Speech
before the Durham Human Relations Commission
February
27, 2015
Introduction by Commissioner
Foster
Scott Holmes is
presently professor of law at North Carolina Central University where he
teaches appellate advocacy, trial advocacy, criminal procedure and supervises
the Civil Litigation Clinic. The North Carolina Civil Litigation Clinic handles
a variety of cases including housing, unemployment benefits, and police
misconduct cases. He is also an adjunct professor of Restorative Justice at
Guilford College in Greensboro, where he teaches a class on diverting people
from the prison pipeline with restorative justice. He is concerned with the way
our justice system harms poor and vulnerable members of our community including
children, immigrants, and the mentally ill. He also works to challenge racial
disparities in housing practices and in the justice system. Having represented
protesters, preachers, and panhandlers, Scott works to empower and amplify
marginalized voices in our community. He lives in Durham with his wife, Kerry,
his four kids, and three dogs.
Introduction
Commissioner
Foster, Councilman Moffit, esteemed Commissioners and members of the Durham
Human Relations Commission, honored friends and fellow guests,
I
am thankful for this invitation to share some thoughts on human relations in
Durham on this auspicious occasion awarding some of Durham finest leaders in
the area of human relations. When they asked me to speak, I asked them multiple
times if they were sure because you never know what you are going to get. Also,
at this time when law professors at public law schools are being targeted for
their speech, I have to say that I am not speaking on behalf of NCCU law
school, or any other group. Tonight I speak for myself. I am so honored to come before you and share some thoughts on human relations in this important historical venue, the Hayti Heritage Center.
Tonight we will have the opportunity to
honor Wanda Boone, founder of Durham
Together for Resilient Youth, for her work helping steer our children away
from drugs, alcohol, and other challenges which sabotage young lives. We honor the
Genesis Home, for his work helping families out of homelessness with technical
assistance, individualized case management, and circles of support. We also honor, Brenda Howerton, Vice Chairman
of the Durham County Commission, who will receive the human rights award for
her tireless service in a variety of human rights areas. We will also honor our
young leaders, Sary Martinez for her amazing individual journey and her work
welcoming immigrant youth, and Vernodo Garcia-Carrol for his community work
promoting civil engagement.
In addition to these specific awards,
our own Durham Human Relations Commission deserves an award for their
remarkable work in the last year conducting hearings on racial profiling in our
police department and issuing their thoughtful report. Even a cursory glance at human relations in
Durham reveals a wealth of rich leadership, movements, personalities, and
people dedicated to improving human lives. There are so many people in Durham
working hard for human relations that you can hardly throw a stone in public
without hitting one of them.
The Story of Written
Consent and the FADE Coalition
This richness is illustrated by the role
our Human Relations Commission played in the City Council’s consideration of
racial disparities in policing. A coalition of Durham organizations came
together around the issue of racial profiling in Durham. These organizations
included, but were not limited to, SpiritHouse, Southern Coalition for Social
Justice, the Durham NAACP, Neighborhood Allies of Durham, Durham Congregations
in Action, Durham CAN, Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, Durham
People’s Alliance, George H. White Bar Association, Southerners on New Ground
(SONG), Action NC, North Carolina Public Defender’s Committee on Racial Equity,
and the Rutba House. Friends and colleagues such as Commissioner Diane
Standaert, Daryl Atkinson, Ian Mance, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Nia Wilson,
Tia Hall, Dave Hall, Rafiq Zaidi, Candace Rashad, Omar Beasley, and others who came together to
develop a strategy for changing police practice in Durham. They gathered under
the umbrella of a coalition called FADE, Fostering Alternatives to Drug
Enforcement. FADE issued recommendations. Five of their most important
recommendations included: mandated written consent forms for all vehicle consent
searches; de-prioritization of misdemeanor marijuana enforcement; periodic
review of racial disparities in officer stop data; reformation and
strengthening of the Durham Civilian Police Review board; and formal racial
equity training.
The local FADE coalition collected statistical
analysis clearly demonstrating racial disparities in consent searches at
traffic stops. We learned that police have requested people of color for
consent to search at traffic stops at rates far higher than traffic stops involving
white people. The statistics also showed a very lot hit rate for drugs or
contraband. This means that many innocent people of color were targeted for
searches with no results. We represented victims of police misconduct in court,
collected evidence of misconduct, and told individual stories of people who are
victims of racial profiling and excessive force. Ministers, organizers,
statistical and policy analysts, and lawyers brought their skills together to
make racial profiling visible and offer concrete solutions. In our public
discussion we heard from our Chief of Police, from our City Manager, and from our
concerned citizens. We engaged in contested and difficult conversations about
race, police practice, and our values in Durham which resulted in the adoption
of a police policy requiring written consent to search. We are now receiving
regular reports from our Police Department on the racial disparities in our
police practices. I am proud to be a part of this courageous community facing
directly the issue of race in our justice system, engaging in difficult
conversations which are resulting in concrete, innovative policies. Our work
here is an example for other communities facing the same problems. The way our community brought the issue of
racial profiling to the leaders on the City Council, and the way the Human Relations
framed the difficult discussion, leading to specific and concrete advancements,
serves a model to the rest of North Carolina and the rest of the Country as we
all struggle with these racial disparities.
Where do we go from
here? End the War on Drugs
So where do we go from here? I say, we
should call an immediate end to the “War on Drugs” in Durham. We have lost this
self-defeating War on Drugs and we must begin imagining an exit strategy.
This War has not made us safer. This War has not reduced the amount of drugs on
our streets. And yet, it has inflicted numerous casualties against our own
citizens. This War was ill conceived and misguided from the start. For, there
is really no such thing as a “War on Drugs.” There is only War against people. Drugs
are things, inanimate objects. This War is against human beings. War involves
the destruction of human lives. And that is what we have witnessed in the War
on Drugs - the destruction of human lives.
Our first mistake in the war on drugs was
concentrating the War in poor communities of color. While studies showed that
two thirds of all crack users were white, not one white person had been
prosecuted for crack in Los Angeles as of 1995. The War on Drugs was really a
War on poor communities of color. Declared as we were exiting from the
segregation battles of Jim Crow, the War on Drugs became the new form of
racialized coercion and social control – a New Jim Crow. (Many of us are reading that excellent book by Michelle Alexander in
Durham this month) The media campaign against drugs portrayed the
stereotypical drug user as a black crack addict when studies showed the demand
for drugs came primarily from the white majority. Our police have therefore targeted
people of color more often for drug investigations. For example, our police set
up undercover drug transactions in more often in poor communities of color, and
not on Duke’s campus or other more affluent parts of our community. Our City
police have recently reported that 86% of their marijuana arrests were for
people of color.
Not only are people of color targeted at
a higher rate for drug investigations, their sentences are disproportionately
longer than white offenders. Because crack appeared to be prevalent in
communities of color we passed harsh mandatory sentencing laws which punished
crack at a rate of 100 times when compared with powder cocaine. Powder cocaine was viewed as the drug of
choice for affluent whites, and crack was viewed as the drug of choice for poor
people of color. This means that a black teenager with crack weighing about as
much as a candy bar would face a ten year mandatory minimum sentence. To get the same sentence, a white person
would have to possess about 12 pounds of powder cocaine. Scientifically there was no difference in the
addictiveness or harmfulness of the two, the only difference was baking powder.
Our federal law allows for mandatory life sentences for some non-violent drug
offenses depending on the amount of drugs. As a result more people of color
were not only unfairly targeted for prosecution at higher rates, and they also faced
disproportionately longer sentences. More black people go to jail for drugs,
and black people face longer jail sentences than similarly situated white
people. Our racial history permeated the investigation, prosecution, and
sentencing of black people, tilting the scales of justice irrevocably against people
of color.
Our second mistake in the War on Drugs was
the militarization of this war. In one generation the image of the ideal law
enforcement officer shifted from the Andy Griffith who used personal
relationships to work out community problems, to the SWAT team. Armored vests,
armored vehicles, flash grenades, bullet proof vests, assault rifles became a
normal part of communities that felt more like occupied territories than local
neighborhoods. For every high capacity
magazine on the street, the police needed greater capacity. For every armor
piercing bullet, the police needed better armor. We have watched our inability
to regulate guns lead to an arms race on the streets.
As an aside, how is it that we can
regulate motor vehicles requiring a driver’s test, a license, accident
insurance, and an entire regulatory scheme of motor vehicle laws to insure safe
operation, but we cannot do the same for guns? It makes no sense that I can get
a gun without a license, insurance, test, or strict regulations for its use?
And yet, we are asking our police to face these risks on the street.
Our third mistake was to turn the War on
Drugs was turning it into a profit making endeavor - War profiteering on the War
on Drugs. We took advantage of federal grants to arm our officers in the war on
drugs, and needed to generate drug arrests to justify the grant money. We
reported drug arrests in order to justify more federal money to get more drug
arrests. We applied forfeiture laws to seize cars, houses, cash from poor folks
arrested in tough neighborhoods as part of the spoils of War. As a result the Prisoners
of the War on Drugs feed a billion dollar Prison Industrial Complex which
regards these poor people of color as a “Revenue stream.” This Billion dollar
prison industry employs lobbyists to lower the age of adulthood and lengthen
criminal sentences in order to increase their profits and pad their bottom line
by increasing the number of prisoners around the country. It is a fact, made
more painful by our history of slavery, that the War on Drugs has become yet
another way for rich people to profit on black flesh in chains. The War on drugs is a three headed monster,
yet another manifestation of the intertwined horrors of racism, materialism,
and militarism in our midst.
The Battle of Cheek Road
I encountered this three headed monster in
all its ferocity on February15, 2002 when I was a new public defender here in
Durham. I was watching the nightly news when I saw reporters live at the scene
of a drug raid at Cheek Road apartments. Mayor Bell was there at the scene, talking
about the need to rid our community of drugs. The Police Chief was there.
Officer Green made arrangements for the local ABC affiliate to stand alongside
of police as the busted into homes, entering the homes of residents as police raided
apartments. There were 111 apartments at
Cheek Road. The police showed up with hundreds of officers from Durham City
Police, Durham County Police, and the State Bureau of Investigation. There were two National Guard helicopters
spot lighting people on the ground. There were also media helicopters in the
air. At eight o’clock the police sealed all the entrances to the apartment
complex, conducting traffic stops of everyone who tried to leave. No one was
free to go. The City Government called it “ TAPS” – “The Aggressive Police Strategy.”
They battered down doors, threw “flash bangs” into apartments where they knew
small children were living. They only executed 3 search warrants, entering many
other homes without warrants. The chased a thirteen year old boy into this
apartment where they searched him at gun point in front of his mother. It was a military operation, an invasion of a
poor community of color.
I was horrified the next night, February
16, 2002, when they returned to the same complex and did it again. They invaded
4 more apartments with search warrants using the selective enforcement team
(SET team), riding in an unmarked black van, wearing unmarked black body armor,
helmets, masks, and pointing semi-automatic weapons and shot guns. Once again they chased the same thirteen year
old child back into his apartment and held him at gunpoint. This time he was
hospitalized for shock. By the end of the two night invasion, the police had entered
each one of the 111 apartments even though they only had 7 search warrants.
They claimed that all the residents gave “consent” to search their homes. A Judge later held that any consent was
“coerced” and that the entire invasion was unconstitutional. The minor drug
charges arising from this invasion were dismissed. The invasion of Cheek road
embodied everything that was wrong with our militarized war on drugs.
The
Consequence of the War on Drugs
The consequence of this misguided War on
Drugs is that certain parts of our community live in fear of the police. The
children of Cheek road are ten years older. What do they think of our police? Because
of the War on Drugs, the number of people in prison nationally has escalated
from five hundred thousand to 2.3 million. The Prisoners of the War on drugs
outnumber the entire population of some small countries. As a country that
represents five percent of the world’s population, we house twenty five percent
of the world’s prisoners. More than
sixty percent of Prisoners of the War Drugs are from poor communities of color.
The Prisoners of the War on Drugs are
never completely free because their felony convictions follow them the rest of
their lives, restricting their vote and keeping them unemployed. The Prisoners of the War on Drugs are forever
marginalized in our society. We have more black people under Government
supervision today than there were slaves at the height of slavery, and more
black men who cannot vote now than at the height of Jim Crow. Our poor communities of color have been
decimated by taking young black men out of our communities and making them
criminals. Parents are divided from children, which only perpetuates the cycle
of poverty. We have suffered immeasurable social and economic cost for making
people convicted felons: the social marginalization, the loss of economic
opportunity and labor productivity, the harm to the social fabric of families
and communities. Our police departments
are built to aggressively search for drugs and are less well equipped to solve
murders, property crimes - the historical and traditional role of law
enforcement.
It’s not the fault of the police. How
can we turn our police into drug soldiers and then complain that they use too
much force? How can we order our drug soldiers into communities of color and
then complain there are racial disparities in their arrests? It is our fault
for allowing this self-defeating War on Drugs to continue for so long. We must
find another way, or we are sentencing our community to more shame and
destruction.
The
Giant Triplets: Racism, Militarism, Materialism
In his speech at Riverside Church in New
York City in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., identified the “giant triplets
of racism, materialism, and militarism” as the greatest threats to justice in
our society. Dr. King most famously grappled with racism in his movement for
equality for people of color and the dismantling of American Apartheid. He
spoke often of the way racism dehumanizes people of color. Racism excludes some residents from the basic
hallmarks of human dignity, while allowing other residents to enjoy the
unearned advantages of these patterns of discrimination, whether we consciously
discriminate or not. Racism is an insidious social disease infecting us all
because we live in a post-Apartheid society that has never faced directly our
racial divide. We have never looked in the mirror of a Truth and Reconciliation
process the way South Africa did.
Dr. King also marched against poverty.
He spoke incisively against the greed and materialism of our malignant
capitalism which refuses to pay a living wage to poor people in order to line
the pockets of the rich. At the end of his life, Dr. King was leading a poor
people’s campaign to block streets in Washington and demonstrate that poor
lives matter.
Also, as a gospel minister of non-violence,
Dr. King taught us that militarism, the use of massive doses of force of
violence to solve problems, only creates more problems. He saw our own government
as the greatest purveyor of violence in our society. The social and economic
resources need to cure the social disease of racism and lift us out of poverty
with an annual minimum wage were being squandered in the nightmare of war and
organized mass killing. He spoke clearly against war, showing its connection to
both poverty and racism.
We see in this misguided and
self-defeating War on Drugs the same malignant and monstrous giant triplets of Materialism,
Militarism, and Racism. This three headed monster lurks the streets of Durham
under the name of the War on Drugs. We see clearly now the racial aims of this
war, the militarized nature of this war, and the profits of this war from the
lives of poor people of color. It is time to declare defeat and imagine an exit
strategy.
But how do we end this war, without
leaving in its place yet another new monster of social control and decimation?
A Radical Revolution of Values
Dr. King called us to a “radical revolution of values.” He said “I am convinced that if we are to get on the
right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a
"thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered
more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and
militarism are incapable of being conquered.” “A true
revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of
many of our past and present policies.” He said that it is not enough to toss
a coin to a beggar on the road to Jericho, but “the whole Jericho road must be
transformed” “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not
haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces
beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look
uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.” We cannot watch
capitalists profiting on the black flesh from our neighborhoods and remain
silent. “With righteous indignation,”
we must look at the malignant capitalists profiting off our poor children of
color, with “no concern for the social
betterment” of our neighborhoods and say: "This is not just." This
revolution of values will look at our police breaking into homes of people of
color in riot gear and say "This is not just." It will look upon our
City Police using a TASER gun against a minor and his father and say, “This is
not making us more safe.” “A true
revolution of values will lay hands on” the war on drugs and say of this
war: "This violent and exploitative way of handling what is truly a mental
health problem is not just." This business of throwing smoke bombs at
citizens, taking hundreds of thousands poor black prisoners of war, filling our
nation's homes with children orphaned by Prisoners of the War on Drugs, of
sending men home from prison mentally handicapped, psychologically deranged, and
forever marked by the scarlet letter of a felony conviction cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice
and love. A local government which continues year after year to spend more
money on drug investigation, detention officers than educators, on armored
vehicles than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death. Do we pay federal detention officers
more than we pay elementary school educators? How can we spend 30,000 a year to
house an inmate instead of investing in their employment, education, and mental
health?
The
Exit Strategy
Let
Durham become the first city in America to officially declare the end of the war
on drugs. Let's begin to imagine and implement the exit strategy. What I have
in mind is not surrender to open air drug markets, or acquiescence to the
infestation of drugs in our community. No, what I am imaging is a way of
dealing with drugs as a public health problem rather than a criminal
problem. Arresting a 16 year old for
possessing less than half an ounce of marihuana is like punishing a sick person
for being ill. As other States legalize marijuana it becomes increasingly
absurd to impose long sentences for drug trafficking here while companies are
getting rich in Colorado for the same conduct. And, the long term economic
effect of imposing a criminal record on our child is catastrophic to our struggling
communities. Let's invest in treatment. Let's provide restorative circles of support
and accountability. Let's provide jobs. A summer jobs program for youth in high
risk neighborhoods in Chicago provided a 25 hour a week job at minimum wage,
resulting in a 43% drop in violent crime. When white people were suffering
massive unemployment during the depression our government invested in public
works programs to put them to work. Let's invest in our youth and provide
meaningful, living wage jobs. When
Portugal decriminalized all drugs more than a decade ago, drug use was reduced
in half. According to many sources, including Forbes magazine, Portugal’s
experiment shifting from penalties to treatment has been an overwhelming
success. Drug treatment is cheaper and more humane than prison.
In addition to investing in the health
and economics of our struggling communities, let’s re-purpose and de-militarize
our police department. Look at our police budget. We pay more for drug
investigators than we do homicide investigators. Let’s shift most of the money we
are paying for drug investigation to violent crime, property crimes, and white
collar crime. Let’s have our police
trained as community mediators and ask them to resolve conflicts instead of
making drug arrests. The United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime has found international consensus around the idea
that drugs are a matter of public health, and that police should focus on
community policing, mediation, deferral programs, and restorative
conferencing. Imagine our police as
positive role models, mediators.
Think about the thousands of dollars our
Durham Police Department spends paying addicts in our community to set up
undercover drug transactions. Let’s
imagine that instead of giving that “snitch” a couple of hundred dollars to
make a drug arrest, we gave her a job with a living wage and health care to
help treat depression and addiction. Right now, we give an addict a few hundred
dollars to help us arrest another addict. Let’s stop treating these folks as
means to an end, and embrace and support their full humanity.
One
of the areas of greatest hope in my work is in the area of Restorative Justice.
This is an international movement that imagines the resolution of conflicts and
crime in a way that is more healing and less harmful. Our retributive system of
crime and punishment should be restricted to our most serious violent crimes. Our
court system is a hammer. And when all we have is a hammer, every problem looks
like a nail. Let's put away the hammer, and reserve its use for violent crime
and stop prosecuting low level drug offenses. People should not go to Durham
County Jail for less than half an ounce of marijuana, or failure to have
insurance on their car, or having no operator’s license. People with mental
illness need treatment, not jail. Children in trouble at school need guidance
and support, not jail. We should move toward a system which asks the victim how
they have been harmed and what they need for healing. We should ask the
community what are the underlying causes of these crimes and how can we work
together toward solutions for the root causes. We should ask offenders how they
can heal the harm and best reintegrate into our community. At every stage of
our criminal process from pre-arrest, to pre-guilt determination, to
sentencing, post-conviction, and re-entry from prison – there is a more restorative
process that heals the victim, involves the community, and holds the offender
more accountable. Let’s imagine ways to replace our adversarial system of guilt
and punishment, hammer and nail, with a more therapeutic and healing method.
Instead of suspending or expelling
children, let’s use positive behavior interventions and supports and
restorative justice and keep them in school.
One of the greatest risk factors for failure in our society is dropping
out of school. We complain about the number of kids who are dropping out, and
wring our hands to find solutions to the dropout rate. I have a brilliant and time tested method of
keeping kids in school – stop kicking them out! Let's work
together to make Durham a place where every child gets three healthy meals for
their body, and exemplary education for their mind, and dignity, equality, and
freedom for their souls. Let’s begin by ending the war on drugs, and developing
a humane exit strategy.
