Hal Hargrave
Staff Writer
Law professors and practicing attorneys continued the second panel of a five-part series “Ferguson: Protector or criminal? Advocate or thug? Or neither? Examine your perceptions” Tuesday in the Campus Center ballroom.
The panel of three focused on the perception among society and how individuals view African-American males.
Krystal Lyons, director of external relations for La Verne’s College of Law, organized and moderated a discussion which was intended to get people to stop and evaluate their biases.
“Initially we were going to use (this as) something to teach on and for students to evaluate it from a legal perspective,” Lyons said. “But when more sub-topics started to arise, we decided to break it up into five different sections, so more people would be able to come out and show an interest in the topics they were passionate about.”
The panelists were Isaac Carter, adjunct professor of sociology and anthropology; Leeshawn Moore, director of Institutional Research for the College of Law; and Kevin Rogan, assistant inspector general of Los Angeles police commission. They debated various ongoing societal issues and perceptions relating to Ferguson.
Lyons showed a slide show with various images of armed cops and unarmed but looting African-American males. She asked the panel their thoughts about these images, in which several of the cops had assault rifles.
Rogan said assault rifles have no place in crowd control and asked the crowd if the military should be giving their devices to law enforcement.
He said there are roughly 80 uses of force annually by police officers in the Los Angeles area, and a majority of those are against African-Americans.
“California cops like to think that they are better trained, and that was indicated during the Occupy L.A. issue,” Rogan said.
“This was handled with relatively no violence, so I believe the Ferguson case was a reflection of the notion that the Ferguson officers felt they were entitled to bring assault rifles out to a scene.”
Rogan pointed out that as people we have a fear of the unknown and going into unfamiliar territories. Officers have to evaluate situations and people quickly, make judgments based upon their evaluations and then immediately act upon the situation.
The media has played a vital role in magnifying the Ferguson case.
“What if these photos were racially reversed?” junior criminology major Natalin Daldalian said. “What if the African-American cop killed a white person? Which happened in Utah last month, which I’m sure nobody heard about. I think the media puts the spin on it and to put things into people’s heads.”
Moore said if these black men were in a suit and tie they would be looked at with no prejudice. She said society does not see humanity in African-American males and we do a character assassination of them. She said we continue to see people as criminals and this is an issue of humanity for all ethnicities.
“It has started long before police officers became police officers,” Moore said. “We are taught in society that everybody is different from the next person and we can’t come together because we are different.”
Lyons said our minds automatically categorize information and people, which leads to stereotyping, judging and prejudice within society. She said we have an unconscious bias when we look at people, namely African American males.
Carter said that we have to address these issues in life systematically and not from a criminal perspective to see how we can better things in La Verne first.
“I was pleased by tonight’s involvement of the people because this type of conversation needs to happen,” Carter said.
“I was displeased with the amount of people showed up because if we are able to look at this in a complex cultural and social perspective, we can all work together to try and understand these from all perspectives by talking about it together.”
Hal Hargrave can be reached at hallett.hargrave@laverne.edu.
