Aaron Knapp
RACINE — A team from the
American Civil Liberties Union will hold a free training session on Thursday
about what residents should do when they… Read more
RACINE — Although one turns to
authorities for assistance with racial profiling and misconduct, fighting a
police officer at the moment of misconduct is the worst approach.
This is according to Emilio De
Torre, Youth and Program Director with the American Civil Liberties Union of
Wisconsin, who gives frequent training sessions around southeast Wisconsin on
how residents should conduct themselves in contact with police and what their
rights are.
While residents have a right to
not give consent to officers without a warrant to search their cars or homes,
he said it is unwise to stand in the way of officers who go through with a
search anyway.
“Verbally, respectfully assert
your right, and then let whatever transpires transpire, because any other
altercation is going to be very bad, but not for the police officer,” he said.
He spoke to several dozen
residents on Thursday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, 1134
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, in a training session on the rights of
residents and powers of police, particularly during traffic stops.
The session — scheduled to last
90 minutes — went well more than two hours as attendees asked questions and
voiced frustrations about their experiences with police, even to two members of
the Racine Police Department, Sgt. Jessie Metoyer and Lt. Aldred Days, who
attended the meeting.
“There always is criticism,”
said Metoyer after the session. “As supervisors we need to know when people feel
that their rights have been violated.”
The session was hosted by
North/South Outreach, which was founded to offer community events and stop
youth from getting involved in gangs and crime, according to founder Tyrell
Davis.
“Everything is for the community
that I polluted and destroyed once upon a time,” he said, recalling crimes he
committed.
Davis asked the ACLU to host
this session due to recent incidents of racial profiling he said he has
experienced and heard about.
“There’s a lot of racial
profiling going on in my neighborhood and I know it’s not just around here,
around the north side area, it’s everywhere in the inner city,” he explained.
“I chose to be part of the solution and find someone who can give the correct
information to educate everybody else.”
Acknowledging that there is
little a person can do if they feel they have been profiled or mistreated as
the incident is unfolding, De Torre explained that every officer is accountable
to a superior and the recourse is to file a complaint with the department.
He said if every person
alleging police misconduct files a complaint with the Police Department, those
complaints will go to superiors and stack up.
If that fails, he said, the
community should band together and refer the issue to the media, the Department
of Justice, the FBI and higher until the issue is resolved.
“If the police are not giving
you quality policing, if everybody else in the community gets it but not
Latinos, or not black folks, or not white folks, then you have a right to complain,”
De Torre said.
Metoyer noted the importance of
residents and police knowing their rights and how to conduct themselves during
traffic stops and urged residents to find complaint forms in English and
Spanish on the department’s website.
