Posted on 12/05/2003 5:59:33 AM PST by Arrowhead1952
City manager responds by not buying tickets for other city officials
By Tony Plohetski
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, December 5, 2003
When board members with the local NAACP chapter drafted the guest list for their annual banquet Saturday, Police Chief Stan Knee didn't make the cut.
Neither did anyone else from his department.
Board members have decided to break a long tradition of inviting Knee and other police officials to attend the event, saying the Police Department has failed to mend strained relations with members of Austin's minority communities.
"This banquet is about social justice, and we aren't receiving social justice from the Police Department," Nelson Linder, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Thursday. "Apparently, they aren't getting our message that there are problems."
City Manager Toby Futrell responded to the NAACP's decision with a slight of her own: The city will break its long tradition of buying seats at the event for city workers and council members.
Last year, the city spent about $1,500 for about 30 officials to attend the banquet. Between 500 and 600 people generally attend. The impasse comes less than a month after a Travis County grand jury encouraged honest conversations about the city's race relations, particularly between minorities and police.
Grand jurors, who indicted a police officer for criminally negligent homicide in the fatal shooting of a man in June, said in a report that residents of East Austin's minority communities are subject to a different brand of law enforcement. Three days later, city officials called a news conference to unveil plans to begin building racial harmony, including a survey asking residents how police training could be improved.
Linder said the decision to leave Knee and the other officials off this year's guest list was not unanimous among the 14-member board but that most supported his recommendation. He said Knee still has not said publicly that the department has a problem with brutality.
Futrell and Knee said they each learned from staff that police officials weren't on the guest list. Futrell said she had someone call to be sure.
"I was stunned when I heard that was the response," she said.
Knee said he was disappointed. Retired police Capt. Louie White and Mae Leonard, a longtime East Austin activist who has helped fight crime, are expected to be honored.
"I think most likely we would have bought more than one table," Knee said. "My hope is that over the next few months, we can re-establish a good working relationship with the NAACP, which we have had in the past."
This is an understatement. This is a total snub to the APD by the NAACP.
Oh brother.
I think that maybe "East Austin" should get the "exact" same brand of law enforcement that Austin's wealthiest communities receive...
The city of Austin could save a fortune. Minority communities typically receive a much higher level of police involvement.
The only time I see the police in my neighborhood is when they are directing traffic in and out of school parking lots...
Law enforcement officers tend to migrate to those "problem" areas in more numbers because, to maintain some sort of civil order, it takes more to overwhelm the thugs of those "poor, disenfranchised" communities.
There is no disproportionate amount of dispatching officers to the areas and the severity of their responses that isn't justified by the rate and violence of the crimes committed.
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