The blue divide

TPD on TV

It’s mandatory when writing about police in America—especially on the incidences of police brutality—to immediately accompany your remarks with the proviso that most cops are professional, conscientious and good public servants. Omit the caveat and you'll be accused of turning your back on the men and women in blue and embracing anarchy.  

So, let’s stipulate that most cops, certainly most locally, would not, say, “Fuck your breath” to an unarmed suspect who has been shot, as Tulsa deputy Joseph Byars told a dying Eric Harris in 2015. But while I’m stipulating, let’s change the noun from cops to surgeons and see what happens. Still going through with your cardiac catheterization procedure, you know that while most surgeons in the OR are competent and professional, some are racist goons who won’t operate on black and brown people—or, if they do, don’t follow standard medical procedures.

I bring this up because the Tulsa Police Department has once again agreed to be part of A&E’s LIVE PD, a show which follows police departments of various American cities on their appointed rounds, complete with gritty, if staged, realism.  

Wasn’t too long ago that TPD distanced itself from such nonsense.

Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan declined to renew the department’s contract with the show in 2016 after a season’s run with the Gang Unit because “he felt like it was not in the best interest of the department,” a spokesman said at the time. (Tulsa World)

For his part, Mayor Bynum was also against it before he was for it.

“I supported the cancellation of Live PD previously because I felt the presence of a television camera crew served as a distraction for our officers in the field. I have since come to appreciate that our training staff greatly values the footage from the show as it allows them to teach from real life scenarios at our academy." (Tulsa World)

Please. Filming a traffic stop at 41st and Mingo, while area residents gawk and officers try not to stare into the camera, is as much a “real life scenario” as the dinner scenes in Blue Bloods.

To see what else may be going on here, and to talk policing in general, I contacted former Police Chief Drew Diamond, who ran the department from 1987-1991; Sgt. Brandon Watkins, a 22-year veteran of the force; and Marq Lewis, founder and community organizer at We The People Oklahoma.

Diamond doesn’t like—and has never liked—such shows.  

“I was the first chief who, when FOX launched COPS in the 80s, refused to allow them to film TPD. I took a lot of heat nationally and locally, but it was the right decision and would do the same today. Either you are providing police service or entertainment for profit.”

Brandon Watkins, meanwhile, says the show is nothing to get worked up over.

“This is much ado about nothing in my opinion,” he says. “I’ve been on the First 48 [a similar show also on A&E] and have had their cameras following me around for the past year. You really forget they're there and it doesn't change your behavior any.” 

Debatable. Have a camera crew follow you around work and see if it affects your job performance.

Moreover, Diamond says if your goal is to have a birds-eye view of a police officer’s life, do it right:

“Get a news crew. Get a reporter in the car, and then I would be more inclined to believe they were showing what a police officer goes through. You’d see on the six o’clock news some reporter saying, ‘I rode around for six and a half hours and be the way, we made two traffic stops and checked out a building.’”

As for Lewis, he echoes Diamond’s point. “This is not educational,” he says. “It’s exploitive. It’s entertainment for those not in those communities featured.”

Lewis’s bigger problem with LIVE PD is its contract with the city. “It’s the stuff that doesn’t make it to show that I’m concerned about. They have access to confidential information forever.”

He’s right.

From the Restricted Free Agent (RFA) contract between Big Fish Entertainment (A&E) and the City of Tulsa: “All film, videotape, still photographs and other visual and/or recordings or representations … shall be the sole and exclusive owner of the Material with the right for the full period of copyright …. Throughout the universe, to use and re-used, an unlimited number of times … by all means and in all media.”

Throughout the what?

Considering Tulsa doesn’t receive a dime from the deal, why do it?

Watkins says it will help with morale. “Officers want to be taken seriously. There's a feeling of not wanting to be seen as flippant.”

There may be something else involved, though—the refurbishing of a department.

HRW’s investigations found evidence of racial bias in policing outcomes including stops, arrests, allocation of court debts, and use of force. There is evidence of racial bias in the descriptions of the treatment of Black people by police an in the difference described about policing in primarily black parts of North Tulsa.

That is from a 216-page report by Human Rights Watch, an organization that investigates cases of alleged abuse all over the world, which came to Tulsa to investigate the killing of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, by Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby.  Its report ‘Get on the Ground!’: Policing, Poverty, and Racial Inequality in Tulsa, Oklahoma is an indictment on Tulsa’s inability to address, serve and protect its black citizens. More troubling, HRW discovered we are two cities and of two minds when it comes to policing.

Human Rights Watch found that, beyond the statistical disparities of treatment by police of the different races, black people nearly all had personal experiences of abusive policing, ranging from extreme violence towards themselves or family members, to more mundane harmful interactions like unnecessary traffic stops, coercive searches and intimidating encounters. Black leaders reported that fear of police and experience of mistreatment by police are facts of life in their communities.

(Shelby, by the way, acquitted on manslaughter charged, has since found work in the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office. Terence Crutcher is still dead.)

TPD, not surprisingly, took issue with the report.

In a Tulsa World article published Thursday, Deputy Police Chief Jonathan Brooks called it “misguided” to say racial disparities are evidence of bias or profiling without knowing the entire story. Brooks said police must acknowledge and address community concerns by “drilling down” deeper into data to find root causes of disparities.

Mayor Bynum fouled back his response. During a community meeting, after the Shelby verdict, he dismissed those who brought legal action against the city.

“Whether hearings are serious fact-finding sessions by city councilors or PR stunts by trial lawyers suing the city, we are going to stay focused doing the hard work of making Tulsa a place of equal opportunity for everyone,” he said. (Tulsa World)

Worse, instead of chastising TPD for this needless death—for warning such actions by its officers will no longer be tolerated—the mayor issued a greeting card.

“I see how hard our police officers are working to be better every day than the department was the day before,” he said.

Watkins is on to something:

“I do absolutely think we're missing something about what it means to be African American or Hispanic. When I first heard the terms implicit or unconscious bias, I didn't understand it. … The same is for ‘white privilege.’ I can't claim to have a perfect handle on the concept, but the explanations I've read make sense to me and I'm trying and willing to learn.”

Diamond, too, sees and feels the racial disconnect:

“You get the kind of policing the community tolerates. If the minority community doesn’t get the style of policing it wants, it doesn’t have the political clout to undo it, so that’s why you get lawsuits and protests,” he says. “If the Tulsa Police Department policed the white community at the same level of disrespect as the black community, it would change pretty quickly. The idea that you have to accept a level amount of civil rights and human rights indignities in order for me to protect you, then what you’re saying, as a police officer is, ‘I don’t believe my own oath.’”

Lewis, an African American, says the goal to understanding, the goal to improvement, is to get closer to the problem. 

“Many of my allies,” the term he uses for his white friends, “never understood racism until they were with me.” 

While saying this is not solely the fault of racially biased policing—“The police cannot be psychiatrists. They cannot solve the social, economic problems but they can be a voice within their departments”—he nevertheless wants more than PR fixes. 

“The basketball things TPD does in the community is not enough.”

One of the fascinating aspects on the HRW report is its examination of the mindset of officers. They fall into two groups: warriors and guardians. The warrior intimidates citizens, minorities especially, to unquestionably accede and fear their authority. The guardian, on the other hand, views him or herself as an essential part of the neighborhood—one who protects and serves, not one who demands worship and slavishness.

Jenkins says the political pull on cops from both sides misses the point. “The right uses us as props and the left uses us as the boogeyman,” he says.

Perception, it seems, is one thing—reality is another, and public relations yet a third.

From the report:

Tulsa Police Department’s pattern of aggressive stops for minor or non-existent violations, coerced consent to search, enforcement of failure-to-pay and other low-level warrants, and elevation of force levels as outlined above, demonstrates that this mindset is prevalent.

But it makes great television.