NEWS

Race and police at Mars Hill University

What happens when a college is more diverse than the town?

Beth Walton
bwalton@citizen-times.com
While neither Mars Hill University nor the Mars Hill Police Department catalog complaints or data related to race, new Mars Hill Police Chief Michael Garrison has decided to start collecting and reporting traffic stop demographic data to the State Bureau of Investigation.

A week hardly goes by without Alaysia Black Hackett hearing from an African-American student with complaints of mistreatment based on race.

And each story, the director of multicultural affairs at Mars Hill University said, brings another little bit of heartache.

The black students she works with are struggling to find their place in a town where minorities are few and encounters with law enforcement have left them feeling unsafe, she said.

Hackett said she has no way of verifying the students’ claims.

Neither Mars Hill University nor the Mars Hill Police Department catalog complaints or data related to race, even though North Carolina was one of the first states in the nation to mandate that law enforcement track demographic information at traffic stops.

Academics, journalists and justice organizations use that information to study racial profiling and look for signs of problems.

Mars Hill doesn’t fall under North Carolina’s law enforcement tracking requirements because of its small size, though the town’s police chief said he plans to start collecting the data anyway.

That’s an especially important step at a time when discussion on race, police brutality and campus activism are dominating the news, Hackett said. The time to pay attention to the students' concerns is now, she said.

“I cannot guarantee that there is huge marginalization here. I cannot guarantee that the numbers will prove what students are saying, but I can say that our conditions are conducive to tragedy if we are not intentional,” said Hackett, who has been in her position at the university for three years.

“These are 18- to 22-year-old students in a foreign place who are scared,” she said. “I believe we need to look at this. I think we need to look at the relationships between our campus and the police as it relates to students.”

New Mars Hill Police Chief Michael Garrison agrees. During his first few weeks on the job, Garrison said he has decided to voluntarily start collecting and reporting traffic stop demographic data to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

There is a diverse population of people living or staying in Mars Hill, and Garrison said he wants to make sure officers are acting in a way that is reflective of the population.

The 2010 census counted 1,869 people living in Mars Hill — 87 percent of whom identified as being white.

In the fall of 2014, minorities and students with undisclosed race made up almost 31 percent of Mars Hill University’s 1,435 students. There were 315 African-American students enrolled, nearly double the 160 black people residing in Mars Hill.

Garrison said data collection by his department will allow him to see the number of traffic stops by age, race and gender. It will help him understand why those stops were made and what occurred during the interaction with law enforcement.

Mars Hill University not the problem

Freshmen roommates Demarius Stewart and Richard Hanks have spent less than four months on Mars Hill University’s campus.

In that time, both say they have had negative encounters with local police, something they each attribute to being black.

Stewart, 20, said he was at the Mars Hill Ingles with friends. He admits they were loud as they were leaving the store, but said that doesn’t justify what came next.

An officer with the Mars Hill Police Department asked him if he was from the ghetto because he was wearing jeans and boots, Stewart said.

Hanks said he was pulled over unnecessarily while driving a green Buick around town this month. An officer told the 20-year-old that he was swerving and demanded a sobriety test, he recalled. Hanks says he passed.

Stewart was in the car with him. The young men said they had to wait more than 30 minutes for the officer to return Hanks’ license. The white police officer kept shining his flashlight in their car, they said.

One of the first questions the officer asked was if the two had any guns, drugs or pocketknives, Stewart said.

"That's not what they would ask all people," said Stewart, a business major in the school’s honors program who came to Mars Hill from Orlando, Florida, after being offered financial aid.

Stewart and Hanks said they did not file a complaint with the university nor Mars Hill police, saying they did not want to aggravate the situation. They did, however, confide in school staff and faculty.

Garrison, the Mars Hill police chief, would not comment on the account from Stewart and Hanks.

Mars Hill University is not the problem, said Hanks, a freshman who was also drawn to the small Baptist liberal arts college from Orlando, Florida, after being offered financial assistance.

“It’s basically like the cops and the community around you," he said. "People make smart remarks. You just want to say: ‘You do realize I’m not a statistic. I’m in college. I was born to get a degree.’”

With Garrison’s arrival, Hackett said for the first time in years she feels hopeful about students’ relations with the local police, despite hosting a focus group for students of color three weeks ago where 12 of 14 students expressed concerns about race, police and personal safety.

She and Garrison studied public administration together in graduate school at Western Carolina University. Hackett is impressed by the chief’s desire to do more.

She spent three years worrying about students like Hanks. She has a black 9-year-old son at home and can’t help or control her motherly instincts.

“This is a positive thing,” said Hackett of Garrison’s decision to start tracking data. “It moves us toward a better community, a better county and a better university. The data will no longer be hidden behind shadows; we can now embrace it.”

Counting complaints

North Carolina’s legislation requiring that police track demographic information at traffic stops was introduced in 1999, and it has limits.

Police departments serving municipalities with fewer than 10,000 people are exempt from reporting, as are agencies with fewer than five officers per 1,000 residents.

Departments like Mars Hill, Waynesville, Brevard and Burnsville don't turn in monthly reports to the State Bureau of Investigation, even though larger ones like Buncombe County Sheriff's Office and Asheville Police Department do.

The data is self-reported, often by officers from mobile computers installed in police cruisers. Each month, agencies compile results and submit reports to the State Bureau of Investigation, which makes the information publicly available.

It's intelligence-led policing, which leads to a higher probability of being effective, said Shannon O'Toole, spokesman for the State Bureau of Investigation. "We see the validity in this like many researchers do."

Small agencies don't have the resources for this sort of systematic data collection, said Brevard Police Chief Phil Harris. Harris collects his own data related to race internally, but says the form the SBI uses is time consuming and detracts from the department's focus on safety and crime prevention.

"The value for me is to assure my officers are doing what is fair, honest and respectful — that we are adhering to our principles," said Harris, who will make his data publicly available if asked.

In Burnsville, the police department has six patrol officers, said Chief Brian Buchanan. In addition to policing, staff are doing things like running the deposit to the bank, he said. "It just winds down to a resource issue and managing the data we're already required to accumulate for various agencies."

The Burnsville Police Department is an all-white police force in a town that is 92 percent white.

"I've never received any complaints, and I've been chief for seven years," Buchanan said. "I don't know if it is as big of an issue here as it is in other places."

The deal with data

Demands for racial profiling data among police departments started in the early 1990s and continue today, said Greg Ridgeway, associate professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania and former acting director of the National Institute of Justice.

California started requiring data collection this year.

Information gathered can help the public and police better understand how local police departments are working, the professor said. It gives departments more than an anecdote when they are asked: Why are you stopping so many minorities?

"Without data you can't even start having that conversation, and that's true even if there is a department with only one officer," Ridgeway said.

Collection efforts should expand beyond the number and race of people stopped, but provide context regarding the outcome and location of each incident. This sort of detail can allow analysts to see if police really are pulling over more minorities, or if more crime is happening in places where there are simply more minority drivers.

Data can help departments identify bad actors and trends that point to a problem or need for more training or better policy, said Sarah Preston, acting executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

Using the statistics collected by the State Bureau of Investigation, Preston said the ACLU was able to work with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office in 2012 to end racial profiling at a local traffic checkpoint near a primarily Hispanic neighborhood.

That May, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had set up a “seat belt” check in Tuckasegee and taken into custody some 15 Latino drivers, primarily for lacking proper documentation. The charges were eventually dropped against 10 of those arrested.

"We have seen checkpoints and traffic stops being used disproportionately against communities of color," Preston said. "From Winston-Salem to the western counties, we have seen some success when we come into communities to work with affected individuals, but without complete data, it is that much harder."

"It's important that every agency be collecting data and paying attention to how stops are being conducted. Even if the law says they don't have to, they certainly could be collecting the data and reporting it."


Learn more

The American Civil Liberties Union has published a "Know Your Rights" booklet to help people better understand their rights when they are stopped, questioned, arrested or searched by law enforcement. The free pamphlet is available for download at www.aclu.org/national-security/know-your-rights-when-encountering-law-enforcement. The agency also has a mobile justice app that allows users to record their interactions with law enforcement from their phones. More information at www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct.

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