Security Incident Controversy

Students Tell of Security Encounter
April 6 Letter

To the Editor:

Last Saturday four men allegedly stole food from Dascomb and fled. Concurrently, we, three black women, committed the crime of walking home from the ’Sco past that unavoidable building. This apparently explains the presence of Security on Elm Street, where we first saw the “officers.” After arriving at South we stopped, provoked by the abominable desire to engage in conversation. SUDDENLY, Security appeared again, pulled up the driveway by which we were standing, and slowed down to two miles an hour as they passed us and stared.
Feeling slightly offended, we began to ask the officers, in the ‘loud tones known to women of our racial orientation,’ why they were staring at us and what it was that they wanted. The officers pulled off, then turned into the alcove on the west side of South and turned around. They returned to park right in front of us and stared hard as if to say, “I can stare at you any time I want!” We again protested, and this time the staring lasted approximately 20-30 seconds. At this point the reasonable black man in the backseat of the car convinced the two white men in the front, using hand gestures that were apparent to us, to pull off and leave us alone. We stood shocked, and then decided that we were not going to take the treatment that we had just received lying down. 
We decided to call security to report to them that we had been harassed…by security. We called and reported the story to a female dispatcher, giving our names and the location of the event, at which point we were speedily put on hold. Next a male got on the phone and asked us to repeat our story. We asked several times why he had been put on the telephone, and he eventually said that it was because he was this lady’s supervisor. Sounded valid. Little did we know that this was the male in the passenger seat who had just helped give us the Al Pacino “You talking to me?!” treatment. 
The man asked us to retell the story and stopped us several times to ask for details. He asked us to describe the officers as if he were taking this for his records, and then asked how long ago the event happened. At the end of the interrogation, he said “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about because I was there.” The officer then proceeded to use something from the story we had just told him –– that my friends and I had yelled at the car for staring at us –– to give an excuse: they had stopped to gaze at us because they thought we wanted a ride. 
It may seem odd to the reader that the guards did not ask if we wanted a ride, never rolled their windows down or said words to us. In fact, they could never have fit all three of us into the car because there was already a rather built security guard in the back seat. 

Later the officer informed us that the reason they had come near us was to look for the four men who had stolen some food from Dascomb. After arguing a bit, we asked if our complaint had been recorded and hung up. Was this destined to make the Security Notebook, reading:
March 18, 12:30 a.m. Officers laughed at a complaint that three black women received unwanted attention from Security guards outside of South. No one was notified.
For our own condolences, we are petitioning that the people who did steal the food please cut us our fair share of the pilfered goods. We’ll be eating it outside South; any hungry Security guards can come by and ask for a piece.

–Yvonne O. Etaghene
College sophomore

–Tarika Powell 
College junior

–Catara Vinson
College junior


Security Addresses Allegations
May 4 Letter

To the Editor:

On Sunday morning, March 18, 2001 at approximately 12:17 a.m. two Safety and Security officers –– one white, one African-American –– learned that four white males had been seen attempting to steal a foosball table from the lounge of Dascomb. After abandoning the table in the doorway of Dascomb, the white males were seen fleeing in a southerly direction, and the officers proceeded east along College Street in order to begin looking for them. They encountered Sergeant Kriesen from Safety and Security, and acquainted him with the situation.

At approximately this time, the patrol car passed three female African-American students, just as the officers were looking in their direction for the white males. The car slowed momentarily when one of the officers thought they made a gesture trying to get their attention, but with more pressing business, the officers determined that they could not stop and there was no additional contact with the students at that time.
A short time later, having circled around in search of the white males, the officers again encountered the three students. One of the officers recognized them, and thought perhaps they were in need of a ride. But there was a brief exchange, in which the officers looked toward the women, and they made no effort to walk toward the car, and the patrol car drove off.

Having a patrol car stop near you is not a pleasant experience for many people. If one is black –– as I am –– the experience can sometimes be frightening. The historic abuse of African-Americans at the hands of police officers means that a black person in America can never be certain of the reasons for which they have attracted the attention of the police. In this instance, the officers had slowed to see if they could be of help to some students that they recognized. But because they did not get out of the patrol car to speak with the students, their purposes were unclear. The misunderstanding that developed is in large measure the responsibility of the officers, and the conclusions to which the students jumped were fully understandable. In the wake of this incident, we have spoken as a department about the ways in which we represent authority and the need to make our intentions and purposes clear to students. We are developing protocols to ensure that we do not unnecessarily alarm students, and to make sure that we are communicating clearly about our intentions.

Our review of this incident helps us to evaluate ourselves, so that we can continue to provide the best possible services to our students and the larger community. These policy revisions have now been implemented:

1.) Students who request escorts and transportation will be contacted personally by the responding officer to identify the particular need of the individual(s). As a safety issue, more communication should take place between the officer and the student(s) to establish a level of feeling safe during the encounter.

2.) Any member of the community who wishes to express a concern, question or lodge a complaint involving any security personnel can do so directly to the office of the Director of Security if they do not wish to have contact with department personnel who may be on duty at the time of the incident in question. The Director or the Assistant Director of Safety and Security will then conduct an internal investigation. The results of this investigation will then be discussed with the complainant(s). Any complaints against the Director of Safety and Security should be filed with the Dean of Students.

3.) The department will identify and support additional training for all of its personnel in race relations and cultural sensitivity.

As we continue to refine the skill level of officers, we need to make sure that they understand and share the College’s dedication to genuine diversity. We welcome input from students on these and other issues, and seek students’ assistance in helping us to best serve their safety and security needs.

–Robert K. Jones
Director of Safety and Security


Security Letter a Fabrication and Violation of Trust
May 11 Letter

To the Editor:

Last week’s letter to the Editor by Security Director Robert K. Jones concerning an act of harassment perpetrated upon [sophomore] Yvonne Etaghene, [junior] Catara Vinson and myself by security officers was very surprising. Particularly due to the fact that in a meeting two weeks ago between the three of us, Jones and [Assistant Dean of Students] Bill Stackman, Jones agreed to write a public letter of apology for the incident; which he said he could not deny was racially motivated. 
That’s correct. The letter that we all read last week, which stated that my colleagues and myself had “jumped to conclusions,” was supposed to be an open letter of apology. 
We, the students, agreed to edit and approve the content of his letter before sending it to the Review. Because of scheduling difficulties, we were not able to make the meeting. Instead of rescheduling, which Jones had been very adamant about doing for the first meeting, he forwarded the bogus letter to the Review and wrote us a tart e-mail, briefly dismissing us from the conversation and thanking us for our “concern.”
In the meeting, which occurred April 27, we demanded that the officers involved write a letter to the Review apologizing for the blatantly disrespectful act of racial profiling that they perpetrated on March 17. To this Jones replied that he was forbidden by the administration from engaging in “media wars,” a term he described to mean “you write a letter this week, I write a letter the next week disputing you, and on and on.” We stated that we did not want to engage in a media war; we just wanted an apology. A brief conversation between himself and Stackman yielded the result of Jones agreeing to write an apology. He said that he could not get the officers themselves to do so, because he could probably not get them to agree that they had racially profiled us.
Jones himself did see profiling as a possibility. Not surprisingly, he initially denied our concerns, repeatedly. Instead of even allowing that we may have been abused, Jones clung steadfastly to his interpretation that we had misunderstood. He even said that he found it hard to believe that racial profiling occurred at all on this campus, at which point we directed him to several incidents surrounding attacks that have occurred in the previous two school years. We told him that an abundant number of black men had been harassed, and he still refused to think that his officers might have been racially profiling us until questioned further by Stackman. Jones then acknowledged to Stackman the likelihood that we had been harassed. 
After “seeing the light,” Jones also agreed that it was quite possible that his officers stared at us the first time the rode by because they thought we were the thieves. Not because they “recognized us,” as he said in his letter. The only problem he saw with their actions, however, was that the officers did not, after they figured out that we were not the thieves, roll down their windows and explain that they had thought we were the suspects, and proceed to ask us if we had seen anyone fleeing. 
I would like to now point out areas in Jones’ letter where he stretched the truth in order to blur the racial composition of the incident. 
Jones stated in his letter that the two officers who originally responded to the theft were as follows: one white and one black; and that a second white officer later joined the car. This is untrue. We ourselves saw two white officers waiting in the car on Elm Street being joined by a third officer, who was black. This is the way that the officer in the passenger seat of that car explained it to me over the phone after the incident, and this is the way that Jones himself described it in our meeting when going over his “investigation” of the incident. Why change this information in the letter? Also, Jones’ letter was the first time the suspects have ever been white. They were not white the night of the incident in the explanation of one of the harassing officers. They were not white when Jones agreed that the officers had probably stared at us to determine if we were the men. In fact, they could not have mistaken us for the men if they thought they were white. 
I am extremely disappointed and angered that Mr. Jones agreed to write an apology for racial profiling but then attacked our common sense and breached all the agreements that he had made with us. He has proven himself to be a fabricator, despite the safeguard we attempted to implement by having a Dean of Students present at our meeting with him. As I have joked before, this ex-Chief of Police has engrafted the Blue Wall of Silence into the Grey & Brown Wall of Silence. His actions are very unfortunate, and no longer funny. 

–Tarika Monique Powell
College junior