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BY YINGJIA WANG

In print | October 25, 2007

Law enforcement and community leaders from the college and surrounding areas gathered on campus over fall break for a training course presented by the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service. Entitled “Responding to Allegations of Racial Profiling: Building Trust Between Police and the Community,” the conference was held on Oct. 16 and included members from various Delaware County law enforcement departments, community leaders such as area mayors, including Swarthmore mayor Eck Gerner, members of a local NAACP branch, college deans, Public Safety officers and Swarthmore students.

The conference was a joint effort between Swarthmore College and the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office. Swarthmore Equal Opportunity Officer Sharmaine Lamar coordinated the event on the college’s end. According to Lamar, bringing the speaker, Senior Conciliation Specialist Ben Lieu of the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service to the conference was the fruition of collaborative endeavors by the Sheriff’s Office and the college.

“We were contacted by Delaware County Sheriff’s Office because one of the sergeants there had seen the facilitator at another university and thought it would be wonderful to bring him back to Delaware County for their law enforcement,” Lamar said. “They thought of Swarthmore College because of our history for social justice and concern. They thought that we would be a good place and neutral ground to hold the conference. We leaped at the opportunity to play host to the conference.”

According to Lamar, the conference focused on bridging the communication gap that sometimes exists between law enforcement and its community. As the subtitle of the conference suggests, Lieu also stressed the importance of building trust between the two parties. Lamar wished to emphasize that the conference was not meant to diminish any complaints of racial profiling. “It was about how do we better communicate with each other so as to better avoid racial profiling,” Lamar said.

Since the conference was open to the college community, a few Swarthmore students took advantage of the opportunity to sit in on Lieu’s presentation. Patrick Rock ’09 was one of the student attendees.

“I thought it sounded interesting, and I was curious as to how they were going to deal with it. I’m a black studies minor, so we think a lot about race and how perceptions of race fit into society,” Rock said.

Rock also said that much of the conference was focused on the legal issues surrounding racial profiling and the distinction between it and criminal profiling. “I thought that the issues of ‘how do you connect with the community’ was addressed, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more community building. It was more focused on ‘how can we understand what racial profiling is so that we can’t be accused of it,’” Rock said.

Rock also noted an incident at the conference that shocked him.

According to Rock, a video of a young Dominican woman getting pulled over was shown during the conference, and a law enforcement attendee said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were the chief’s nanny,” in response to a question of how to deal with the situation. His answer was met by the laughter of many of the other attendees.

“It made me appreciate the Swarthmore community more because we don’t have to deal with comments like that. On the other hand, I feel that it was important that it was a safe space for [law enforcement officials]. You can’t address attitudes like that unless they’re comfortable saying them,” Rock said.

Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave, who attended the conference along with four other members from Public Safety, said that the conference was beneficial for Public Safety because it refreshed the attending officers on important guidelines. However, the conference was clearly geared towards municipal or state law enforcement departments that conduct many traffic stops or deal with significant criminal activity.

“Personally, I enjoyed the program although I didn’t hear much that was particularly new or inventive. It was a good refresher regarding why it is important to practice open, professional police reporting,” Redgrave said.

Echoing Lamar, Redgrave also articulated the conference’s emphasis on trust building. “One of the major goals, I thought, of the program was to stress the need to build trust within the community. Although our Public Safety department may not be perfect, I believe we enjoy a fairly good working relationship with the community here. It may be the fact that practicing law enforcement within a college setting has … been required awareness of sensitivity and diversity … Colleges are ahead of the curve in a lot of the things that were brought up at the conference,” Redgrave said.

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