Policing the Police

PICTURE THIS: you're sitting downstairs with some friends in Matthews or Hollis early freshman week, when a Harvard police officer barges in and demands to see your ID. As you explain that you don't have it with you because it's upstairs in your room, he smirks, "Ok, then, let's go upstairs and get it."

Or you're just walking up Mass. Ave. one night with a friend or two, minding your own business, when two officers stop you. They throw you against a wall, rudely search you, and then curse you out--all the while refusing to let you present your Harvard ID.

For most Harvard students, these scenarios are incredible. But for Black students, they constitute a harsh reality. And while Harvard University Police Department officials and College administrators claim ignorance of such incidents. Blacks at Harvard continue to complain that police harassment here is on the rise.

At any given BSA meeting, for example, if you were to ask how many students had fallen prey to harassment, you could probably count the unraised arms on one hand. "A lot of people who feel they've been harassed write it off as an isolated incident that's not going to happen again and then they're surprised at the number of other hands that go up," says Heather S. Johnston '86, a BSA member.

But when police officials are asked if harassment of minority students is a problem, they blithely reply that they've never heard of even one incident of indiscriminate harassment of a minority student.

They probably haven't. But the fact that most cases of harassment go unreported does not mitigate the serious problem. Discrimination has always been a tricky thing to prove, and few instances illustrate this more clearly than a recent case involving two Black undergraduates.

Thomas A. Harris '84 charged that he and two friends were harassed by two Harvard police officers last November because the three were Black. The officers were looking for two Black men who had stolen a car. Harris claimed that the officers pushed the three against a wall of a Mass. Ave. building and frisked them, while denying them the right to show their Harvard identifications. He also claimed that when he accused the officers of being racists, they cursed at him.

After charges of discrimination were brought against the Harvard University Police Department the matter was referred to Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59, and a letter of apology was ultimately issued by Police Chief Paul E. Johnson.

But while Johnson's letter may be a step in the right direction, the apology itself does not really address the issue at hand. Harris' complaint was not only that the officer treated him roughly throughout the procedure, but also that he and his friends were stopped in the first place when none of them resembled the description of the suspects. "If it had been white students on Mass. Ave. and they had been looking for white criminals, this never would have happened," he said earlier this month.

Johnson apologized only for the fact that the officers did not explain why they stopped the three students after it had been determined that they were not involved. He did not apologize for any act of discrimination--saying the students did resemble the suspects--and uphold the officers' actions as legal and justified. Most severs, the matter is being treated as a specific incident and not as part of a general problem.

It seems curious that many accept the common wisdom that the Cambridge police force is generally racist and that its officers often harass minorities indiscriminately, but dismiss suggestions that the Harvard police could share the same attitudes and prejudices. As a rule, HUPD attracts the same type of person that would join the Cambridge force; generally local Massachusetts residents of working class origins who may be angered by seeing middle and lower income Blacks receiving opportunities that their children never will.

The Cambridge police force has recently come under attack from local families for harassing several Black youths. Sociologists have attributed the commonplace harassment to a deep-rooted mistrust of Blacks, stemming from strong ethnic identifications and recent racial tensions. Why should Harvard police officers be considered immune to these forces?

Harvard cannot change the attitudes of its police officers overnight, but it can do something to diminish harassment of its Black students. Dr. S. Alan Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for improved race relations, suggests discussion groups to sensitize officers to the needs of the Black community. Additionally, harassment should be treated more seriously, with serious penalties attached to it.

Cambridge, like any city, offers more than enough dangers to an unsuspecting student. Police officers should deter these attacks, not add to them.