Madison police shooting offers stark reminder that city's race issues run deep

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/08/madison-police-shooting-tony-robinson-race

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Related: Madison police chief says officer shooting of unarmed man has similarities to Ferguson

On Friday evening, Lorien Carter spoke to a crowd in front of the building in Madison, Wisconsin where her nephew, Anthony Terrell Robinson, was earlier shot and killed by a police officer, Matt Kenny.

She said: “Here in our little bubble of Madison, WI … I want y’all to know, that for minorities, we are [in one of] the top five worst places to live. But we are [also in one of the] three happiest cities to be in. So who is it happy for?”

Carter’s words evoked not only the bitterness of losing a young man too soon, but also well-documented disparities affecting Madison’s African American community. For many, Robinson’s death was a harsh reminder that their city is not the progressive utopia it sometimes styles itself to be.

Robinson died on Friday night. Madison’s police chief, Mike Koval, said he was shot during an altercation with an officer investigating calls regarding a person jumping into traffic, who one caller said was “responsible for a battery”. The chief later named officer Kenny, who he said had fired more than once. Robinson was given first aid at the scene, Koval said, but he died later in hospital.

Koval also said Kenny was involved in a another fatal police shooting in 2007, in which he shot dead a man who pointed a gun at police. The gun turned out to be a pellet gun; the death was deemed a case of “suicide by cop”.

After Robinson’s death, protests began. Some chanted “Black lives matter”, the slogan associated with demonstrations after the deaths at the hands of police last year of two unarmed black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City.

A Facebook page supporting the Madison police department, meanwhile, was launched on Saturday afternoon. It quickly gained nearly 7,000 “likes”.

On Saturday morning, the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, which has been advocating for criminal justice reform in the city and county since 2013, called a meeting. Matthew Braunginn, a coalition member, said approximately 150 people attended and between 400 and 500 then marched to the location of Robinson’s death.

“We’ve been warning Madison that this could happen, and we were laughed at by certain community members,” Braunginn told the Guardian in a phone interview.

Brown said the coalition has been pressuring the city and county for changes related to criminal justice and community investment.

“When we invest in people, we get a return back,” he said. “But when we arrest people, we don’t get a return in costs to society. It costs a lot of money, and it costs people their lives.”

One of the group’s aims is to have Madison shift its spending away from jail renovations towards investments in services that will improve opportunities for low-income neighborhoods. Another is to reduce the number of black people incarcerated so the number is proportional to the city’s black population.

In 2013, a report by Race to Equity, an initiative run by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, found that in 2011, 80% of youths in juvenile detention facilities in Dane County, where Madison is located, were African American. They represented only 9% of the county’s population. The report also noted that African American youths were arrested six times more often than their white counterparts.

A 2007 report from a national nonprofit, the Justice Policy Institute, ranked Dane County third in the nation in racial disparities for drug-related crimes.

Such statistics were well known to the Madisonians who on Saturday attended an afternoon gathering at the Fountain of Life Church. Carter, along with Robinson’s grandmother, Sharon Irwin, accepted hugs and condolences. The mayors of Madison and neighboring Monona participated, along with state assembly member Melissa Sargent and leaders from Madison’s faith and non-profit communities. As of that time, the family had not been granted access to Robinson’s body.

Saying Robinson’s death made him heartsick, Reverend Alexander Gee Jr, pastor of the Fountain of Life church, recommended a soul-searching analysis.

“What have we done to allow this to happen?” he asked. “We have the worst disparity for kids in the country, and we are just tooling right along. How are we benefiting from the status quo? Because until we answer that, we won’t really be able to make changes.”

Gee has been campaigning against what he sees as the city’s entrenched racial disparities through the Justified Anger Coalition. He says he realised “that being from this community, professional, middle-class, graduate degree … I could still experience some of the same things that common criminals do”.

At the gathering, Madison’s mayor, Paul Soglin, told the Guardian that since the killing was being investigated by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, he had no information on why officer Kenny had used his firearm rather than a taser when reportedly struggling with Robinson. He also acknowledged racial disparities in the city’s policing.

Soglin noted that white youths who are arrested are diverted out of the system early in the process and generally end up avoiding further involvement. For African Americans, he said, there was no diversion.

“The mathematics are real simple,” Soglin said. “You’re going to get arrested again and again and again, and you’re not going to have that divergence that the white youth has.”

Soglin said the city’s efforts to change the early stages of this process would lead to a dramatic reduction in all arrests.

While the mayor’s intentions focused on the future, however, some residents worried about what will happen around the death of Tony Robinson.

“They’re going to frame this so that it’s the black kid’s fault,” said Craig Spaulding, father of Jack Spaulding, one of Robinson’s closest friends. Craig Spaulding works with the city’s homeless population, work which has brought him in touch with the police.

“There’s a lot of wonderful officers in Madison,” he said. “Incredible officers in Madison.” But, he added, “there’s an underlying current of racism, discrimination and abuse.”

The Young, Gifted and Black Coalition is planning actions and events for the first four days of next week, culminating on Thursday with a debate with county sheriff David J Mahoney