By Racism and victimization of Black women by police is often overlooked and glossed over — despite the harsh reality that a great number of Black women experience racism and bias no less than that of Black men.
In the New York Times on Aug. 12, a much needed spotlight was placed on the issue of bias against Black women by Baltimore police.
The article “Baltimore Police Fostered A Bias Against Women” chronicles the findings of the Justice Department’s study released last week on rape claims of Black women. The study reveals overall that claims of rape by Black women in Baltimore are frequently ignored by Baltimore police.
In his popular speech titled “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself,” Malcolm X proclaimed, “The most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
“The most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
The treatment of Black women by Baltimore police is a blatant example of how what Malcolm X spoke to more than 54 years ago is still very much and very unfortunately the case today.
The 6 pages of the 163 page Justice Department’s report explains how the rights of African Americans have been systematically violated by Baltimore police.
One example of how the rights of Black persons have been violated is the careless response of the Baltimore Police Department to sexual assault cases which has been etched by the Justice Department as “grossly inadequate.”
Clearly, the police culture is dismissive of sexual assault and this dismissiveness plays out in how Baltimore police officers have sometimes humiliated women who have tried to report sexual assault, routinely did not collect basic evidence, and did not consider some complaints filed by prostitutes.
The New York Times writes, “Some officers blamed victims or discouraged them from identifying their assailants, asking questions like, “Why are you messing that guy’s life up?” Investigators found that this police culture was not limited to that of police officers but extended to prosecutors.
‘Some officers blamed victims or discouraged them from identifying their assailants, asking questions like, “Why are you messing that guy’s life up?’
During an email exchange between a prosecutor and a police officer, a lady who reported a sexual assault was referred to as a “conniving little whore.” The police officer who received the email from the prosecutor found the description of the lady very funny and replied — “Lmao! I feel the same.”
Although patterns and practices of discrimination in addressing sexual assault cases by police forces in other cities such as New Orleans, Puerto Rico, and Missoula exist, experts and advocates concede that Baltimore’s problem with police fostering gender bias “is especially complex and, and perhaps more acute,” because so many women in Baltimore are poor and Black.
Lisalyn R. Jacobs, a race and gender bias expert who works intimately with Obama’s administration on issues such as sexual assault stated, as written in the New York Times, “Baltimore is worse in the sense that Baltimore is a city that has more people of color (63% of the population is Black) and more poor people of color, so we are likely to see more excesses, and that is manifest in the report.”
The Justice Department’s report moved the conversation concerning victims of police prejudice beyond Black men, said Tessa Hill-Aston, the president of the Baltimore’s branch of the N.A.A.C.P.
During 2010-2014, rape kits containing forensic evidence collected by doctors and nurses were tested in only 15 percent of the Baltimore cases of sexual assault victims.
She asserted as written in the article in the New York Times, “There’s a lot of women in the same communities that have been victimized just as much.” She continued saying, adding of the police, “They just didn’t care, because it was a poor Black woman or a poor Black neighborhood.”
In 2010, the Baltimore Sun reported that in the prior four years, Baltimore police had routinely failed to solve rape cases. Data from the F.B.I. reviewed by the newspaper revealed that “the percentage of rape cases dismissed as false or baseless was higher in Baltimore than in any other city in the country.”
Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief who supervised this year’s report, stated that they felt compelled to raise the issue of gender-biased policing because of little progress made — although they did not formally site the Baltimore police for violating the constitutional rights of women.
Of particular concern to the Justice Department was the lack of conviction of the police to properly and thoroughly investigate rapes.
Basic detective work was not performed by officers.
For example, one victim reported a rape by a taxi driver, but the police department did not try to test the suspect’s DNA. Another victim reported sexual assault by an unlicensed cabdriver and despite a suspect being identified, the police never attempted to contact him and the investigation floundered. As was discovered by the department, during 2010-2014, rape kits containing forensic evidence collected by doctors and nurses were tested in only 15 percent of the Baltimore cases of sexual assault victims.
“We have many, many, women who will never go to the police about a rape ever again because of the way they’ve been treated,” said Jacqueline Robarge, as reported in the New York Times article. Ms. Robarge is the director and founder of Power Inside, an organization that works with gender-based violence as reported in the New York Times article.
“We have many, many, women who will never go to the police about a rape ever again because of the way they’ve been treated…”
She added that women she has worked with have been victims of sexual misconduct by police officers themselves. In the report by the Justice Department, investigators wrote that according to complaints from the community, some officers target a vulnerable population — such as those involved in the sex trade to coerce sexual acts from them in exchange of avoiding arrest, or for money, or narcotics.
The findings of the Justice Department’s study were not disputed by Baltimore’s Police Commissioner, Kevin Davis. The commissioner has reported within the last month that he has already began taking steps towards turning his department into “a model for the rest of the nation” by assigning a trusted captain to be in charge of a new sex offense unit so that problems can begin to be addressed.
He referenced a “sea change” in the policing culture.
Captain Steven Hohman, the commander of the department’s Special Investigations Section, which houses the Sex Offense Unit, stated in an interview, “I believe that much of the work was being done,” concerning their investigation of sexual assault cases. “We just weren’t very good at documenting.”
He declined responding to individual examples in the report.
Like in other cities, now police practices in Baltimore will be examined under the supervision of a federal judge, Ms. Gupta said.
It is obvious Black people are one of the most discriminated, most oppressed groups of people in the United States. Disgracefully, cases and reports of racism and perpetual injustice against Black women, including sexual assault, have gotten unfair attention, little media coverage and limited publicity.
Disgracefully, cases and reports of racism and perpetual injustice against Black women have gotten unfair attention, little media coverage and limited publicity.
I urge participants and supporters of Black Lives Matter and other pro-justice and human rights movements to commit themselves to paving the way in presenting to the world a fair representation of cases, situations, stories, etc. of racism and discrimination by police against both genders of the Black race.
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Written by Najwa Kareem