Looking hesitantly at the blue and white cruiser through squinted eyes, he nervously shifts as he stands near his porch rapping to his friends. As the car parks and two cops emerge, he feels a nervous butterfly sensation in his stomach as the police officers approach. Within seconds, the officers have cornered him and his friends, peppering them with questions and ordering them to turn and spread their legs.
“It was unnecessary and embarrassing,” remembers the young man. Refusing to be identified for this article, this 17 year-old African-American Ward 8 resident claims that he was a victim of racial profiling that is not an exception, but the expectation when living in East of the River Washington. “The cops here do whatever,” he says. “They don’t care about us. They harass us whenever they get a chance because they know we can’t do nothing.” His recent experience with the police described above is just an example of what he says happens to him at least every other month.
“You can’t walk down the street and see a cop that’s helping people. If I see a cop, he’s either looking at me like I stole something, or patting down another man who just trying to get home after school or work. The cops in this area do whatever they feel like doing.”
James Pearlstein, co-founder and director of Youth Leadership for the organization Facilitating Leadership in Youth (FLY), works with adolescents in the Barry Farms public housing development who say that this young man’s experience is the norm. To confront the issue head-on, the youth of FLY began a campaign to stop harassment of young people by the police.
“Our preliminary findings found that transit police -- in metro stations -- are the ones youth are having the biggest problems dealing with. The L’Enfant Plaza metro stop and the Anacostia Metro stop particularly,” Pearlstein explains. “The youth report officers unfairly targeting them because they are young, and this happens largely during after-school hours.”
Based on these findings, the young people of FLY’s Youth Council put together the magazine Is It Because: SE Youth and the Police recently as a follow-up to their 2004 publication Why?: Guns Killin Young’uns. FLY youth told Pearlstein that they believe that youth violence in the community could be prevented if relations between youth and police were improved. As relations stand now, young people are less likely to cooperate with the police or seek support when they are in danger or witness a crime.
The Metropolitan Police Departments 7th District commander and community outreach coordinator were contacted multiple times for comment but did not respond.
Officer Timothy Riche, a 7th District officer who has been based in District Public Schools for the past fifteen of his twenty year tenure, agreed to speak on what he views as a lack of understanding between youth and police. Currently serving at Hart Middle School and Ballou Senior High School, Riche feels that tension is mainly due to misunderstanding and assumption.
“I haven’t had a negative experience working with kids in the community because I’ve been based in the schools for so long. I see people now who were [students] when I first met them, come to the school as parents of the kids I work with now,” he says. “What I think happens a lot is that [youth] believe all police are the same because of their bad experiences with a few.”
But some argue that a few bad experiences that happen just because you are black, young and present in a high crime area are enough to cause a young person to be hesitant in trusting the police.
SE resident Stephen Boney says that the bad experiences make up the total experience for most of the youth growing up in Southeast. Large-framed and standing over six-feet tall, Boney resembles a football player on any NFL team. At 21 years-old, he says that he has been a victim of police harassment ever since childhood, which he believes is mainly because of his large size and black skin.
“When I was old enough to hang with my big brother, I started getting picked on by the police,’ says Boney. “We would be at the playground and the cops would tell us that we would have to go home now. There weren’t any signs that said that the playground was off-limits.”
Boney compares what he calls constant surveillance by the police to the treatment he sees white residents receive for doing the same things he and his friends do.
“I’ve been outside in the neighborhood standing with my friends and the police have told us to break up and go home and we’re not doing anything. I’ve witnessed groups of white people, walking their dogs and standing in a group chatting and police cars just drive by like its nothing. This happens a lot.” Boney, a youth worker who is finishing up college, feels he shouldn’t have to stay in the house to prove he is law abiding.
The FLY youth council plan on surveying 300 youth in Wards 7 and 8 to garner more feedback on what general and specific feelings are regarding police. The goal is to ultimately have information to present to the police to begin working in tandem to create positive change. The first objective is to create a handbook, tentatively titled Know Your Rights, for youth to use in times of doubt when encountering police. They will distribute at least 3,000 copies of this handbook, followed by workshops to teach young people specific responses to their interactions with the police.
“Our goal is to prevent police abuse of youth in District,” Pearlstein says.
To learn more about FLY, contact James Pearlstein at 202-423-2124 or visit their website at www.flyouth.org