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From the Washington Times

ANALYSIS / OPINION

Bill Cosby weighs in on Trayvon Martin case

by Deborah Simmons

“The gun.”

Those two simple words flowed easily from the mouth of social commentator Bill Cosby during an exclusive interview Friday regarding the Trayvon Martin case, arguably the most high-profile, citizen-on-citizen U.S. slaying facing the Obama administration .

Trayvon was killed Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman , who told police that a “confrontation” with the unarmed 17-year-old led him to shoot in self-defense.

Mr. Cosby , a Navy veteran, said “the gun” empowered Mr. Zimmerman , whose actions have stirred a firestorm of debate, protests and remarks from President Obama.

“We've got to get the gun out of the hands of people who are supposed to be on neighborhood watch,” said Mr. Cosby , whose remarks were the first he has made publicly about the case.

“Without a gun, I don't see Mr. Zimmerman approaching Trayvon by himself,” Mr. Cosby explained. “The power-of-the-gun mentality had him unafraid to confront someone. Even police call for backup in similar situations.

“When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody,” he said.

An award-winning actor and great American humorist, Mr. Cosby , 74, is best know for the ground-breaking NBC sit-com “The Cosby Show,” stand-up routines and recorded performances, all of which are infused with familial humor.

Scheduled to perform April 28 at the Kennedy Center, Mr. Cosby continues to grace multiple platforms, and is scheduled to tickle funny bones as co-emcee at the April 12 gala celebrating the reopening of the historic Howard Theatre in Northwest Washington.

But it was at another celebration, the NAACP marking of the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, that saw Mr. Cosby take a spot on the forefront of controversial social commentary.

In his remarks at the 2004 event, Mr. Cosby pointed out to the audience that blacks had essentially created a new lower rung on the socioeconomic ladder by failing to police their children. Since then, he has traveled the nation and used social media to expound the virtues of personal accountability, responsible parenting and a sound education.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/7/simmons-bill-cosby-weighs-trayvon-martin-case/

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Neighbors fearful after shootings in Tulsa

by Justin Juozapavicius

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Residents of Tulsa's predominantly black north side said Saturday they're afraid a shooter is still roaming their neighborhoods looking for victims after five people were shot — and three killed — a day earlier.

“We're all nervous,” said Renaldo Works , 52, who was getting his hair cut at the crowded Charlie's Angels Forever Hair Style Shop on Saturday morning. “I've got a 15-year-old, and I'm not going to let him out late. People are scared. We need facts.

“You don't want to be a prisoner in your own home,” he said.

Police are still waiting for the results of forensic tests, but investigators think the shootings are linked because they happened around the same time within a 3-mile span, and all five victims were out walking when they were shot. All the victims are black, and community met this weekend in an effort to calm any unrest.

One of the victims told police that the shooter was a white man driving a white pickup truck who stopped to ask for directions before opening fire. Officer Jason Willingham said Saturday that the pickup was spotted in the area of three of the shootings.

“We don't have one definitive way where this investigation is headed,” Willingham said. “Right now, that's the only thing we have to go on.”

More than two dozen officers are investigating the case, along with the FBI , the U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies, Willingham said.

As investigators searched for the killer, the tension and fear among some of the city's black residents was palpable.

“It's got everybody on edge,” said Louis Johnson , 24. “Everybody is saying the same thing — it's a white guy in a white pickup or a Tahoe.”

Barber Charles Jones , 40, said the north side has had its share of crime trouble, but residents have never faced a series of random killings like these.

“It's pretty shocking,” Jones said. “We've never had any serial-type stuff.”

At a neighborhood park a couple blocks from two of the shootings, parents kept close watch over their kids during an Easter egg hunt.

“The first I heard of it, it sounded like some type of gangland thing,” said 47-year-old parent Wayne Bell, who was hiding plastic eggs in the grass. “Everybody's asking why. Everybody has to just stick together. It's more of a keep close to the nest thing right now.”

The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr. , president of the Tulsa NAACP, said “avid distrust” between the black community and the police department had raised concerns that the shootings wouldn't be fully investigated, and he contacted police to emphasize the need for them to work together to avoid vigilantism.

“We have to handle this because there are a number of African-American males who are not going to allow this to happen in their neighborhood,” he said. “We're trying to quell the feeling of ‘let's get someone' and we will make as certain as we can that this isn't pushed under the rug.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/7/neighbors-fearful-after-shootings-tulsa/

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From Google News

2 suspects arrested in Oklahoma shootings

TULSA, Okla.— Police said special operations officers and other agents arrested two white men early Sunday, saying they were suspects in recent shootings that left three people dead and two others critically wounded, all black, in the Tulsa area.

Tulsa police spokesman Jason Willingham said the two men were arrested at a home just north of Tulsa at 1:47 a.m. Sunday and they were expected to face three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill. He said police acted on an anonymous tip and went to one location and followed the suspects after they had traveled about a half mile on foot to another place where they were apprehended. He declined to characterize that as a pursuit.

"There obviously still is a lot of investigation" ahead, Willingham told The Associated Press by telephone. "We don't' have a motive at this time. We are still asking questions and hopefully that will become clear in coming days."

Willingham identified the men in custody as 19-year-old Jake England and 32-year-old Alvin Watts, both white, but gave no hometowns for them. He said the two men were taken early Sunday for questioning at a downtown Tulsa police station and would be booked and then jailed.

It was not known if either man arrested had obtained an attorney early Sunday.

Willingham said the arrests followed a crimestoppers tip on Saturday but he declined to specify what that information was. Willingham said he did not have any immediate details when asked if the men were armed when they were arrested. But he said authorities had begun honing in on the men Saturday evening, adding, "this evolved pretty rapidly."

"We've been on them since early in the evening (of Saturday). We had been doing surveillance and using a helicopter," he told AP.

Willingham said a special operations team and other law enforcement agents were key in making the arrests. He says police used surveillance and other techniques and a helicopter in the course of apprehending the men.

Asked if the two men were armed when they were taken into custody, the police spokesman said he had no immediate information.

Police had said previously that they were searching for a white man driving a white pickup, which was spotted in the area of three of the shootings early Friday. At least two dozen officers were called to investigate the case, along with the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service. The arrests came hours after authorities created Operation Random Shooter, a task force of various law enforcement agencies at various levels of government that have been working together on the case.

The shootings had placed Tulsa's black community on edge over the weekend after the series of shootings early Friday morning. The shootings left many alarmed and worried in the north Tulsa area.

Authorities had said they thought the shootings by an attacker or attackers were linked because they happened around the same time within a three-mile span and all five victims were out walking when they were shot.

Willingham said authorities still faced many unanswered questions after the arrests.

Police, in their initial statement announcing the arrests via email, declined to discuss speculation about issues of race. Authorities signaled many questions remained and the investigation is still very active.

"We are going to turn over every rock," he said of the work of the task force and local police.

Police had said previously that they didn't believe the victims knew one another and they were trying to determine the circumstances behind the killings. Black community leaders met Friday evening in an effort to calm worries about the shootings, which had alarmed the predominantly black north Tulsa area.

The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr., president of the Tulsa NAACP, had contacted police to emphasize the need for all to work together to avoid vigilantism. Blakney also had spoken of "avid distrust" between the African-American community and the police department and he also raised concerns that the shootings be fully investigated.

Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan had said Saturday that police would do whatever it took to apprehend suspects in what he called vicious and cowardly attacks.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/04/08/police_2_suspects_arrested_in_oklahoma_shootings/

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Community Policing Defined

Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.

Community Policing is comprised of three key components:

• Community Partnerships
  Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.
  • Other Government Agencies
  • Community Members/Groups
  • Nonprofits/Service Providers
  • Private Businesses
  • Media
    
• Organizational Transformation
  The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem solving.
  Agency Management
  • Climate and culture
  • Leadership
  • Labor relations
  • Decision-making
  • Strategic planning
  • Policies
  • Organizational evaluations
  • Transparency
  • Organizational Structure
  Geographic assignment of officers
  • Despecialization
  • Resources and finances
  Personnel
  • Recruitment, hiring, and selection
  • Personnel supervision/evaluations
  • Training
  Information Systems (Technology)
  • Communication/access to data
  • Quality and accuracy of data
    
• Problem Solving
  The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop and rigorously evaluate effective responses.
  • Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems
  • Analysis: Researching what is known about the problem
  • Response: Developing solutions to bring about lasting reductions in the number and extent of problems
  • Assessment: Evaluating the success of the responses
  • Using the crime triangle to focus on immediate conditions (victim/offender/location)

To learn more about Community Policing, please refer to our Community Policing Defined publication.

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?item=36

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Michael Eric Dyson Offers Ed Schultz A Solution To Racial Profiling: ‘Community Policing'?

(videos on site)

by Frances Martel

With the Trayvon Martin case still at the forefront of much of the news, racial profiling in general has become a frequent topic of conversation, and many have shared the frightful experiences that have come out of profiling situations. One such person in the spotlight this week is Tyler Perry , who wrote a long Facebook post about a traffic stop that could have gotten ugly had a black police officer not intervened. Ed Schultz used the Perry example to illustrate the dangers of profiling with guest Michael Eric Dyson on his program yesterday, and Dyson offered some solutions. Strangely among them, he cited community policing. Isn't community policing what brought racial profiling into the news cycle to begin with?

Perry wrote a post last Sunday on Facebook about an experience in which a police officer stopped him for an illegal turn, and he and his white partner became extreme hostile towards him until he began to behave the way his mother had taught him to in the presence of officers:

I finally realized that he thought that switch was the key, so I told him that it wasn't the key he was grabbing. I reached down into the cup holder to get the key, not realizing that the key had a black leather strap on it. As I grabbed it they both tensed up and I dropped it as I heard my mother's voice from when I was a little boy.

My mother would always say to me, “if you get stopped by the police, especially if they are white policemen, you say ‘yes sir' and ‘no sir', and if they want to take you in, you go with them. Don't resist, you hear me? Don't make any quick moves, don't run, you just go.” My mother was born in 1945 into a segregated hotbed town in rural Louisiana. She had known of many colored men at the time who were lynched and never heard from again. Since I was her only son for ten years, growing up she was so worried about me. It wasn't until after I heard her voice that I realized that both of these officers were white.

Perry escaped the situation when a black police officer drove by and saw him, gave him what Perry describes as an “oh no” face, and spoke privately to the officers, one can imagine explaining to them who Perry was and to not overdo it.

Schultz and Dyson discussed the situation on the program on Friday, with Dyson noting that he was familiar with the “fear, the anger, the hostility, the intimidation” that comes with that sort of stop. “I've had this happen to me at 3 o'clock in the morning on the highways of New Jersey, on the streets of Detroit,” he says, and no matter who you are, “whatever stature you have, whatever education you have, whatever achievements you have go out the window” before a hostile police officer.

Dyson proposed some solutions– for one, police should “treat everybody like you treat Tyler Perry after you find out he is Tyler Perry.” He also proposes a review board within the police department to hold officers guilty of racial profiling accountable. Somewhat baffling in the context of the racial profiling case at the forefront of the news today, though– the killing of Trayvon Martin – was his call for more “community policing.” “How about people in communities policing those communities?” he offered, adding that he thought the President weighing in on profiling in a tactful manner, as in the Martin Case, could do a lot of good.

Dyson's general instinct that the problem with racial profiling is a lack of accountability for police officers who engage in it is spot-on, but who does the policing is key. Yes, most people who work in community policing and neighborhood watch groups do so because they care about their neighbors and they want people to feel safe. Then there are the George Zimmermans of the world, who seemed to have always wanted to be policemen and found a way to get around the strict requirements of training and graduation from police academy. Not being a uniformed officer is absolutely no guarantee of being unable to discriminate racially, and unfortunately in this context, the glaring question of who watches over the community watch shines brighter than the answers to some others.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/michael-eric-dyson-offers-ed-schultz-a-solution-to-racial-profiling-community-policing/