San Francisco: 8 Percent Black But African Americans Dominate The SF Jail System; The Role Of Racism And Classism - SF Chronicle
HIGH BLACK ARREST RATE RAISES CALL FOR INQUIRY
Range of explanations offered by experts, officials for S.F.'s disparity with other cities
Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006
San Francisco police arrest African Americans for serious crime at a much higher rate than officers in California's other biggest cities.
Black people in San Francisco are arrested for felonies at nearly twice the rate they are in Sacramento. They are arrested at twice the rate of black people in Fresno, three times the rate in San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, and four times the rate in Oakland.
The disparity between San Francisco's black felony arrest rates and the seven other largest cities' -- measured by the number of African Americans arrested per 1,000 black residents -- is so large that many experts and civic leaders who reviewed the numbers said they are "disturbing" and require an investigation.
The numbers prompt several questions, all of which basically boil down to this: Is the high arrest rate of African Americans because of the way the San Francisco Police Department does its policing, or because of criminal activity within the community?
Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief Heather Fong said they do not think the department is going after African Americans in an unfair manner. They also said they were consulting experts to try to learn why the arrest numbers look the way they do.
Newsom said he found the numbers "outrageous'' but was not shocked by them because of the time he has spent attempting to tackle the root causes of poverty.
"There is no question in my mind that this deserves immediate attention and investigation, and I will be doing that,'' Newsom said. He said the investigation would be conducted by a University of South Florida criminologist, Lorie Fridell, who will "do aggressive data analysis'' of the arrest numbers and report back to him and Fong in about two months.
While Fong said the arrest numbers merit review, she suggested that the disparity exists in part because the perception that sometimes San Francisco is "soft on crime'' may draw criminals from out of the city who feel they can come here and "not be held accountable.''
Fong's staff said they hand-counted arrests made by the Tenderloin Task Force last year and found that more than 60 percent of the African Americans arrested were listed on booking cards as "no local" -- a term often applied to transients -- or gave addresses outside San Francisco. The department does not have similar data for other districts besides the Tenderloin, which police looked at because they believe many nonresidents are involved in drug dealing and other crimes there.
San Francisco officers arrest criminal suspects as they find them, not based on the color of their skin, Fong said.
"I don't think just by looking at the numbers, you can prove or disprove that there is any targeting,'' she said, adding that factors such as repeat offenders and out-of-town criminals influence the numbers.
Others who reviewed the numbers for The Chronicle found them startling.
"What is significant about these numbers is that they beg serious attention,'' said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. "These numbers are clearly based on a legitimate collection of data and are not based on emotional cries.''
Merrick Bobb, a nationally recognized expert in police practices, said the city must look harder to explain the numbers.
"The strongly disparate impact of San Francisco policing on African Americans begs for a convincing set of reasons based solidly on empirical fact,'' said Bobb, who heads a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that advises departments nationwide.
"The SFPD, to date, has not persuasively explained what legitimate factors cause San Francisco to have felony arrest patterns so different'' from the state's other biggest cities, Bobb said.
Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who runs the city's jails and has tracked their racial composition for years, said his lockup population reflects the black arrest rate. "The disparity is just incredibly dramatic,'' he said. "If you are an adult white male, your chances of being in my jail are 1 in 365, and if you are an adult black male, your chances are 1 in 23.''
The Chronicle began examining the city's black felony arrest rate after its investigation of the department's use of force, published in February, found officers were arresting African Americans and reporting use of force on them at rates about five times greater than their presence in the city's population.
San Francisco police cited several factors they say contribute to African Americans accounting for about half of all felony arrests in the city, where they are less than 8 percent of the population. In 2005, 1 out of 3 arrests of black people involved narcotics.
Officers interviewed by The Chronicle said most of the dealers coming from out of town by BART or car to sell drugs -- primarily crack cocaine and sometimes methamphetamine -- are African Americans. Moreover, said Capt. Timothy Hettrich, head of the narcotics division, black drug dealers often sell out in the open on street corners, thus increasing their chances for arrest.
Fong also has said that some of the offenders are arrested time and again, thereby increasing the black arrest numbers.
Also, she said, the department has had to devote a lot of resources to combatting gangs of youths responsible for many of the city's black-on-black homicides. William Whitfield, an African American officer who has worked in the department for more than a decade, said factors such as out-of-town criminals do affect arrests.
"I've seen that with my own eyes -- I got a guy once with an automatic weapon around his neck on a shoestring coming off of BART,'' Whitfield said. "He had the weapon under his jacket, and I was buying dope undercover. I saw him walk up from BART, and when they moved in and arrested him and the crew he was working with, they found the weapon. He was an Oakland guy.''
Whitfield said many black criminals today quickly resort to violence and this occurs at a younger and younger age. People are "selling dope in the Sunset, don't get me wrong, but they aren't shooting each other over it, and they are out in the Bayview and the Fillmore. It's not all about dope and gangs, either, because you've got that everywhere. Sometimes a shooting is a personal beef, sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's as simple as, 'You were looking at my girlfriend.' ''
'Disturbing' numbers
Many experts acknowledge that the factors Fong and her officers cite may contribute to the city's black arrest rate. They also note that in cities throughout America, African Americans are arrested in numbers that exceed their presence in the population.
But they say the black arrest rate in San Francisco is so much higher than other California cities that the disparity cannot be explained completely by the factors cited by police.
"America's criminal justice system disproportionately affects African Americans, and San Francisco is no exception,'' said Bobb, the police practices expert. "What stands out in this city is the degree of disproportion, which is higher than what I've seen elsewhere on the West Coast.''
Joseph Marshall, a member of the San Francisco Police Commission and co-founder of the Omega Boys Club who has worked with at-risk youth for decades, said he knows the Police Department has made a concerted effort to combat black gang violence "to reduce the homicides, and those numbers are down.''
But he added: "These numbers on arrest rates are disturbing and scream for an explanation. Is there something going on within the SFPD that makes the numbers so different?''
James Bell, executive director of the San Francisco-based W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness and Equity, has been wrestling for years with Marshall's question. About 60 percent of juveniles detained in the city are black.
"If you are an intelligent, caring person in San Francisco, you should be disquieted that in a supposedly liberal city, black youths are so much in the overwhelming majority among the detainees,'' Bell said. "The numbers are just too disparate for anyone to credibly advance the 'you-do-the-crime, you-do-the-time' syndrome as an explanation. To believe these numbers, you'd have to believe that white kids in places like the Haight and the Sunset are basically doing no crime.''
Hettrich, who heads the narcotics division, says numbers don't convey what police confront.
"The real story is we go after the drugs, and we go where we have had complaints,'' Hettrich said in a ride-along interview where he pointed out drug dealing hot spots around the city and the high numbers of African Americans and Latinos making sales. "Those arrest numbers may indicate we are doing a good job in areas where we have had complaints.
"Color means nothing to us,'' Hettrich said. "We are prejudiced against dealers."
David Dockery, an African American officer who walks a beat in the predominantly black Hunters Point housing projects, said most citizens "want more of us out there. If I could stand in front of their houses all day long, that's what they'd like.''
Dockery and his African American partner, Officer Mike Robinson, said the department's crime chasing is "color blind.'' They also said what many officers believe -- that criminals are drawn to San Francisco because they feel that if caught, their punishment in the courts will be lighter than it would be in surrounding counties. "We know a guy with four cases pending,'' Robinson said. "Where does this stop?''
Answers, not speculation
San Francisco's high black arrest rate is not of recent origin: 20 years ago, San Francisco was making black felony arrests at a rate much higher than California's seven other largest cities, state Justice Department reports show. In 1986, for example, San Francisco's black felony arrest rate was almost 45 percent greater than Los Angeles' and almost 51 percent higher than Oakland's.
In the decades since then, San Francisco's black felony arrest rate has climbed by more than 35 percent while the other seven major California cities' rates have dropped -- often by a considerable amount. During those 20 years, Los Angeles' black felony arrest rate dropped by more than 36 percent and Oakland's declined by more than 52 percent.
When evaluating why San Francisco's black arrest numbers are so different from the other cities', Bobb said speculation is not productive.
"It is not helpful, in the absence of thorough research and hard evidence, for the SFPD merely to speculate as to possible reasons, just as it is unproductive for others to speculate that there must be police antipathy to African Americans," Bobb said.
A second review was conducted at The Chronicle's request by Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor emeritus from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who has consulted with the U.S. Justice Department on matters ranging from police use of force to questions of race-based civil rights violations by police agencies.
Walker concluded that San Francisco police are targeting black people in their law enforcement efforts. To him, the numbers indicate that "many law-abiding citizens" are confronted by officers "solely because of their skin color."
"No other factor than race could possibly explain the San Francisco arrest data given the fact that they are so far out of line compared with other departments,'' Walker said.
Two figures in San Francisco's criminal justice system expressed similar conclusions.
Public Defender Jeff Adachi said that he does not believe the department has a go-after-black-suspects plan, but he added that by focusing on heavily black neighborhoods plagued by crime and violence, police inevitably drive black arrest numbers up and often use those high numbers as proof they are in the right spots to catch the criminals.
"I believe that the San Francisco Police Department has focused its efforts, in terms of 'crime crackdowns,' in those neighborhoods where there is a high concentration of blacks -- the Western Addition, Tenderloin, Visitacion Valley, Potrero Hill, Ingleside Terrace and Bayview-Hunters Point,'' he said. "This has long been the trend since the crack cocaine epidemic, when task forces were formed to focus buy-bust operations in those neighborhoods.''
Sheriff Hennessey said the problem does not just lie with the police.
"I think this is a reflection of institutionalized racism: You are more likely to get arrested for the same act if you're black, you are more likely to be retained in jail for the same crime if you are black, and society is more likely to care less about your incarceration if you are black," Hennessey said.
Officers in the department said they go where the crime and violence is happening.
Mikail Ali and Toney Chaplin, African American inspectors in the gang task force, said police concentrate their efforts on areas where violence is occurring.
"African American youth are shooting each other at a rate far greater than other groups, so we try to get those kids on some charge if we can't get them on a homicide,'' Chaplin said. Ali added: "Social neglect by the community, government and business have caused environments populated predominantly by black people to be conducive to crime and violence, and law enforcement ends up having to deal with the bottom line -- young black kids killing one another at a disproportionate rate.''
The community perception
Chief Fong says officers are taught to treat all citizens equally. Police Academy recruits are given 52 hours of training -- more than twice the state requirement -- on discrimination and cultural diversity as it relates to African Americans, and other races and segments of society, including gays and lesbians, seniors and the homeless.
But in San Francisco's black neighborhoods, many believe police give them special attention.
At the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center -- a hub of activity for African American youths living in the Western Addition -- Executive Director George Smith says he is blunt with young people about what he believes they face.
"I tell young kids that you shouldn't break the law because this is a system so poised to arrest young African American males,'' Smith said.
Guy Hudson, who works two jobs as a city athletics coach and as a security guard, knows many of the kids in black neighborhoods all over town, and he said that many black people believe they often can "talk things over'' with police in San Francisco when that wouldn't work in Oakland, Santa Clara or Daly City.
Even so, Hudson says, it's a reality that police focus on black people in San Francisco. He recalls the time three officers stopped him in Hunters Point after he "drove down a hill a little fast'' and they emerged from their car "pointing guns at my head.''
Hudson, 42, said he asked them, "Out in the avenues, would you be jumping out of your car with an automatic machinegun?''
The police eventually let him go. Before they drove off, Hudson said, one of them told him that someone recently had fired shots at an officer on Harbor Road. Hudson said he responded: "That gives you the right to pull pistols on everyone in the community?''
Police Commissioner Marshall, who is African American, wrote a book, "Street Soldier," in which he described the deep-seated antipathy black people hold for police. "There's not a black person I know who doesn't see the police as an occupying force in the community. At the same time, though, I'm convinced that if black folks stopped blowing each other's brains out, they'd be in a much better position to deal with police issues.''
However, there are African Americans who approve of the way officers conduct themselves in their neighborhoods.
Al Harris, who lives in the Ingleside and works as an organizer for the Safety Network group, which is funded by the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, says police often have to confront a "pretty rough world -- you go into neighborhoods and you're hated. In some neighborhoods, it's instilled from when kids are little that the police are the enemy.''
"I think the police are doing a pretty good job,'' Harris added. "I know officers who do all kinds of good stuff for the kids, participating in community events, giving toys at Christmas, hundreds of turkeys at Thanksgiving.''
Asked about whether it appears that police are targeting black people for arrest, Harris said: "Definitely not. There's no need to target the African American kids. They're the ones out on the streets selling the drugs.''
Earlier study
The numbers revealing the high arrest rate of black people in the city are not the first statistical indication that African Americans get special police attention.
In 2002 the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report, "A Department in Denial: The San Francisco Police Department's Failure To Address Racial Profiling,'' which found black motorists were more than three times as likely to be searched as whites after a traffic stop.
That year San Francisco police arrested black people for felonies at the department's highest rate in the years reviewed by The Chronicle -- 171 for every 1,000 African Americans in the city's population.
The next year, the department adopted a new general order establishing its commitment to "unbiased policing'' and stating officers "must be able to articulate specific facts and circumstances that support reasonable suspicion or probable cause'' for detaining, stopping, arresting and searching citizens or seizing their property.
The black arrest rate began to drop. In 2003 it was 150 per 1,000, in 2004 it was 146, and in 2005 it was 145. Even in that last year, though, the rate was three times higher than Los Angeles, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego and four times higher than Oakland.
Search for explanation
Looking at the 2000 U.S. census to try to find possible reasons for the arrest rate, The Chronicle found some similarities and some differences between San Francisco and the seven other cities.
Like black residents of those other cities, San Francisco African Americans' median household income lags considerably behind that of the city's total population, and their level of education is also typically years behind that of the total population.
Police Commissioner Marshall says answers that might seem at least part of the explanation -- such as poverty, lack of education and the flight of large numbers of middle-class black residents from the city in recent decades -- end up providing no real guidance, because those patterns are found in other cities where the arrest rates are far lower.
In two ways, though, San Francisco does stand out: During the 1990s, the city's African American population declined faster than in any other major U.S. city, dropping by 23 percent, according to 2000 census figures.
The black percentage of population also dropped in Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. In Fresno, Long Beach and Sacramento, it rose somewhat. Today San Francisco, which is 7.8 percent African American, has the second smallest proportion of black people among the state's eight biggest cities. San Jose, with 3.5 percent, has the smallest, and Oakland, with almost 36 percent, has the largest.
A second difference involved unemployment numbers. While African Americans in all the cities had high unemployment numbers, only in San Francisco was their unemployment rate -- 6.2 percent -- more than double that of the rest of the population.
Need for investigation
Walker, the Nebraska criminal justice professor, said San Francisco's high black arrest rate should be investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and the state attorney general's office.
Fong said she did not feel the need for a state or U.S. Justice Department investigation of San Francisco's black felony arrest rate. Instead, she said she was consulting with outside experts and plans a review of department policies to see if changes are warranted.
She added that the department's efforts to analyze its arrest record are made difficult by the fact its record keeping system is being overhauled and she can't "go to a computer right now and pull up arrest data with all this information you have spoken about.''
Newsom said while he is convinced there is no "significant racial profiling in our department,'' he cannot "in good conscience defend the disparity'' between San Francisco and other cities' black arrest rates. Referring to the arrest numbers, he said, "On face value, they are outrageous.''
The mayor added that as he has worked to push programs tackling concentrated poverty in the city, such as a tax credit for working families, he has concluded "the issues of crime for me are overwhelmingly correlated with issues of poverty.''
Newsom added that Fridell, the University of South Florida associate professor of criminology selected by the city to review its arrest data, was picked in part because she has special expertise in the area of racial profiling.
One way or another, San Francisco has to discover why it is arresting black citizens at a higher rate than the other California cities, said Bobb, the Los Angeles police practices expert.
What is at stake is the concept of equal treatment under the law, he said.
"The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race,'' Bobb said. "Courts across the country have ruled that using impermissible racial classifications in determining whom to stop, detain and search violates the equal protection clause.''
Walker, the law enforcement expert who has consulted for the Justice Department, says the San Francisco Police Department "should be looking at its own operation to see if there's anything it could be doing differently.''
The equal protection under law guarantee of the 14th Amendment is "the bedrock of all civil rights laws in the United States and a fundamental principle upon which our country is based,'' he said.
Jack Jacqua, who founded the Omega Boys Club with Marshall, said the policing of black people in San Francisco is a problem for the city and its leaders.
While he acknowledged that police have "the most dangerous, difficult job in America,'' he said they "most times treat poor kids from the hood differently than they do more affluent kids.''
Jacqua, who has devoted his life to working with at-risk youths, added that many black youths come from "a population where there is virtually no middle class because the middle class people can't afford to live here, and many of these youngsters end up in the criminal justice system.''
It works this way, Jacqua said: If a kid shoplifts in the Sunset District, police are probably going to call Mom and Dad and have them take their child home. "But if you shoplift downtown and your address is in the Bayview, then they will take you to jail.''
As for the black community, he said much of it "is a mess -- it's destroying itself. Not enough people are involved in standing up and challenging these youngsters to take responsibility for their lives. Where is the leadership?''
And what of the city's liberal political establishment that has reigned for many years?
"The bottom line," said Jacqua, "is that poor blacks are in the way of what this city wants to be, though the city won't admit it because 'we're liberal and believe in diversity.' But the city really doesn't want poor folks and especially poor black folks.''
VOICES: From double standards to police strategy to social factors, there's no tidy explanation
Heather Fong, San Francisco police chief: "I support the crime-fighting efforts of the officers of this department, who day after day, under challenging and perilous circumstances, work tirelessly to protect the people of San Francisco, and do so in an impartial manner."
Victoria Gray, social worker for the nonprofit Family Service Agency: "If you are out here black, selling drugs and your pockets full of drugs and you get busted and holler 'Racism!' -- that's not racism. ... Of course there's racism. This is America. But everything isn't linked to racism. ... You have to understand all our men want is a piece of the American pie, the American dream. I don't blame them for wanting some of the pie, but I blame them for how they go about it."
Damone Hale, member of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission and an attorney who has represented many young African Americans: "You see officers whose talk is rude and disrespectful, and time and again the only distinguishing factors we could find is that the defendant is African American. It's consistent and this treatment is permitted by our society."
Arlene Ackerman, former San Francisco school superintendent now teaching at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York City: "I believe that race in San Francisco is the elephant in the room and people refuse to talk about it and if you bring it up, then you are the racist. I felt more uncomfortable as a black person in San Francisco than I have felt in any other city. ... Someone has to be courageous and step up and address the issue of race in the city, starting in the education system and moving through the criminal justice system.''
Delores Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor who is interim director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice: "Typically when we see disproportionate arrest rates for African Americans or other minorities, it is because the police have focused their forces or hot-spot policing on areas with large minority populations. What is the harm of targeting? Innocent people who are unfortunate enough to live in economically depressed neighborhoods aren't given the same measure of constitutional rights as their more affluent counterparts: They are stopped and frisked, have their cars and persons searched even without permission -- simply by virtue of where they live. It's unacceptable."
William Whitfield, officer who joined the San Francisco Police Department in 1994: "If I had to put my finger on one thing, it's the homes. I look at the kids on the corners, and 9 times out of 10 there's no dad and maybe 7 times out of 10 there's no mom in their lives and they are being raised by an aunt or grandma. Kids aren't being raised as I was -- there's just not that accountability in the homes. If they had someone at home they knew they had to answer to, that would stop a whole lot of it.''
Tim Nichols, ex-San Francisco police officer, on the high black arrest rate: "It comes from the fact the majority of officers who want to take on criminals are in the Bayview and the Fillmore, which are heavily black. I don't believe it's racism. ... Officers have to pick and choose the severity of the crime they want to spend their time on, and officers who make a lot of arrests generally go after hard-core criminals." He also said black drug dealers are particularly visible: "How often do you see a group of whites standing on the street corner selling narcotics? Generally whites don't sell on the corner."
Sharen Hewitt, director of the Community Leadership Academy and Emergency Response project, which helps connect low-income clients with services, said when she has watched what happens on a Friday night on Union Street where the crowds are predominantly white, she finds "kids tearing up, fighting, smoking marijuana, drinking in the streets, guys being abusive to women, young men publicly urinating, and I don't see a whole lot of them being arrested. Some of these behaviors are developmentally appropriate, but I don't think African American young men get the luxury of having errors."
Range of explanations offered by experts, officials for S.F.'s disparity with other cities
Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006
San Francisco police arrest African Americans for serious crime at a much higher rate than officers in California's other biggest cities.
Black people in San Francisco are arrested for felonies at nearly twice the rate they are in Sacramento. They are arrested at twice the rate of black people in Fresno, three times the rate in San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, and four times the rate in Oakland.
The disparity between San Francisco's black felony arrest rates and the seven other largest cities' -- measured by the number of African Americans arrested per 1,000 black residents -- is so large that many experts and civic leaders who reviewed the numbers said they are "disturbing" and require an investigation.
The numbers prompt several questions, all of which basically boil down to this: Is the high arrest rate of African Americans because of the way the San Francisco Police Department does its policing, or because of criminal activity within the community?
Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief Heather Fong said they do not think the department is going after African Americans in an unfair manner. They also said they were consulting experts to try to learn why the arrest numbers look the way they do.
Newsom said he found the numbers "outrageous'' but was not shocked by them because of the time he has spent attempting to tackle the root causes of poverty.
"There is no question in my mind that this deserves immediate attention and investigation, and I will be doing that,'' Newsom said. He said the investigation would be conducted by a University of South Florida criminologist, Lorie Fridell, who will "do aggressive data analysis'' of the arrest numbers and report back to him and Fong in about two months.
While Fong said the arrest numbers merit review, she suggested that the disparity exists in part because the perception that sometimes San Francisco is "soft on crime'' may draw criminals from out of the city who feel they can come here and "not be held accountable.''
Fong's staff said they hand-counted arrests made by the Tenderloin Task Force last year and found that more than 60 percent of the African Americans arrested were listed on booking cards as "no local" -- a term often applied to transients -- or gave addresses outside San Francisco. The department does not have similar data for other districts besides the Tenderloin, which police looked at because they believe many nonresidents are involved in drug dealing and other crimes there.
San Francisco officers arrest criminal suspects as they find them, not based on the color of their skin, Fong said.
"I don't think just by looking at the numbers, you can prove or disprove that there is any targeting,'' she said, adding that factors such as repeat offenders and out-of-town criminals influence the numbers.
Others who reviewed the numbers for The Chronicle found them startling.
"What is significant about these numbers is that they beg serious attention,'' said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. "These numbers are clearly based on a legitimate collection of data and are not based on emotional cries.''
Merrick Bobb, a nationally recognized expert in police practices, said the city must look harder to explain the numbers.
"The strongly disparate impact of San Francisco policing on African Americans begs for a convincing set of reasons based solidly on empirical fact,'' said Bobb, who heads a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that advises departments nationwide.
"The SFPD, to date, has not persuasively explained what legitimate factors cause San Francisco to have felony arrest patterns so different'' from the state's other biggest cities, Bobb said.
Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who runs the city's jails and has tracked their racial composition for years, said his lockup population reflects the black arrest rate. "The disparity is just incredibly dramatic,'' he said. "If you are an adult white male, your chances of being in my jail are 1 in 365, and if you are an adult black male, your chances are 1 in 23.''
The Chronicle began examining the city's black felony arrest rate after its investigation of the department's use of force, published in February, found officers were arresting African Americans and reporting use of force on them at rates about five times greater than their presence in the city's population.
San Francisco police cited several factors they say contribute to African Americans accounting for about half of all felony arrests in the city, where they are less than 8 percent of the population. In 2005, 1 out of 3 arrests of black people involved narcotics.
Officers interviewed by The Chronicle said most of the dealers coming from out of town by BART or car to sell drugs -- primarily crack cocaine and sometimes methamphetamine -- are African Americans. Moreover, said Capt. Timothy Hettrich, head of the narcotics division, black drug dealers often sell out in the open on street corners, thus increasing their chances for arrest.
Fong also has said that some of the offenders are arrested time and again, thereby increasing the black arrest numbers.
Also, she said, the department has had to devote a lot of resources to combatting gangs of youths responsible for many of the city's black-on-black homicides. William Whitfield, an African American officer who has worked in the department for more than a decade, said factors such as out-of-town criminals do affect arrests.
"I've seen that with my own eyes -- I got a guy once with an automatic weapon around his neck on a shoestring coming off of BART,'' Whitfield said. "He had the weapon under his jacket, and I was buying dope undercover. I saw him walk up from BART, and when they moved in and arrested him and the crew he was working with, they found the weapon. He was an Oakland guy.''
Whitfield said many black criminals today quickly resort to violence and this occurs at a younger and younger age. People are "selling dope in the Sunset, don't get me wrong, but they aren't shooting each other over it, and they are out in the Bayview and the Fillmore. It's not all about dope and gangs, either, because you've got that everywhere. Sometimes a shooting is a personal beef, sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's as simple as, 'You were looking at my girlfriend.' ''
'Disturbing' numbers
Many experts acknowledge that the factors Fong and her officers cite may contribute to the city's black arrest rate. They also note that in cities throughout America, African Americans are arrested in numbers that exceed their presence in the population.
But they say the black arrest rate in San Francisco is so much higher than other California cities that the disparity cannot be explained completely by the factors cited by police.
"America's criminal justice system disproportionately affects African Americans, and San Francisco is no exception,'' said Bobb, the police practices expert. "What stands out in this city is the degree of disproportion, which is higher than what I've seen elsewhere on the West Coast.''
Joseph Marshall, a member of the San Francisco Police Commission and co-founder of the Omega Boys Club who has worked with at-risk youth for decades, said he knows the Police Department has made a concerted effort to combat black gang violence "to reduce the homicides, and those numbers are down.''
But he added: "These numbers on arrest rates are disturbing and scream for an explanation. Is there something going on within the SFPD that makes the numbers so different?''
James Bell, executive director of the San Francisco-based W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness and Equity, has been wrestling for years with Marshall's question. About 60 percent of juveniles detained in the city are black.
"If you are an intelligent, caring person in San Francisco, you should be disquieted that in a supposedly liberal city, black youths are so much in the overwhelming majority among the detainees,'' Bell said. "The numbers are just too disparate for anyone to credibly advance the 'you-do-the-crime, you-do-the-time' syndrome as an explanation. To believe these numbers, you'd have to believe that white kids in places like the Haight and the Sunset are basically doing no crime.''
Hettrich, who heads the narcotics division, says numbers don't convey what police confront.
"The real story is we go after the drugs, and we go where we have had complaints,'' Hettrich said in a ride-along interview where he pointed out drug dealing hot spots around the city and the high numbers of African Americans and Latinos making sales. "Those arrest numbers may indicate we are doing a good job in areas where we have had complaints.
"Color means nothing to us,'' Hettrich said. "We are prejudiced against dealers."
David Dockery, an African American officer who walks a beat in the predominantly black Hunters Point housing projects, said most citizens "want more of us out there. If I could stand in front of their houses all day long, that's what they'd like.''
Dockery and his African American partner, Officer Mike Robinson, said the department's crime chasing is "color blind.'' They also said what many officers believe -- that criminals are drawn to San Francisco because they feel that if caught, their punishment in the courts will be lighter than it would be in surrounding counties. "We know a guy with four cases pending,'' Robinson said. "Where does this stop?''
Answers, not speculation
San Francisco's high black arrest rate is not of recent origin: 20 years ago, San Francisco was making black felony arrests at a rate much higher than California's seven other largest cities, state Justice Department reports show. In 1986, for example, San Francisco's black felony arrest rate was almost 45 percent greater than Los Angeles' and almost 51 percent higher than Oakland's.
In the decades since then, San Francisco's black felony arrest rate has climbed by more than 35 percent while the other seven major California cities' rates have dropped -- often by a considerable amount. During those 20 years, Los Angeles' black felony arrest rate dropped by more than 36 percent and Oakland's declined by more than 52 percent.
When evaluating why San Francisco's black arrest numbers are so different from the other cities', Bobb said speculation is not productive.
"It is not helpful, in the absence of thorough research and hard evidence, for the SFPD merely to speculate as to possible reasons, just as it is unproductive for others to speculate that there must be police antipathy to African Americans," Bobb said.
A second review was conducted at The Chronicle's request by Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor emeritus from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who has consulted with the U.S. Justice Department on matters ranging from police use of force to questions of race-based civil rights violations by police agencies.
Walker concluded that San Francisco police are targeting black people in their law enforcement efforts. To him, the numbers indicate that "many law-abiding citizens" are confronted by officers "solely because of their skin color."
"No other factor than race could possibly explain the San Francisco arrest data given the fact that they are so far out of line compared with other departments,'' Walker said.
Two figures in San Francisco's criminal justice system expressed similar conclusions.
Public Defender Jeff Adachi said that he does not believe the department has a go-after-black-suspects plan, but he added that by focusing on heavily black neighborhoods plagued by crime and violence, police inevitably drive black arrest numbers up and often use those high numbers as proof they are in the right spots to catch the criminals.
"I believe that the San Francisco Police Department has focused its efforts, in terms of 'crime crackdowns,' in those neighborhoods where there is a high concentration of blacks -- the Western Addition, Tenderloin, Visitacion Valley, Potrero Hill, Ingleside Terrace and Bayview-Hunters Point,'' he said. "This has long been the trend since the crack cocaine epidemic, when task forces were formed to focus buy-bust operations in those neighborhoods.''
Sheriff Hennessey said the problem does not just lie with the police.
"I think this is a reflection of institutionalized racism: You are more likely to get arrested for the same act if you're black, you are more likely to be retained in jail for the same crime if you are black, and society is more likely to care less about your incarceration if you are black," Hennessey said.
Officers in the department said they go where the crime and violence is happening.
Mikail Ali and Toney Chaplin, African American inspectors in the gang task force, said police concentrate their efforts on areas where violence is occurring.
"African American youth are shooting each other at a rate far greater than other groups, so we try to get those kids on some charge if we can't get them on a homicide,'' Chaplin said. Ali added: "Social neglect by the community, government and business have caused environments populated predominantly by black people to be conducive to crime and violence, and law enforcement ends up having to deal with the bottom line -- young black kids killing one another at a disproportionate rate.''
The community perception
Chief Fong says officers are taught to treat all citizens equally. Police Academy recruits are given 52 hours of training -- more than twice the state requirement -- on discrimination and cultural diversity as it relates to African Americans, and other races and segments of society, including gays and lesbians, seniors and the homeless.
But in San Francisco's black neighborhoods, many believe police give them special attention.
At the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center -- a hub of activity for African American youths living in the Western Addition -- Executive Director George Smith says he is blunt with young people about what he believes they face.
"I tell young kids that you shouldn't break the law because this is a system so poised to arrest young African American males,'' Smith said.
Guy Hudson, who works two jobs as a city athletics coach and as a security guard, knows many of the kids in black neighborhoods all over town, and he said that many black people believe they often can "talk things over'' with police in San Francisco when that wouldn't work in Oakland, Santa Clara or Daly City.
Even so, Hudson says, it's a reality that police focus on black people in San Francisco. He recalls the time three officers stopped him in Hunters Point after he "drove down a hill a little fast'' and they emerged from their car "pointing guns at my head.''
Hudson, 42, said he asked them, "Out in the avenues, would you be jumping out of your car with an automatic machinegun?''
The police eventually let him go. Before they drove off, Hudson said, one of them told him that someone recently had fired shots at an officer on Harbor Road. Hudson said he responded: "That gives you the right to pull pistols on everyone in the community?''
Police Commissioner Marshall, who is African American, wrote a book, "Street Soldier," in which he described the deep-seated antipathy black people hold for police. "There's not a black person I know who doesn't see the police as an occupying force in the community. At the same time, though, I'm convinced that if black folks stopped blowing each other's brains out, they'd be in a much better position to deal with police issues.''
However, there are African Americans who approve of the way officers conduct themselves in their neighborhoods.
Al Harris, who lives in the Ingleside and works as an organizer for the Safety Network group, which is funded by the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, says police often have to confront a "pretty rough world -- you go into neighborhoods and you're hated. In some neighborhoods, it's instilled from when kids are little that the police are the enemy.''
"I think the police are doing a pretty good job,'' Harris added. "I know officers who do all kinds of good stuff for the kids, participating in community events, giving toys at Christmas, hundreds of turkeys at Thanksgiving.''
Asked about whether it appears that police are targeting black people for arrest, Harris said: "Definitely not. There's no need to target the African American kids. They're the ones out on the streets selling the drugs.''
Earlier study
The numbers revealing the high arrest rate of black people in the city are not the first statistical indication that African Americans get special police attention.
In 2002 the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report, "A Department in Denial: The San Francisco Police Department's Failure To Address Racial Profiling,'' which found black motorists were more than three times as likely to be searched as whites after a traffic stop.
That year San Francisco police arrested black people for felonies at the department's highest rate in the years reviewed by The Chronicle -- 171 for every 1,000 African Americans in the city's population.
The next year, the department adopted a new general order establishing its commitment to "unbiased policing'' and stating officers "must be able to articulate specific facts and circumstances that support reasonable suspicion or probable cause'' for detaining, stopping, arresting and searching citizens or seizing their property.
The black arrest rate began to drop. In 2003 it was 150 per 1,000, in 2004 it was 146, and in 2005 it was 145. Even in that last year, though, the rate was three times higher than Los Angeles, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego and four times higher than Oakland.
Search for explanation
Looking at the 2000 U.S. census to try to find possible reasons for the arrest rate, The Chronicle found some similarities and some differences between San Francisco and the seven other cities.
Like black residents of those other cities, San Francisco African Americans' median household income lags considerably behind that of the city's total population, and their level of education is also typically years behind that of the total population.
Police Commissioner Marshall says answers that might seem at least part of the explanation -- such as poverty, lack of education and the flight of large numbers of middle-class black residents from the city in recent decades -- end up providing no real guidance, because those patterns are found in other cities where the arrest rates are far lower.
In two ways, though, San Francisco does stand out: During the 1990s, the city's African American population declined faster than in any other major U.S. city, dropping by 23 percent, according to 2000 census figures.
The black percentage of population also dropped in Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. In Fresno, Long Beach and Sacramento, it rose somewhat. Today San Francisco, which is 7.8 percent African American, has the second smallest proportion of black people among the state's eight biggest cities. San Jose, with 3.5 percent, has the smallest, and Oakland, with almost 36 percent, has the largest.
A second difference involved unemployment numbers. While African Americans in all the cities had high unemployment numbers, only in San Francisco was their unemployment rate -- 6.2 percent -- more than double that of the rest of the population.
Need for investigation
Walker, the Nebraska criminal justice professor, said San Francisco's high black arrest rate should be investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and the state attorney general's office.
Fong said she did not feel the need for a state or U.S. Justice Department investigation of San Francisco's black felony arrest rate. Instead, she said she was consulting with outside experts and plans a review of department policies to see if changes are warranted.
She added that the department's efforts to analyze its arrest record are made difficult by the fact its record keeping system is being overhauled and she can't "go to a computer right now and pull up arrest data with all this information you have spoken about.''
Newsom said while he is convinced there is no "significant racial profiling in our department,'' he cannot "in good conscience defend the disparity'' between San Francisco and other cities' black arrest rates. Referring to the arrest numbers, he said, "On face value, they are outrageous.''
The mayor added that as he has worked to push programs tackling concentrated poverty in the city, such as a tax credit for working families, he has concluded "the issues of crime for me are overwhelmingly correlated with issues of poverty.''
Newsom added that Fridell, the University of South Florida associate professor of criminology selected by the city to review its arrest data, was picked in part because she has special expertise in the area of racial profiling.
One way or another, San Francisco has to discover why it is arresting black citizens at a higher rate than the other California cities, said Bobb, the Los Angeles police practices expert.
What is at stake is the concept of equal treatment under the law, he said.
"The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race,'' Bobb said. "Courts across the country have ruled that using impermissible racial classifications in determining whom to stop, detain and search violates the equal protection clause.''
Walker, the law enforcement expert who has consulted for the Justice Department, says the San Francisco Police Department "should be looking at its own operation to see if there's anything it could be doing differently.''
The equal protection under law guarantee of the 14th Amendment is "the bedrock of all civil rights laws in the United States and a fundamental principle upon which our country is based,'' he said.
Jack Jacqua, who founded the Omega Boys Club with Marshall, said the policing of black people in San Francisco is a problem for the city and its leaders.
While he acknowledged that police have "the most dangerous, difficult job in America,'' he said they "most times treat poor kids from the hood differently than they do more affluent kids.''
Jacqua, who has devoted his life to working with at-risk youths, added that many black youths come from "a population where there is virtually no middle class because the middle class people can't afford to live here, and many of these youngsters end up in the criminal justice system.''
It works this way, Jacqua said: If a kid shoplifts in the Sunset District, police are probably going to call Mom and Dad and have them take their child home. "But if you shoplift downtown and your address is in the Bayview, then they will take you to jail.''
As for the black community, he said much of it "is a mess -- it's destroying itself. Not enough people are involved in standing up and challenging these youngsters to take responsibility for their lives. Where is the leadership?''
And what of the city's liberal political establishment that has reigned for many years?
"The bottom line," said Jacqua, "is that poor blacks are in the way of what this city wants to be, though the city won't admit it because 'we're liberal and believe in diversity.' But the city really doesn't want poor folks and especially poor black folks.''
VOICES: From double standards to police strategy to social factors, there's no tidy explanation
Heather Fong, San Francisco police chief: "I support the crime-fighting efforts of the officers of this department, who day after day, under challenging and perilous circumstances, work tirelessly to protect the people of San Francisco, and do so in an impartial manner."
Victoria Gray, social worker for the nonprofit Family Service Agency: "If you are out here black, selling drugs and your pockets full of drugs and you get busted and holler 'Racism!' -- that's not racism. ... Of course there's racism. This is America. But everything isn't linked to racism. ... You have to understand all our men want is a piece of the American pie, the American dream. I don't blame them for wanting some of the pie, but I blame them for how they go about it."
Damone Hale, member of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission and an attorney who has represented many young African Americans: "You see officers whose talk is rude and disrespectful, and time and again the only distinguishing factors we could find is that the defendant is African American. It's consistent and this treatment is permitted by our society."
Arlene Ackerman, former San Francisco school superintendent now teaching at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York City: "I believe that race in San Francisco is the elephant in the room and people refuse to talk about it and if you bring it up, then you are the racist. I felt more uncomfortable as a black person in San Francisco than I have felt in any other city. ... Someone has to be courageous and step up and address the issue of race in the city, starting in the education system and moving through the criminal justice system.''
Delores Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor who is interim director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice: "Typically when we see disproportionate arrest rates for African Americans or other minorities, it is because the police have focused their forces or hot-spot policing on areas with large minority populations. What is the harm of targeting? Innocent people who are unfortunate enough to live in economically depressed neighborhoods aren't given the same measure of constitutional rights as their more affluent counterparts: They are stopped and frisked, have their cars and persons searched even without permission -- simply by virtue of where they live. It's unacceptable."
William Whitfield, officer who joined the San Francisco Police Department in 1994: "If I had to put my finger on one thing, it's the homes. I look at the kids on the corners, and 9 times out of 10 there's no dad and maybe 7 times out of 10 there's no mom in their lives and they are being raised by an aunt or grandma. Kids aren't being raised as I was -- there's just not that accountability in the homes. If they had someone at home they knew they had to answer to, that would stop a whole lot of it.''
Tim Nichols, ex-San Francisco police officer, on the high black arrest rate: "It comes from the fact the majority of officers who want to take on criminals are in the Bayview and the Fillmore, which are heavily black. I don't believe it's racism. ... Officers have to pick and choose the severity of the crime they want to spend their time on, and officers who make a lot of arrests generally go after hard-core criminals." He also said black drug dealers are particularly visible: "How often do you see a group of whites standing on the street corner selling narcotics? Generally whites don't sell on the corner."
Sharen Hewitt, director of the Community Leadership Academy and Emergency Response project, which helps connect low-income clients with services, said when she has watched what happens on a Friday night on Union Street where the crowds are predominantly white, she finds "kids tearing up, fighting, smoking marijuana, drinking in the streets, guys being abusive to women, young men publicly urinating, and I don't see a whole lot of them being arrested. Some of these behaviors are developmentally appropriate, but I don't think African American young men get the luxury of having errors."
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