I visited the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Training Academy last Thursday and saw everything that’s wrong with the training our police receive.
During my three-hour and 15-minute visit, I learned that there isn’t real sensitivity training for officers on dealing with different people and cultures. There’s also no effort to educate police about the complex organism that’s Indianapolis in 2010. And there’s no curriculum teaching the diversity and complexity of our African-American community.
Even more distressing, I didn’t see one African-American recruit/trainee or instructor.
New Public Safety Director Frank Straub invited me to come to the academy. I agreed, if we could originate our “Afternoons with Amos” radio program live from there.
I thought I’d get a tour of the training academy, observe operations and ask questions. Instead, Director Straub and Mayor Greg Ballard’s PR apparatus morphed the visit into a larger PR effort for “faith-based and community leaders” to demonstrate IMPD’s training regarding the use of force.
Less than 30 community leaders, virtually all ministers, attended along with participants in some youth programs.
Police demonstrated something they called a “Force Continuum,” which sounds like something out of Star Trek. In short, it describes the type of action and force officers are supposed to use when confronted by different types of behavior.
In a demonstration, three volunteers (ministers) tried to get an “uncooperative” subject (academy instructor) to cooperate. They failed. But when an officer used pressure points behind one’s ear to get an uncooperative subject to cooperate, ministers and media openly questioned police officials.
WISH-TV/Channel 8 reporter Jay Hermacinski was openly skeptical, holding up a picture of the youth, Brandon Johnson, allegedly beaten by police and asked, “Is it appropriate for police to use a level of force that leaves a 15 year old looking like this?”
After seeing how “pressure points” got a suspect to comply, Rev. Michael Jones retorted, “Then how did he (Johnson) end up beaten that way?”
The most biting critique of the demonstration came from a youth around Brandon Johnson’s age, who remarked, “What they just showed us is that they didn’t have to use force. That all they had to do is use a pressure point. Then why was his face all beat up like that?”
The demonstration staged for the TV cameras didn’t achieve IMPD’s goals as ministers and media weren’t sold. Neither were those listening to the unprecedented Afternoons with Amos broadcast, the first Black radio broadcast ever from a police academy.
Listeners hammed Director Straub, Chief Paul Ciesielski, Deputy Chief Darryl Pierce and Assistant Chief Valerie Cunningham with repeated questions and examples of police disrespect.
When I asked what the department was specifically teaching about the demographics of Indianapolis and about our African-American community, I was met mostly with silence.
To me, the most telling part of the broadcast was who I didn’t get to talk to.
Usually when I’ve done broadcasts from a predominately white institution, it goes out of its way to showcase Black employees.
Not at the Police Academy. During my visit, the only African-American police I saw were Assistant Chief Pierce, Assistant Chief Bill Benjamin and retired Capt. James Wyatt, who attended the demonstration.
But, obviously there’re no Black instructors at the academy, because if there were, they’d have been trotted out for me to see and the community to hear.
Meanwhile, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi dropped charges against Brandon Johnson and his brother, whose arrest for allegedly breaking into an empty house started this mess. The only focus of investigations center on the cops involved.
At the same time, under fierce community pressure, Black leaders asked the Justice Department to investigate. And the FBI is doing just that, as is Prosecutor Brizzi.
In the coming days, the Black community and its leadership will be severely tested when IMPD’s internal investigation is released.
But our community’s focus must not end there!
Since Mayor Greg Ballard eviscerated any effort at real racial diversity in hiring and promotion in the Police Department, one can’t take seriously IMPD’s vows to be serious about training their police officers in diversity and understanding the city’s minority communities. I can’t take seriously Straub’s rhetoric of wanting a police department that represents Indianapolis as it is today, not 1960.
Ballard wanted control over police. Now, his police department faces the most serious allegations of police abuse of power since the Michael Taylor shooting in 1987.
Indianapolis’ Black community is virtually unanimous, as are many non-Blacks in Indy, in wanting an end to police behavior which treats Blacks like serfs in a conquered country!
What I’m Hearing
in the Streets
Martinsville and Morgan County get knocked by some in our Black community because of unsavory racial incidents in the past. Yet, one of Martinsville’s greatest sons, John Wooden who died last week at age 99, demonstrated racial tolerance and understanding far beyond his era.
Wooden didn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body. When he coached Indiana State University, he recruited their first Black player, Clarence Walker. In 1947, the team was invited to postseason play, without Walker. Wooden refused to play under those segregated conditions. The next year, eligible again for postseason play, the rule changed and Walker could play, but not be publicly seen with his team.
Wooden again refused. But at the insistence of the NAACP and Walker’s family, Wooden, Walker and the team competed. Clarence Walker became the first Black to play in a college basketball postseason tournament.
In my career, which has had many highlights, one of the greatest was the honor eight years ago to be selected to interview Coach Wooden sitting at center court at Hinkle Fieldhouse in front of hundreds of Indiana high school coaches and student athletes, as part of the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s Centennial.
Researching Wooden’s philosophy before the interview and hearing his wisdom face to face for an hour became one of the highlights of my life.
Of all the memorabilia in my office, a photo taken that day of me listening to Coach Wooden elicits the most response.
It’s a day I’ll always treasure when I met a son of Martinsville who was totally without prejudice.
See ‘ya next week!
