Fibonacci Blue
Though many Democrat politicians have advocated in favor of police reforms, few elected officials have taken action to address police brutality and racial profiling in their communities.
There are exceptions. In November 2017, Larry Krasner was elected district attorney of Philadelphia after running a campaign focused on transforming the criminal justice system. Krasner has delivered in his first few months in office, releasing a list of twenty-nine police officers deemed unreliable as witnesses due to previous misconduct.
In February 2018, Shaun King and several former Bernie Sanders staffers founded the Real Justice PAC to help elect progressive, reform-minded prosecutors, judges, and sheriffs. The PAC’s endorsed candidates have already gained significant victories, helping Diana Becton secure the district attorney seat for Contra Costa County, California, and Joe Gonzales win the Democratic primary for district attorney in Bexar County, Texas.
In other races, progressive candidates have incorporated police reform into their campaigns.
“Our campaign is talking about police reform because it’s the right thing to do,” Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for governor in Michigan, told me. He’s advocating for the creation of an advisory board to oversee training and hiring practices, implementing community policing, and mandating implicit bias and de-escalation training for officers. “We must work to change the distrust that many communities—specifically those of color—have for law enforcement as a result of a history of police bias and brutality.”
The April 2015 death of Freddie Gray in West Baltimore, Maryland police custody incited widespread debate on police reform. Ben Jealous, a progressive candidate for Governor of Maryland, agrees that trust is a core concern. “The best way to keep communities safe is to ensure there is trust between those communities and the police,” he told me. “All across our state, there is a deficit of trust.”
“After twenty years of Republican rule, this won’t be easy, but we owe it to our kids to take on these battles now.”
Andrew Gillum, a Democrat running for governor of Florida, is on the same page. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded in the wake of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s murder in Sanford Florida by neighborhood watch security guard, George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was not convicted of any charges related to the murder, and the Republican-led state government has only reinforced the state’s controversial stand your ground law, facilitating defendants like George Zimmerman to claim self-defense.
“We badly need criminal justice reform and more cultural competency in Florida,” Gillum said in an interview. “This change has to be across the system—from appointing qualified judges who represent the diversity of this state, to more community policing and cultural competency, to legalizing marijuana so we can stop over-penalizing people for low level offenses.”
“After twenty years of Republican rule, this won’t be easy, but we owe it to our kids to take on these battles now, so that our children are not fighting them in the future.”
One closely contested race where police reform has emerged front and center is in San Diego, where grassroots candidate Monica Montgomery is looking to unseat City Councilwoman Myrtle Cole, a powerful player within the local Democratic Party establishment.
Cole is the “most moderate” of the five Democrats who hold a 5 to 4 majority on the San Diego city council, “sometimes breaking party ranks to side with Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer,” reported the San Diego Tribune. As city council president, Cole has appointed Republicans averse to police reform to the Public Safety and Livable Communities Committee.
Montgomery, in contrast, is backed by the organization that grew out of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, Our Revolution. She formerly worked for Cole, but resigned after Cole made a series of comments on racial profiling during a town hall meeting.
“It shows what knowing our community and grassroots efforts can do.”
“There’s more black-on-black shootings in our nation than ever before,” Cole said at a July 2016 meeting on racial profiling meeting in the San Diego Police Department. “Blacks are shooting blacks. So who do [the police] stop? They're not going to stop a white male. They’re not going to stop a Hispanic male or Asian. They’re going to stop an African-American. That’s who they’re going to stop, because those are the ones [who are] shooting.” Cole later apologized for the remarks as local activists called for her resignation.
“I could not look my community in the eye and say it was justified for her to say something like that,” Montgomery told me. “I left the same day she made those comments.”
In the California Primary on June 5, Montgomery came in a close second behind Cole, qualifying them both for the runoff election this November. Montgomery is pleased with that outcome: “It shows what knowing our community and grassroots efforts can do.”
She still faces an uphill battle. An incumbent hasn’t lost a San Diego City Council race since 1992 and Cole has significantly out-fundraised Montgomery, garnering more than $120,000 in campaign donations, compared to Montgomery’s $38,000. The San Diego County Democratic Party, the San Diego Tribune, and several high-profile elected Democrats have endorsed Cole’s re-election this year.
In the wake of Cole’s controversial comments on racial profiling, the San Diego City Council ordered an independent study on racial profiling. The 2016 study found that blacks and Latinos in San Diego were more frequently searched by police after a traffic stop, but far less likely to have contraband on their persons, compared to white drivers.
While blacks were 1.7 times more likely to be searched, they were 44.2 percent less likely to have contraband, the report revealed. Latinos were 1.7 times more likely to be searched and 46 percent less likely to have illegal substances.
The study also found blacks in San Diego were over two times more likely to be interviewed by police than white drivers. Montgomery told me that such interviews are used to provide data for the State of California’s gang database, which has been criticized by civil rights activists for its secrecy and tendency to include innocent people without their knowledge.
“We find out months later that even those results were watered down,” said Montgomery of the study’s findings. “There was actually more profiling in more areas than put forth in the study. We found out the officers felt that implicit bias training wouldn’t help them. A lot of the language was changed to be less harsh.”
Grassroots San Diego city council candidate Monica Montgomery argues that the city government has ignored findings of racial disparities in traffic stops.
Officials purged the report of findings of racial disparities in several districts, according to a draft copy of the study obtained by the Voice of San Diego. And they tried to prevent the draft from being made public, claiming this “would likely increase community tension and discontent.”
Montgomery argues that the city government has ignored the recommendations from that study, which included acknowledging the racial disparities in traffic stops, making those stops more transparent, improving data collection, and enhancing training and supervision.
She also expressed concerns with “shotspotter,” a gunshot detection system used by the San Diego Police Department. All four sensors located in San Diego are in Montgomery’s district, the city’s most racially diverse, with the largest population of blacks in the city at roughly 20 percent.
“If you look at crime statistics in the nine districts we have, we’re not the only district with shootings, they are pretty much across the board,” said Montgomery. “We don’t see an advantage in having shot spotters. I also take offense to the fact that they are only in one community.”
Montgomery’s challenge to Cole is indicative of a divisive policy battle within the Democratic Party between those in favor of reforms and others who tend to support law enforcement and police unions on the issue.
Michael Sainato is a journalist based in Gainesville, Florida. His work has appeared in the Intercept, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice.com, and Huffington Post.