Seeing The Black In A World Of Blue

County Works To Address The Tide Of Racial Tension Amid Police Violence Toward Black Communities As Chief Resigns

By Raoul Dennis

Long before the county executive announced realigning $20 million from the Police Department’s capital budget earmarked for a public safety training facility to build a health facility to address mental health and addiction, she’d been an advocate for placing less of the emphasis of addressing social issues on the shoulders of police officers.

Fast forward to 2020 and not more than a month after the entire world watched a police officer squeeze the life out of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, the questions – and demands – for change in policing strategies came to Prince George’s County.

“What we know is that 70% of the people who are arrested in Prince George’s County arrive to our Department of Corrections intoxicated, and a third of the individuals who come through our jail are suffering from a mental health issue,” County Executive Alsobrooks wrote in a recent edition of Community Connections, a newsletter published by her office. “It’s wrong to treat mentally ill and addicted people in jail, and we must preserve the dignity of these individuals. For this reason, I am realigning resources to ensure a vulnerable population of our community has access to the help they need from medical professionals and not police officers who are not equipped to deal with that population.”

Chief Hank Stawinski was at the meeting when the county executive made the announcement to the county council on June 16. He didn’t hesitate to support Alsobrooks’ move to reallocate the funds and to explain why he supported it.

“The record reflects that we have been ahead of these issues that have now been brought into sharp focus by recent events across the nation,” he said. “Long before this national conversation brought these issues into focus was advocating for greater transparency because the law stands in the way as an obstacle to the public trust.”

Stawinski has maintained watch over a steady annual reduction in violent crime in the county—the lowest in 35 years. He has publicly supported incentivizing residency of county officers, peaceful protest and transparency and accountability. Of late, the department has been fast-acting in cases of police violence and abuse. His methods have put the department on the national stage as a model to other agencies across the nation.

But seemingly it’s not enough. And some three days later, Stawinski resigned under the pressure from the ACLU as a result of a lawsuit brought by black and Latino officers in the department.

County Councilmember Monique Anderson-Walker said the county is far from free of racially-motivated challenges when it comes to the police department.

“We are not light years ahead of anybody [in terms of racial tensions in policing],” Anderson–Walker said. “We don’t need to fool ourselves into thinking that we are. I think there is a lot of good that we do but if we pretend that the bad isn’t there then we’re missing this whole point.”

There are other concerns that the executive office and the council will have to address.

The recent ACLU press release regarding the report on county police conduct and race outlines “over two dozen instances where white officers in the Prince George’s Police Department (PGPD) engaged in racist conduct with no or minimal discipline, including for the use of racial epithets or offensive imagery.”

The report and pressure from social and activist groups led to Stawinski submitting his resignation.

A day prior to the resignation, Dorothy Elliott, mother of Archie “Artie” Elliott, 24, who was killed by police in the county in 1993 pressed county officials to reopen the case. Elliott had been denied the reexamination of the shooting which left her handcuffed and seat belted son dead each time she appealed over the last 27 years. But she believes the time is right now for her family “get justice in this case,” she says.

It’s not just Prince George’s.

Maryland is undergoing a strong push for sweeping reform across the state. A large, diverse coalition of over 60 groups from across the state are calling on Maryland legislators to support strong, renewed demands for police reform and accountability. Fueled by continuing frustration over the Freddie Gray case, Marylanders are calling for greater community control over the Baltimore police department, greater police accountability and transparent observations of internal police investigations.

Here in the county, County Executive Alsobrooks says Prince Georgians will have the last word.

“I believe we have to address injustices in policing in our communities,” she said. “But I also believe that if we only focus on policing, we will have missed an opportunity for meaningful change. I believe this moment in history also requires us to look at the social injustices that have harmed the African American community for centuries, like disparities in healthcare and education, and work toward reform in those areas as well.

In addition, I am also establishing a workgroup of stakeholders, thought leaders, community advocates, and organizers to examine the policies and practices of the County’s Police Department. While our department has made tremendous strides over the past decade in terms of community policing, we realize that there is still much work to be done. We will be announcing additional details on this workgroup in the near future.”

“We are not where we ought to be but we are not where we were,” Alsobrooks said.