ plan flat didn’t add up.
Now, the plan causes for a brand new Capitol Improvement Board, dominated by Republicans and folks who don’t live in the city/county. The mayor would appoint six to the new board, the governor, County Commissioners and City-County Council one each. Also, State Senate President David Long and House Speaker Pat Bauer would each pick a new CIB member.
Under the GOP scheme, Democrats would be limited to just four of the eleven CIB members. A bad deal, again, for Indianapolis/Marion County.
Get ready for more IPS school closings in 2010, because Ball State University is dropping another charter school on the Westside. Ball State OK’d a new charter Imagine Life Sciences West to be located just one mile from another Ball State charter, Indiana Math & Science.
The new Imagine West is literally one block from IPS School 79, less than a mile from School 61. Just over a mile are two other IPS schools and several Town of Speedway schools. This new charter won’t help IPS and Speedway’s declining enrollment and state aid.
It’s time Ball State’s charter school officials take into account the neighborhood impact of where they place their charter schools.
Feminism’s ability to motivate African-American women was harmed last weekend when the National Organization for Women (NOW) missed a chance to reach out to Black women. Latifa Lyles, a sistah, was running to head the nation’s leading women’s advocacy group and lost in very close votes. Lyles is part of a new generation of feminists who believe that all communities, including the Black community, needs to be engaged in the battle for women’s’ rights.
I interviewed Lyles on our radio program last week and was impressed.
NOW, meeting surprisingly here in Indy, missed a great chance to broaden their image from an organization dominated by upper middleclass whites. Sad.
See ‘ya next week!k!
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915.
