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        -  Responding to Minority Youth
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        - 21st Century Policing Forum: In “Protecting the Rights of LGBTQ+ People” 

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### Responding to Minority Youth: Policing by TOTALS

Equality in society depends on government agents  being legitimate while providing opportunities and protections for all  citizens. Citizens’ perceptions demonstrate their understanding of whether  their interactions and contacts with government agents in the mainstream arena  reflect a fair and just process. Arguably there is no system today under more  scrutiny concerning questions of equality than American policing and its  interaction with African-American and Latino youth.  As director and a co-founder of the Teen And  Police Service (TAPS) Academy, I present a perspective from both youth and law  enforcement. 

     Founded by the Houston (Texas) Police Department and  funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) of  the U.S. Department of Justice, the TAPS Academy provides an 11-week curriculum  to the most at-risk youth in juvenile facilities, alternative schools, and  low-performing high schools in which police officers and teens learn together  about subjects affecting them most, including youth and police interaction,  conflict resolution, drugs, teamwork, bullying, truancy, dating, and others  along with a service-learning project. Pre- and post-program evaluations show  30–50 percent positive changes for youth as compared to control groups in areas  of trust, connectedness, like, and respect. In addition, post-program  evaluation shows that police officers increase their understanding of youth,  which enables them to more effectively handle interactions with youth in the  community (Lumpkin and Penn 2013).

     A host of literature confirms that minority youth,  especially African American, has the lowest amount of trust, like,  connectedness, and legitimacy for police (Jones, Penn, and Davenport 2015).  Overall, 59 percent of White Americans have confidence in the police as  compared to only 37 percent of Black Americans (Economist 2014). This nearly  poisonous relationship erodes the public trust and weakens the social contract  that holds a society together. Citizens must believe they have equality with law  enforcement in order for the groups to bond and the citizens to become law  abiding. They must believe that “playing by the rules” pays off justly and  fairly and is rewarded (Hirschi 1969); the fact that many do not raises  questions about perceptions of authority and the law in general (Laub 2014). In  some minority communities in the United States police are seen as “an occupying  force fighting a war against us just because we live in a poor neighborhood,”  said an African-American male teenager (Penn forthcoming). This legal cynicism  (Sampson and Bartusch 1998) has been found to be correlated with the  disadvantaged and high rates of violence (Kirk and Papachristos 2011).

     Violence, crime, and victimization rates make for  constant contact among minority youth and the police. With this reality of race  and place, the African-American young man quoted above has a one-in-three  chance of going to prison in his lifetime (Knafo 2013). This ongoing, daily  struggle between members of minority communities and law enforcement has the  characteristics of war as death occurs on both sides. Recent stories such as  those of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have triggered public protest, but other  deaths should also be noted. For example, John Crawford was in an Ohio Walmart  toy aisle holding an air rifle he planned to buy. As he talked on the phone and  looked at other items he passed several children and their parents. Video  footage shows there was no concern from the parents or children. When police  responded to a 911 caller stating “A Black man with a gun was threatening  people,” they shot the 22-year-old Crawford dead. In addition, the mother of  some of the children died of a heart attack in the aftermath. The grand jury  declined to indict the officers who shot Mr. Crawford (Economist 2014). The  statistics are grim for both African Americans and the police: roughly 29  percent of Americans shot by police were African-American. African Americans  make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population and 42 percent of cop killers  when the race of the offender is known. In 2014 alone, more than 46 police  officers were shot dead (Economist 2014). In retaliation to the killing of Mr.  Garner, Ismaaiyl Brinsley wrote on his Instagram account: “I’m putting wings on  pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs” (Long and Peltz 2014).  Brinsley would later assassinate New York City officers Rafael Ramos and  Wenjian Liu before taking his own life. Hatred for police is so embedded in the  minds of many minority youth that self-protection is seen as the logical  response. One African-American teenage girl stated: “I have more faith in my  papa’s gun than the police. They ain’t no good” (Penn forthcoming). 

     The social distance (Bogardus 1933) between minority  youth and police is extensive and is well-defined in the literature. President  Obama  convened the President’s Task  Force on 21st Century Policing and charged it with strengthening community  policing and strengthening trust among law enforcement officers and the  communities they serve. The task force examined, among other issues, how to  build public trust and foster strong relationships between local law  enforcement and the communities that they protect while also promoting  effective crime reduction. A response to the recommendations is for law  enforcement leaders to view their agencies through a lens of policing minority  youth. I first proposed these questions called Policing by TOTALS at the  National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in 2013. It  was and continues to be well-received. Policing by TOTALS synthesizes the  research to ask questions for policy and implementation.

**Policing By TOTALS**

**Trust.** Starting from the premise that bias (explicit and implicit) exists the question  becomes what is being done agency wide to build relationships and understanding  between the most disenfranchised communities and the police? Citizens must  believe in the legitimacy of the agency and the local law enforcement officer. 

**Openness.** Is the agency seeking and perusing opportunities to listen and learn from the  most disenfranchised? Theories such as Implicit Bias (Kirwan Institute 2016) ,  Minority Group Threat (Blalock 1967), and Social Distance (Penn 2013; Bogardus  1933) provide an understanding for fears, misunderstandings, and biases. All  citizens have value and venues must exist allowing for dialogue and discovery.

**Transparency.** What are the procedures for all citizens to engage in due process?  All people should have voice; thus, access to  information is important to facilitate interaction. Access to information and  interaction among groups promotes accountability. The use of body cameras,  outside investigations, and reports will assist in creating opportunities for  citizens to know the functions and operations of their law enforcement agency.

**Accessibility.** Community policing in its simplest format brings policing to the citizen. Yet  there must be an understanding at the citizen level and throughout the agency  command of what community policing means in practice. What is being done to  bring policing to the most disenfranchised and those with the greatest social  distance from the police? In addition, are those communities being oriented to  understand, implement, and respond to community policing?

**Legitimacy**.  Citizens comply when they feel local policing is legitimate. Procedural justice  practices of voice, respect, neutrality, understanding, and helpfulness evolve  individual police actions into citizens’ perceptions of fairness by law  enforcement, moving citizen and police relations beyond “us versus them”  practices.   

**Safety.** Crime is at its lowest levels in more than 30 years, yet the perceptions of law  enforcement have not risen and have even fallen in minority communities. One’s perception  of safety is one’s reality. What is being done to make people feel safer beyond  Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)? Are there ways to reward officers beyond the  number of arrests?  Finally, everyday men  and women in more than 12,500 law enforcement agencies in the United States  provide society’s line of authority; once this line has been passed, there  would be chaos and an end to society as we know it. Law enforcement personnel  must have the training and authority to best perform their duties honorability  and safely every day.       Policing by TOTALS provides a starting point to  bridge the gap that currently exists between minority youth, their communities,  and law enforcement. COPS Office-funded programs such as the TAPS Academy, Fair  and Impartial Policing, and Coffee with a Cop are tools to bring community  policing to the most disenfranchised citizens.

*Dr. Everette  B. Penn**is Professor of Criminology, Department Chair of  Social and Cultural Sciences at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and  Director of the**Teen And  Police Service (TAPS) Academy**.*

 

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###  References 

Blalock, Hubert. 1967. *Toward  a Theory of Minority Relations**.*New  York: Wiley.

Bogardus, Emory. 1933. “A  Social Distance Scale.” *Sociology and Social Research* 17: 265–271.

Hirschi, Travis. 1969. *Causes  of Delinquency*. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Jones, Chenelle, Everette  B. Penn, and Shannon Davenport. 2015.   “Social distance between minority youth and police: An exploratory  analysis of the TAPS Academy.” *Journal of Juvenile Justice* 4(1).

Kirk, David S., and Robert  J. Sampson. 2011. “Crime and the Production of Safe Schools.” In Greg J. Duncan  and Richard J. Murname, eds., Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, School,  and Children’s Life Chances. 397–417. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Kirwan Institute. 2016.  “Understanding Implicit Bias.” Accessed April 19, 2016. http://www.kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding.     Laub, John. 2014.  Understanding Inequality and the Justice System Response: Charting a New Way  Forward. New York: William T. Grant Foundation. http://wtgrantfoundation.org/library/uploads/2015/09/Inequality-and-the-Justice-System-Response-Charting-a-New-Way-Forward.pdf.

Long, Colleen, and  Jennifer Peltz. 2014. “Gunman Kills 2 Officers after Garner Death.” *Houston  Chronicle*. December 21.

Lumpkin, Brian, and Everette B. Penn. 2013. “Can Police Officers Be   Effective Mentors for At-Risk Youth?” The Police Chief 80(3): 26–29.

Penn, Everette B. 2013.  TAPS Academy and the Adoption of Policing by TOTALS. Presented at the National  Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives conference, Pittsburgh, PA,  August 2–8. 

Penn, Everette B. 2013.  “Reducing the Social Distance Between Minority Teens and Police.” Juvenile  Justice Information Exchange. Last modified October 7, 2003. http://jjie.org/op-ed-reducing-the-social-distance-between-minority-teens-and-police/105445/. 

Penn, Everette B.  Forthcoming. Race and Juvenile Justice, 2nd Ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic  Press.

The Economist. 2014.  “Don’t Shoot.”   December 13. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21636044-americas-police-kill-too-many-people-some-forces-are-showing-how-smarter-less.

Sampson, Robert J.,   and Dawn Jeglum Bartusch. 1998. “Legal  Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of  Racial Differences.” *Law and Society Review* 32(4): 777–804. 

Knafo, Saki. 2013. “1 in 3  Black Males Will Go to Prison in Their Lifetime, Report Warns.” Huffington  Post. October 4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/racial-disparities-criminal-justice_n_4045144.html.    

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 Photo Contest Winner: The Abington Township Police Department | President declares "National Community Policing Week" |  Story: High Point, NC, Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative | Responding to Minority Youth | Halloween and “Deltopia” Made Safer by UCIV Volunteer Program | 21st Century Policing Forum: In “Protecting the Rights of LGBTQ+ People” 

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