Committee Report CR-2

The Civic Unity Committee held a public meeting on May 3, 2011 beginning at six o'clock and forty-seven minutes P.M. in the Ackermann Room.  The meeting was held for the purpose of continuing discussion with the Civic Unity Advisory Committee of the recommendations of the Cambridge Review Committee report.

Present at the meeting were Councillor E. Denise Simmons, Chair of the Committee, Vice Mayor Henrietta Davis, Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves, and City Clerk D. Margaret Drury.  Also present were Sally Haslanger, Professor, MIT, 395 Washington Street, Estelle Disch, Professor, University Massachusetts, 528 Franklin Street, Janie Ward, Professor, Simmons College, 30 Parker Street.

and began with a discussion of "distilled themes" from the report.  She noted that the report asked for a central contact person in the police department.

Councillor Reeves said that with regard to class differences he believes there should be a clarification.  He also noted the Yuri Stamps incident.  A report of the investigation has been released.  The explanation in the report is not an explanation.  The report said that the police officer did not know whether he pulled the trigger.  Councillor Reeves pointed to the focus on police discretion in the Cambridge Review Committee's final report.  Police discretion must be accompanied by good judgment.

Vice Mayor Davis said that the disorderly conduct issue is a much larger issue than just in our own City.  This is something that we should be able to do something about.

Councillor Simmons asked how one could extract race and class from the discussion and added that to her it seem impossible.

Vice Mayor Davis stated that she believes there is a certain closing of ranks after there is an incident.  She added that the Cambridge Review Committee Report leaves her with the question of how is it going to be different if it happens again.

Councillor Reeves noted that police culture plays a big role.  The City Manager and Police Commissioner attended role calls to assure the police officers that they would be backing the officers.

Dr. Ward said that there is a way in which we can look at this as a continuation.  Peoples' fears are most excited by what happened in the Yuri Stamps situation.  There may be an opportunity to tie the two conversations together.

Dr. Ward said that the next-to-last bullet on the agenda would read better if an "individual recommendation versus systematic problem" included "boys behaving badly."  She added that the remedies are very different.

Councillor Simmons expressed her interest in tying the two conversations together.  She said that there is a need to resolve this in a way that reduces the chances of a "next time."

Professor Haslanger said that she was impressed by the willingness of the Police Commissioner and Deputy Superintendent to admit that the training police receive in the Police Academy to never back down was wrong.  But they did not talk about that in connection with race.  So they did not go far enough.  Councillor Simmons noted her concern with the training issue, especially for lateral hires.

Dr. Ward said that there is a need to do some really careful thinking about police training.  It is not clear as to what part of race relations she would like police officers to become aware of.

Professor Haslanger noted the Binaji experiments at Harvard which looked at how the biases we all have affect our fast responses.  As a process of increasing self-understanding, that kind of material could be useful.  There is also research about how to combat explicit violence.

Dr. Ward said that race talk in America is such a complicated mess; it is like a chess game-one false move and then it's over.

Vice Mayor Davis stated that she still suggests monitoring the explicit recommendations in the report as a good next step.

Councillor Simmons said that the committee could agree that the recommendation in the report should be monitored and that there are areas for which sufficient recommendations were not included in the report, specifically, race and class.

Professor Haslanger described her experience in designing and conducting workshops at MIT about race and gender.  They tried to figure out what scientists could hear, and that brought them to the realization of how important it was to start in their language.

Councillor Simmons said that race and class were not adequately addressed in this report and now we have to bring the issue back.  Cambridge gets caught up on avoiding this discussion.  Diversity in the room does not guarantee that the conversation will happen.

Dr. Disch described the experience in New Bedford.    In response to a troubling increase in arrests of youth New Bedford instituted a program to focus on youth/police relationships.  When the police took black kids into police cars for a ride along and the police got to know the kids as people, the arrest rates went down.

Dr. Ward said that it is helpful for individuals to locate themselves in systems.  Here, the police decided to interpret the problem within their framework and race and class were outside of the box.  She added that she wonders whether there are other systems in Cambridge that are operating similarly. The first thing that comes to her mind is the Cambridge Public Schools.

There ensued a discussion about race and class in the public schools including the effects of micro aggression.  Thereafter Councillor Simmons moved the discussion to the issue of next steps with regard to the committee's work on analyzing the Cambridge Review Committee Final Report.

It was agreed that Commissioner Haas and Deputy Superintendent Christine Elow would be invited to the next meeting for further discussion and an update on the police training that they described at an earlier Civic Unity Committee meeting.

Councillor Simmons stated that she would like the committee to take a closer look at the report's recommendations for the Police Department to have a community liaison and/or a contact person for situations which result in elevated levels of public concern, particularly when race/class intersects in the situation.

It was also agreed that engaging in any sort of "blame game" with respect to race and class and why the issue was not dealt with sufficiently in the report would not be productive and that the committee should consider whether and how it wants to continue to address race and class, for example, whether it should continue to focus on the Crowley/Gates incident and report, or on a more general look at race and class in context of the police/criminal justice system, a comparison of race and class in different systems, for example, the police and public education, or examination of recent academic work such as the Binaji experiments.

Councillor Simmons thanked all those present for their attendance and participation.  The meeting adjourned at eight o'clock and thirty-five minutes P.M.