Month: July 2020

4th of July 2020

Gadflies are never satisfied. Gadflies, seeking perfection,
always see the glass only half-full.

For a black American, for a black inhabitant of this country, the Statue of Liberty
is simply a very bitter joke, meaning nothing to us.
James Baldwin

“I shall see this day . . . from the [people-of-color] point of view.”
Frederick Douglass

In 1852 the people of Rochester, NY, did an audacious thing.

They asked a slave — Frederick Douglass — to give the annual 4th of July oration.

Douglass had escaped slavery. And until quite recently, when a friend purchased his freedom, he was still the property of another, subject to arrest and return to his Master.

Douglass was “Other.”

In that oration, Frederick Douglass did an audacious thing. He spoke as a slave and asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In that oration, Frederick Douglass had the audacity to tell his mostly white audience [“us”] what the slaves would think and say hearing the pious and patriotic 4th of July orations.

Followers will know that Gadfly feels the pain of others. Especially the pain of the underdog. Especially unjust pain.

When he wrote last 4th of July, the national mind was full of images of the treatment of and the conditions of migrants along the Southwest border.Floyd 6

This 4th of July it’s urban racial violence.

Gadfly will ask you to do an audacious thing.

Imagine if we asked an inner-city Black from, say,  Minneapolis to give the 4th of July oration here today.

And imagine he or she answered in Frederick Douglass’s words.

I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. . . .

Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. . . .

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. . . .

Above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of [thousands?] whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. . . .

I shall see this day . . . from the [people of color] point of view. . . . I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the [people of color] on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate [this treatment] — the great sin and shame of America! . . .

I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the [need for racial justice] creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that [people of color are human beings]? . . .

What, then, remains to be argued? . . . The time for such argument is passed. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and
could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. . . .

What to [people of color] is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Like getting hit with a bucket of boiling oil.

A message addressed with equal fervor to members of all political parties.

This, in Gadfly’s opinion, is the kind of soul-rattling voice we need to hear on this 4th of July as we think at the next City Council meeting and later about our local response to what a morning newspaper article called “the nation’s searing reckoning with racial inequality.”

We need to hear this soul-rattling voice when we meet the voices of resistance and status quo and fatigue, as we surely will.

Let’s see how another police department does it

logo Latest in a series of posts about the Bethlehem Police logo

Because of what’s on the plate in front of us, Gadfly is trying to think about and get you to think about policing and our police department from as many angles as possible.

Last post Gadfly asked you to think about how the Bethlehem police represent themselves in a recruiting video.

Now let’s take a look at Allentown.  Compare the two recruiting videos.  What do you see?

Perhaps the most important thing to think about is how appropriate each video is in this period of intense national conversation following the murder of George Floyd.

What do these videos tell us about how each department sees its relation to the public and the kind of officer it wants to recruit?

This Allentown video below is pertinent too as we think about the nature of policing. It made me think of the “Building Trust” section of the Obama-era 21st Century Policing report that Alison Steele turned me on to in one of her Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist posts, that “Law enforcement culture should embrace a guardian—rather than a warrior—mindset to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and with the public.”

Police. Guardian rather than warrior. Food for thought.

Gadfly knows he’s loading this post with too much, but since we’re talking about Allentown here’s their use of force policy to compare with ours.

How does our police department see itself?

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“The police department is structured using a Community police philosophy and committed to community and police partnerships.”
City of Bethlehem 2020 Budget

One place to answer that question would be the face it wears at hiring time.

Here’s a 2018 police department recruitment video from their facebook page.

Let Gadfly give you several prompts as he might have done with his students in order to start a discussion.

  • View the video
  • When done, which 2-3 images do you recall most prominently?
  • List some images you liked.
  • List some you didn’t
  • What did you see that you didn’t expect to?
  • What didn’t you see, that you expected to?
  • What’s the “message” of the video, a message that may be different than that provided in the narration?
  • To what specific characteristics in potential recruits does the video appeal?
  • If you were asked to suggest changes in this video, if any, now after the George Floyd killing, what would you say?
  • Do you think a new video is needed now after the George Floyd killing? If so, why? What kind?
  • Does the video square with the description of the department given above?

Gadfly again trying to start a conversation in preparation for the bigger one coming before us as we review the use of force directives and consider a Community Engagement Initiative.

A case study in use of force by police

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David Ovalle and Charles Rabin, “Miami-Dade cop relieved of duty for hitting woman taunting him for ‘acting like you white’.” Miami Herald, July 2, 2020.

How could Gadfly see this video last night and not try to see it through the paradigm in the Bethlehem use of force directive that we posted about yesterday?

BPD-Directive-3-1-1-Use-of-Force

Read the whole Miami Herald story above for details before and after the incident captured in the video recording here. The woman certainly seems to be acting as a knuckiehead, a delightful term coined by one of our grandsons about his own behavior.

The officer sees the woman as resisting his order, as an aggressor who touched him, “headbutted” him.

The officer sees the woman as an “active aggressor.”

The officer “said he ordered the woman to get her belongings so she could be escorted out. ‘That was when Ms. Anderson aggressively approached this officer violating this officer’s personal space, bumped [him] with her body and struck [him] with her head on his chin,’ he wrote in his report.”

In terms of the paradigm, the officer viewed the woman as resisting through “active aggression” and thus the “hard empty hand technique” of what looks like a “palm heel strike” was legitimately used to maintain control.

The officer struck the woman with an “open hand,” what a police union official called a “diversionary strike” against a “belligerent” subject who was right in the officer’s face.

Was the officer acting properly?

He got fired.

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Now it may be neither here nor there, but it’s worth noting that the woman is black, the officer is “a Black officer of Puerto Rican heritage,” and that she was accusing him of acting white. Jeez, what a racial gnarl.

Was this a proper use of force?

What would “defunding” our police look like, and how would it work?

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City of Bethlehem Final Budget 2020
Police Department pp. 133-48

City Council discussion of Police 2020 budget request November 2019
Part 1
Part 2

Gadfly’s previous post in this series was about national conversation concerning defunding police departments, so he has gathered here some basic budget information that we might want to think about.

Defunding means trimming police department responsibilities and reallocating funds into social programs.

The Police Department has 154 members, with a budget (c. $16m.) approximately 20% of the total City Budget.

Discussion at the Council budget hearing last year (links above) touched on subjects of manpower, overtime, body cameras, and so forth, and was cordial.

If there is interest now in cutting the police budget and reallocating the money, what would be cut? The size of the force? Overtime?

Further $$$$ figures necessary for this conversation would be 1) what we are spending now for desired social programs in comparison to what we are spending on police and 2) the cost of social programs that we would like to institute that we don’t have at all now.

Would, for instance, we take money from the police and transfer it to Community and Economic Development to enhance some programs already in operation and/or to initiate new programs?

Or would we cut elsewhere in the budget? Or see enhanced social programming as a justifiable reason to raise taxes?

Just trying to get a conversation started here.

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Selections from pp. 133-48 of 2020 budget (follow link above if too hard to read):

Police 3

Police 4

Police 5

Police 6

Resolution regarding establishment of a Community Engagement Initiative to be voted on Tuesday night

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Chew on this!

Community Engagement Initiative Resolution

Here’s a resolution to be voted on at Tuesday’s City Council meeting asking Council to approve “urging” the Mayor in collaboration with the Police Department to establish a Community Engagement Initiative.

Gadfly is surprised at the timing. He was expecting a Public Safety Committee meeting first before there was any action.

Gadfly is surprised at the nature of the request. But more on that later.

Gadfly always suggests that you go to the primary source and form your own opinions.

Gadfly hopes that you will pay strict attention, for the City’s response to the George Floyd killing has the potential to have infinitely more impact on the fundamental nature of city life than a casino or a Martin Tower — or a pandemic.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT:
RESOLVED, that the City Council of the City of Bethlehem urges the Mayor and his
Administration to collaborate with the City of Bethlehem Police Department to create a public space and forum for the long-term discussion of issues surrounding systemic racism, discrimination, race-based inequities, social justice, mental health, addiction, poverty eradication, inclusionary housing, education, and fair policing practices (“Community Engagement Initiative”). The Community Engagement Initiative might include and/or interface with any individuals or entities that the Mayor and his Administration think appropriate such as citizens, human service organizations, the medical community, school leaders, social justice organizations, police officers, and Police Department leaders.

Some of the group’s primary functions might include:
• Assist City government in setting funding and resource allocation priorities within the City of Bethlehem Police Department;
• Assist in organizing Police Department non-enforcement neighborhood events in order to build more trust between citizens, our individual police officers, and our Police Department as a whole;
• Discuss the intersection of race, homelessness, mental health, addiction, poverty, housing, law enforcement, and other issues;
• Discuss law enforcement and policing issues, including data on arrests and enforcement activities across our City’s geographic zones and diverse racial and ethnic communities; and
• Generate policy proposals and create metrics to measure any policy changes.

Peter Crownfield points out that we might have a local resource for such community engagement, the International Institute for Restorative Practices, which coordinated police-community summits in Detroit.

Good conduct is good business

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Gadfly,

I see positives from this response [see “The Mob at Molly’s”] to what became an out of control situation.

First, Chaz Patrick took responsibility for what appears to be an unanticipated circumstance.

Second, he’s working on solutions.There’s a learning curve on all of this. Patrons need to act responsibly. If police were present, I think it would have been a good idea for them to step in and disperse this crowd, but I say that without having been present. It may have not gone well if they had.

I don’t know Chaz well, although I’ve eaten at his establishment. I just don’t “hang out” at bars/restaurants per se. My impression is that he’s a good business owner in Bethlehem who is very conscientious about contributing to the community, and we all have to trust that processes he puts into place will rectify this situation.

I will definitely make a point of stopping by Molly’s for lunch very soon!

Dana Grubb

What’s this defunding of the police all about?

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Let Gadfly say it again.

There’s a Public Safety Committee meeting on the horizon. Date unspecified.

And in addition to discussion of the Police Department’s use of force policy, there will be discussion of a Community Engagement Initiative.

Gadfly bets that in the background going on right now by Councilfolk Colon, Reynolds, Crampsie Smith, and others is significant preparation for that part of the meeting.

The first CEI step seems to be “engaging” a committee and setting a structure for them to meet and set their own agenda.

So we don’t know yet what the engaged citizenry will ultimately take on. Their agenda will probably be related to consensus about pressing local problems.

But you’ve been following the news like me, and it’s obvious that reform in the way police do business and relate to the community is much in the air.

There is great appetite for change evident.

For instance, you probably didn’t need Gadfly to call the Cuomo plan to your attention in past posts.

And just within the past day we learned that New York City transferred a billion dollars out of the police department budget, though there is some question if that signals real reform and change or is just paper shuffling since some of those line items were transferred to other parts of city government.

So, just like what Gadfly said about studying our use of force directive, we, as informed citizens who want to be part of the good conversation that builds community, need to be aware of the plans proposed in other cities and understand such ideas as “defunding” the police department.

Gadfly has just spent the last hour or more reading around about this radical defunding idea — basically shifting and trimming police department responsibilities and reallocating funds into social programs — and gives to you here two short, helpful, and easy to read FAQ-type articles:

Ryan W. Miller, “What does ‘defund the police’ mean and why some say ‘reform’ is not enough? USA Today, June 8, 2020.

Scottie Andrew, “There’s a growing call to defund the police. Here’s what it means.” CNN, June 17, 2020.

Suggestions for additional reading invited, as well as your comments.

We need to be ready to discuss change.

Let’s look at our use of force directive

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BPD-Directive-3-1-1-Use-of-Force

There’s a Public Safety Committee meeting on the horizon. Date unspecified.

In preparation for which, the Police Department was asked to submit its use of force directives.

If “we” informed citizens want to make the most out of this meeting, we need to look at those directives and start to form our comments and questions. Which we might want to pass on to City Council.

Gadfly always recommends going to the primary source. Here linked above is the use of force directive.

Gadfly has just spent the last hour or so going through the directive, has copied out below some sections that stood out to him, and has begun to form some questions.

He invites you to do the same.

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BPD-Directive-3-1-1-Use-of-Force

The purpose of any use of force by a police officer shall be to establish control and/or maintain a level of advantage to defend himself or another person from bodily harm.

Department law enforcement officers shall only use reasonable force.

The level of force used by an officer will be determined by the subject’s actions.

Each use of force situation is unique,

An officer may use deadly force when the officer reasonably believes such action is immediately necessary to protect the officer or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm.

By law and officer need not retreat in efforts to lawfully control a subject.

An officer may use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect

  • whom the officer has probable cause to believe has committed an offense in which the suspect caused or attempted to cause death or serious bodily injury; and
  • who will pose an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury should the escape succeed; and
  • when the use of deadly risk presents no substantial risk of injury to innocent persons.

An officer shall not resort to the use of deadly force if the officer reasonably believes that an alternative to the use of deadly force will avert an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, and achieve the law enforcement purpose at no increased risk to the officer or another person.

Officers shall not use deadly force to subdue persons whose actions are only destructive to property.

Department members shall not use chokeholds or strangulation techniques as a means of control except as a last resort in a life and death struggle.

Officers and employees shall be responsible for reporting witnessed violations of the Department’s Use of Force policies.

When practical, officers shall intervene through verbal or physical means to prevent physical harm to the subject as a result of the misapplication of force.

Officers shall receive annual training in the Department’s Use of Force directives.

Officers shall receive annual training in weaponless control techniques.

The mob at Molly’s

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The Morning Call article in the last post mentions an incident (a Facebook commenter called it a “shit show”) at Molly’s last Friday. If anyone can direct Gadfly to the photo of the scene that “blew up on social media,” ‘twould be much appreciated. Here’s a response from the owner.

From Molly’s Sports Bar Facebook:

Hello. My name is Chaz Patrick and I am the owner of Molly’s Irish Grille and Sports Pub. I’m writing this post after long thought and time to settle. I want to start off first by say we apologize for the events on Friday night.

As a restaurant owner during these very very trying times this has tried on myself, my staff, my loyal customers and surrounding neighbors. With everyone going green on Friday and having had outside seating for the last few weeks it has been a positive sign after a terrible situation. Our focus on Friday was inside seating with proper distance and cleanliness standards, which we follow on a daily basis during the pandemic or not.

Yes, outside was very crowded. We have a small patio area which my landlord allowed us to use so that we could have income. We also have the part of New Street that was shut down for us and neighboring restaurants for people to hangout out in and socialize with friends and family. Friday was a beautiful night. People wanted to get out and see friends and have a drink.

I had my wonderful staff, bartenders, kitchen, servers and security at the ready. Our focus was inside which we executed with no problems. The outside was a different story. We asked people to wear masks and please do the best you can to distance. That clearly was not working and people continued to come to the corner.

The Bethlehem Police were on site all night.

We have been in constant contact with the Police and City officials about the outside and we have been addressing the situation on an ongoing basis. We are working on getting a parklet like others around the City but the city gave us New Street for our purposes.

I just on Thursday spoke with a City Councilman about the parklet asap due to the concerns for us with the immediate outside area of our business. Clearly a conversation that should have happened earlier but it did happen.

Our answer to Friday night and not let it happen again was our closing the business early last night so we did not have a repeat, which we know would have happened. We are going to continue to address this and fix it.

But so all of you know, we do everything in our power to keep my most awesome staff, great friendly and loyal customers and our surrounding neighbors safe during these times. We have hand washing stations outside. Hand sanitizer inside and out and all over. We have masks for free to distribute if you do not have one.

So in reply to all of the people out there saying we did not follow the rules, I will gracefully disagree with every single one of you. People are getting sick. People are dying. I personally have lost friends and customers thru this but life must go on. We are doing the best we can and will continue to do so. What happened Friday night we will do our best to not let it happen again and we are working on the fix now.

These are difficult and trying times for everyone. We ask for your forgiveness and understanding but people need to be responsible for their own actions also. If your out in a public setting do your best to distance and wear a mask. Molly’s has built a great following over the years because I care about my staff and take very good care of them.

I care about my very loyal customers and they know that and tell their friends about us and bring them in. We have built a great relationships with Lehigh University as well as DeSales and Moravian students. There are a lot of them in town and they wanted to come and hang out at Molly’s.

They were outside because our inside was at the limit of 50%. If you could redo the night we would have shut it down sooner then we did and again we do apologize for that. I wish you all the best and here’s to ending this pandemic as soon as possible.

I hope everyone enjoys their Sunday. ✌️

Gadfly invites you to browse the 170 or some comments (as of this morning) on Chaz’s post.

Let’s be safe! Wear a mask — the Gadfly you save might be your own

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Ford Turner and Jon Harris, “New Pennsylvania mask order requires everyone to wear one whenever leaving home in certain circumstances.” Morning Call, July 1, 2020.

from Ford Turner. Daniel Patrick Sheehan and Kay;a Dwyer, “Green doesn’t always mean go: Some Lehigh Valley officials see coronavirus trouble brewing in crowded public spaces.” Morning Call, July1 , 2020.

Just a few months ago, a photo of a crowd milling outside Molly’s Irish Sports Bar and Grille would have been too mundane to attract comment.

But that was before the coronavirus. The photo of tightly packed, mostly unmasked customers outside the Bethlehem bar on Friday night set off alarms in a community warily coming back to life on the first day of the green phase of Gov. Wolf’s pandemic reopening plan. The photo blew up on social media and prompted an apology from the bar, which closed early on Saturday night to avoid a repeat.

What made the episode troubling was the fact that similar gatherings in Allegheny County are believed to have driven a spike in infection rates so significant that officials banned drinking in bars and restaurants.

To this point, no one is predicting the Lehigh Valley is in store for the same kind of spike, though a rise in Lehigh County’s case rate in June prompted the state Health Department to include the county in a “deep dive” into data from areas where spikes might be brewing. More recently, there has been a slight uptick in new, confirmed cases in Northampton County.

At Molly’s, owner Charles Patrick said things were under control Friday when he left around 10 p.m., with a manageable flow of masked customers coming in and out and indoor capacity limited to 50%.

Then, around midnight, local college students started coming out, Patrick said. “That’s when it got crazy,” he said, noting that many customers refused staff requests that they don masks.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to quell the onslaught,” said Patrick, who is making a number of changes to scheduling and seating to better manage crowds. “I’m only one establishment. These are the things we are doing to fix our problem.”

Some Northampton County numbers have been ticking up, the dashboard shows, with 90 cases in the most recent seven day period compared with 68 in the previous period. Cases per 100,000 residents rose from 22.3 to 29.5. Statewide, cases per 100,000 residents rose from 23.2 to 28.7 over the last seven days. Of those who have tested positive statewide to date, nearly 37 % are ages 25-49.

Wardle said the Northampton uptick was mostly due to new cases in long-term care facilities. A reason new-case numbers at those facilities are surging, Wardle said, is that Gov. Tom Wolf has required that all residents of all facilities be tested for the virus by July 24 under Wolf’s “universal” testing regimen. More testing, Wardle said, uncovers more cases.

Hence, he said, the concern over Northampton isn’t great, but the state will continue to assist its long-term care facilities — which have been epicenters of outbreaks nationally — and monitor the situation.

Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure said he is fiercely proud of residents for obeying lockdown rules and driving down infection numbers, which could have been far higher given the county’s proximity to the hotspots of New York, New Jersey and the greater Philadelphia area.

He said he doesn’t want to see that success undone by growing laxity over the vital prevention protocols of hand washing, social distancing and mask-wearing.

“We have to balance the public health with avoiding another shutdown, because the economy can’t bear it,” he said. “Wear a mask. I don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. Wear a mask.”

You’ll find a statement by the Molly’s owner in our next post in this series.

An invitation to reflect on civic life and the pandemic

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Gadfly:

Southsider is excited to share this open call to incorporate more community voices into their “Reflections on Civic Life and the Pandemic” Series. There is a lot happening in the world right now, and all of it is shaped by the pandemic. How should we as a community make sense of it all?

See a model from the series here, “Robin Lee on the Impact of COVID-19 on South Bethlehem.

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The Southsider Editorial Team

Gadfly invites you to browse the fine Southsider site, especially see the Women of Bethlehem Steel series.

What more could the Chief have done?

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It looked like that March 3 Public Safety Committee meeting was going to end with the police department and City Council butting heads.

The Chief said he issued directives on the 2018 marijuana ordinance, spoke at roll calls, spoke at platoon meetings, and etc., and felt that there was nothing more he could do to change officer minds, to make the numbers tell a different story.

But there was obvious sentiment from Councilfolk Reynolds, Van Wirt, and Waldron in particular that the Chief was the crux of the problem and that there was more that he could do as leader of the department.

What would that “more” be?

What if something like this happens in the future as we get into discussing the use-of-force directives and the Community Engagement Initiative?

There may come a time when we need to change officer minds.

What would we do?

We’d better be prepared.

Councilman Reynolds obliquely mentioned “tools” that the Chief might have.

To what was he referring?

Gadfly started to think of an analogous situation in his professional life.

The Freshman English (First-Year English) course at Lehigh U was a required course. It had about 40 sections. It had multiple teachers. Those teachers varied in their grading policies. Students were arbitrarily slotted into a section by the Registrar based on holes in their schedule. Students had no choice of section, thus no choice of grading standards.

How to be fair in such an arbitrary system, how to be fair to all students?

At one point in department history, we had “grading sessions.” All of us teachers would read the same student essay, give it a grade, then discuss how we arrived at that grade, trying to arrive at a consensus on the grade, on our standards.

Gadfly can vividly remember such a session in which the prof leading it spoke of a student essay that had been given an “A” as “the kind of writing that would make a yak wince”!

He was not very diplomatic.

Who can forget such articulation of the need to come together to arrive at some common standards to insure fairness for our students.

Was this called “norming”?

These sessions could be brutal. I remember being incensed as a full-of-piss-and-vinegar young Assistant Professor. Nobody was going to tell me what to do in my classroom, no sir. I mellowed.

But there was a need for fairness. And a need for our group to understand the need for balance between our independence and the good of the wider community.

And the way we did it was to come together and talk.

Can one imagine a group of police officers being presented with a scenario involving a small amount of marijuana — such as a traffic stop — and talking about what statute would be applied and why?

Perhaps these could be actual police reports with identifying data redacted.

The goal would not be to force behavior but to have peers work together to shape common standards.

City Council and the Police Chief discuss the city marijuana decriminalization ordinance (4)

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Marijuana Possession ordinance
Marijuana statistics
Marijuana Enforcement Policy March 11, 2020

The March 3 Public Safety Committee was courteous but tense.

Council was obviously frustrated that its progressive legislative move on the subject of small amounts of marijuana was somehow frustrated by Police practice.

Council members kept hitting the wall of the Chief’s belief that enforcement was in the hands of officer discretion and that he had no means or power to create change.

Fortunately, the meeting had a surprise happy ending. The Chief suggested that officers charge those caught with a small amount of marijuana under both the state law and the local ordinance — and the judge would sort things out at the hearing.

The Chief “buried the lead,” as President Waldron cracked. You could have saved us an hour if you had suggested this at the beginning, Councilman Reynolds said.

You could feel the meeting lighten up immediately. Here was an “out.”

The decision on enforcement was now “punted” to the magistrate.

And Council could review later in the fall to see how that was working out.

Crisis averted (for now).

Linked above are the original 2018 decriminalization ordinance, the statistics provided by the Chief (what do you see there?), and the actual police department directive on this what-we-might-call “compromise” new policy.

Not quite end of story.

Gadfly would like to go on one more step.

to be continued . . .

City Council and the Police Chief discuss the city marijuana decriminalization ordinance (3)

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Let’s move now to the conversation between President Waldron and Chief Diluzio at the March 3 Public Safety Committee meeting.

And let’s remember that we should be interested in the outcome regarding the marijuana ordinance in particular but also, more importantly now, in attuning ourselves to how interaction with police on a tricky issue works in anticipation of the upcoming Public Safety meeting responding to the George Floyd murder.

In this conversation, the Chief reiterates his belief that he can’t force his officers to use the city ordinance in the memorable “That’s like a totalitarian state. You don’t want your police like that.”

President Waldron asks two very important questions: what is the nature of the relationship between a Chief and a beat officer, and, thinking practically like a good Council president should, what can Council do to improve the situation?

President Waldron and Chief Diluzio

We have to have a lot of trust in the officers, said ARW, but we are looking at this in another way.  Officers use a lot of discretion in just about every interaction with the public. But, though we don’t know what the thought process is when faced with a decision about which ordinance to apply, this is certainly not what we on Council had hoped for. We would have hoped that every opportunity in Northampton County would have been met with the citation not the state law. And the question is why not? And the answer that we are hearing is fairness to people in the other county. The City wanted to make a progressive change, recognizing that there’s a sea-change in the country at large about marijuana and that Pennsylvania is a step behind. To which the Chief agreed that he believes in decriminalization and that he wishes the officers would use the local ordinance more, but he can’t change their minds and force them to. How to change the story that the numbers tell, the Chief asked? You just can’t order them to use the city ordinance. “That’s like a totalitarian state. You don’t want your police like that.” ARW asked about the relationship between a Chief and a beat officer — a Chief who says you should or must apply the local ordinance. What’s that conversation like, ARW asked? Wouldn’t the officers be following you and your leadership? “It isn’t that easy,” the Chief replied — I can’t tell them you will do this every time — every time is different, every case is different, every arrest is different. You have to let them use their discretion, their intelligence. The ordinance is not being used, but the officers do have a reason for not using it. Yes, ARW pointed out, the local ordinance is being used some times (19 out of 289) — if it were not used at all, the conversation would be totally different. Bottom line question for the Chief: is there anything Council can do to back up your wishes and to get the desired outcome we want? Trust the officers, the Chief replied. I stand behind them 100%, I do not look over their shoulders.

Gadfly would say that the answers to President Waldron’s two question are not satisfactory. The first question is really asking can’t you order the officer to do something. We are left with the feeling that an officer is pretty much left on his or her own. Hmmm. And the Chief again kind of throws up his hands in answer to the second question. Though, Gadfly must say teasingly, the Chief was playing possum, as they say, and does come up with a concrete suggestion for improving the situation, as we shall see.

to be continued . . .

City Council and the Police Chief discuss the City marijuana decriminalization ordinance (2)

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Gadfly kinda lost yesterday to his day job. He wanted to follow up on his Monday post and do a series of posts close together on the interesting Public Safety committee meeting March 3 concerning the police enforcement of our new summary offense marijuana ordinance.

That was an interesting meeting in itself because of the good comments by our Councilors. This was one of those meetings in which you can get a good sense of what each Councilor is made of, what makes them tick. There was good conversation.

But the meeting also now has heightened interest because of the scrutiny of police departments in the post-GeorgeFloyd era. In a sense, Council was calling the police department on the carpet for under-using the City ordinance, and we get an opportunity to see the police respond. In that respect, the March 3 meeting might foreshadow the upcoming (no date set yet) Public Safety meeting generated by the Reynolds/Crampsie Smith memo about use-of-force directives and a Community Engagement Initiative.

Remember from the last post that the decriminalized marijuana ordinance was only used by Bethlehem police in about 10% of the cases, thus subverting Council’s intent for the ordinance and creating unfairness compared to enforcement of the same violation on the Lehigh campus.

The Chief argued that he can’t control the officers out on the street, that the ordinance gave them discretion about which statute to use — harsh state or softer city — and that, though half the department believes in decriminalizing marijuana, almost all said it should be done by the state, and the current situation left them open to charges of bias.

We saw Councilman Reynolds pushing back on that, intimating without elaboration, that the Chief had tools at his disposal to foster more use of the City ordinance. Councilwoman Van Wirt goes much further down the road on this point, pretty clearly blaming the Chief in pretty direct and strong language for lack of leadership: “They are not following what we enacted here because the tone is set by the leader.”

Lets listen in again.

Councilwoman Van Wirt and Chief Diluzio

Councilwoman Van Wirt began with a question, “Chief, do you believe officers’ own belief systems should enforce how they apply the law?” The Chief replied with a qualified yes and reiterated that in this instance we have given them discretion. PVW said we have given officers the excuse to follow two different laws. On the Westside (Lehigh County) they follow state law per Lehigh County D.A.s orders. But in Northampton County, “you [the officers] are very strongly encouraged by your Chief of Police, who sets the tone and leadership example for his policemen, to follow the will of City Council, who’s enacting the will of the people. . . . We have given them the ability and indeed the encouragement to use the decriminalization ordinance to apply the law over here. They are not going to get in trouble when they follow geographic boundaries.”  But, said PVW, assigning causation if not blame, “they are not following what we enacted here because the tone is set by the leader.” The Chief pushed back that he had talked with both D.A.s about our practice. In her second question, PVW then asked why we are applying the state ordinance to quantities less than 30 grams . There, she said, is the pivot point where we get unequal application of the law. PVW resisted the Pandora’s box argument the Chief has used to explain the difficulty the two different statutes have created. PVW said it’s clear what the law is on the west side of the Monocacy, and at the same time it is pretty clear what Council’s intent was on the east side. The Chief argued again that he could not order his guys to do something every time — they are not robots  — and that in some cases the officers will make a compassionate decision and throw the marijuana away. “I can not order everybody to do one thing.” PVW ended with “These numbers are telling a very troubling story about the use of the state ordinance especially when compared with what Judge Matos Gonzalez highlighted over at Lehigh University. . . . I hope you can understand why this Council is deeply concerned. . . . We’re not waiting for Harrisburg. We believe in local power. . . . I hope you can consider the will of Council. . . . This is unequal justice.”

Getting the picture? Our ordinance gives the officer discretion. The officers by-and-large are using that discretion to not apply the local ordinance and for an understandable if unwelcome reason. What to do if you are the frustrated City Council?

to be continued . . .

Police need to get to know the people in their community

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Gadfly’s been inviting stories about police/community relations as we approach a Public Safety Committee meeting on our use-of-force directives and a Community Engagement Initiative . . .

from Dana Grubb, “Racism: One man’s thoughts.” Bethlehem Press, June 30, 2020.

When he was only 4 years old, Frankie West’s parents decided to move their family north and ended up settling in Bethlehem. They had suffered one of the ultimate discriminatory experiences when, because of the color of their skin, they were refused admittance to the beach at Myrtle Beach, S.C. That was when they decided to move. West carries that scar deep inside and has only returned to Myrtle Beach once since, to watch his niece play basketball in a game at Coastal Carolina University.

West would attend Liberty HS, where he starred in basketball and football for the Hurricanes. He has worked with youth since, at both the Bethlehem and Easton Boys and Girls Clubs, as well as coached young people in basketball. He believes he may have been the first African-American assistant basketball coach at Liberty, serving under head coach Richie Wescoe from 1985 to 1987.

He has participated in Bethlehem’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Civil Rights March since he was a teenager, and today is the lead organizer for the event. That march ends in Martin Luther King Park on Bethlehem’s Southside, where he recently sat down to discuss the murder of George Floyd, racism, his experiences, recent protests for racial equality, and offered some thoughts on how to improve relationships between white people and African-Americans.

“My sadness is that two officers just stood there and did nothing,” West started out about Floyd’s murder. “That’s bull; you don’t see a cop doing that to a white man’s neck,” he said. “I watched it, shook my head, and said that’s not fair.”

“Some of them get a badge and they think now we’re in charge,” said West, adding that he’s not really had issues with the Bethlehem police. “We have had good police in Bethlehem and if they showed up at your door, you know you were in trouble with your parents, too.”

But, he did have an exchange with police on an occasion when he was walking back home from his job at the Easton Boys and Girls Club. He noticed one police car following him and before he knew it there were three. An officer stopped him wanting to know who he was and where he was going.

West said he questioned why the officers didn’t know him, since he was working with youth in their community. Things got a little testy with the officer, whom he felt was not being respectful.

The police need to work with the youth even more, West said, and they need to get to know the people in their community. They need to work harder at conveying the message, “If you need us we’ll be there” to the people in their community.

“Cops need to protect themselves, but they don’t need to kill people,” he finished his thought.

Regarding peaceful protests, West said, “We should keep protesting until we get the change.

“African-Americans are angry,” he said. “Where’s the change? It’s going to get worse if we don’t do something.” He respects the protesters, he said, but due to Covid-19, he has not joined them.

He said he laments the fact that nobody has come to Martin Luther King Park to protest.

“Why not here instead of at City Hall? The man who really fought for you is right there,” he said, motioning to the MLK Monument at the park. West said King wanted to do it the right way by obtaining equal rights for everyone.

As far as the violence and looting associated with some of the protesting, he wants to remain peaceful about bringing attention to the issues.

“Why are you screwing up your town?” he asked.

While some things have changed since Dr. King, West cautioned, “A hell of a lot of things need to change.”

He questions why more minority vendors aren’t seen at area festivals and events. More minority coaches are needed in scholastic sports, he said, and mentions his two mentors, Art Statum and Willie Howard.

“They said it like it is,” he said.

West remembers the ‘Brotherhood Club’ at Liberty and recalls that it was a great way for young African-Americans to learn more about people like Dr. King. He’d like to see something like that return.

He’d also like to see more interaction between the police and residents, noting that family dynamics have changed greatly since his time growing up in Marvine-Pembroke. He said he thinks police officers need better training for how to respond to different situations.

Finally, West said everyone needs to do a hard self-check.

“When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror ask yourself, ‘Am I prejudiced or am I real?’

“We want to be treated fair and honest,” he said. “Give us a chance.”

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