Coping With Cops

By TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND

It looks like a typical high school classroom, but the question Ronald Quartimon poses to his African-American students at Bedford Stuyvesant Outreach, an alternative high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., isn't about the Civil War or Shakespeare's sonnets. He wants to know how many of them have ever been stopped by the police. Six hands shoot up. "Usually," says a student, "they just come out right off the bat and ask you, 'Do you have any drugs?'" The comment is a typical one for the 10-session course called Conflicts with Cops, run by the Harlem-based Neighborhood Defender Service. Its goal: to train African-American teens to make it through a police encounter safely.

The demand for workshops like this is one measure of the fallout from the recent wave of highly publicized police shootings and alleged abuses of African Americans and other minorities. Episodes like the fatal shootings of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond by undercover cops in New York City have raised an outcry against brutal police tactics and racial profiling. But they have also sent a warning into the homes of ordinary families, who are increasingly taking steps to make sure their kids don't do the wrong thing when they come face to face with the police. Says Quartimon: "Today you can't take anything for granted."

Some people might call that paranoia. But learning the way to behave with cops has become a rite of passage for black and Hispanic youngsters. Just as parents warn their sons to wear a condom during sex or urge their kids to say no to drugs, now they drill them on the dos and don'ts of dealing with police. It's just a matter of time, many tell their kids, before you are stopped, for no other reason than that you are young and black. "They know it's part of their job bringing up a black or Hispanic kid," says David Harris, a professor of law and values at the University of Toledo who is researching racial profiling. Police officials don't dispute the usefulness of such efforts. Walter Burnes, a New York City deputy police commissioner, says it is a good idea for parents to teach kids proper "etiquette" for situations in which they are questioned in a car by police. "Everyone has to make their own decisions about what they should do with their families," he says.

It's a tricky balancing act, however. African-American parents want to prepare their kids but don't want them growing up thinking all cops are out to get them. Joyce Randall, a minister at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, tells her sons that police officers have a dangerous job. "The way you dress, your attitude, it all matters," she instructs them. "Police must be very, very careful. So if you are doing what you're supposed to do, chances are you're going to be on your way." Still, tragic events like the Diallo killing--along with alarming scandals like the reported abuses in the Los Angeles police department--have made the words of caution more urgent. "Many people felt that Mr. Diallo could have been any one of us," says Dennis Walcott, president of the New York Urban League and the father of a 15-year-old son.

Those were Larry Dais' thoughts exactly. Like many African-American parents, Dais, an assistant vice president at Columbia University, was worried about the safety of his two sons. He gave them each the "police speech" when they got their learner's driving permits: If you get pulled over at night, turn on the interior light. Put your hands on the steering wheel. Don't make any sudden moves. "My younger son's initial response was, 'Why do I have to do that?'" says Dais. "But now he understands." Last summer Landon, then 17, was stopped while driving his father's Triumph sports car. The cops said it was a routine check, asked a few questions and let him go.

Because of incidents like that, lots of black parents won't let their kids drive flashy cars--even Mom's or Dad's--which can attract unwanted police attention. Other parents have given an emphatic thumbs-down to cell phones. Why? A police officer might mistake it for a weapon in the hands of a young African-American male, just as the cops say they mistook Diallo's wallet for a gun. Other parents restrict their kids' clothing. New York City police detective Clifton Hollingsworth won't let his sons wear hip street fashions. No backward baseball caps or pants drooping down below their waist, because such clothing can send the wrong signals to police. "It's important that families do as much as they can to help prevent their children from getting stopped, frisked or killed," says Kenneth Meeks, author of Driving While Black, a book about racial profiling that is to be published in May by Broadway Books.

While much of the responsibility for teaching kids how to act with the police must fall to parents, a growing number of organized groups are trying to make such training a part of every child's education. In New York City an organization called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care has been swamped with requests for survival workshops, conducted in schools and community organizations. More than 5,000 people, mostly youth, have attended so far. In Chicago, Michael Owens, 17, grew up amid the gangs and drugs of the Englewood neighborhood and had a typical attitude toward the police. Says he: "The decision to make when you saw the police was hope for the best or run." But in high school he formed the Boys & Girls Clubs' YouthNet program, which brings kids together with the cops to talk about how to deal with the police.

The problem is not confined to the biggest cities. Jon Munnerlyn, 18, an African-American high school senior in Columbus, Ohio, says he gets stopped all the time: "I'm a big kid, tall," he says. "I get kind of nervous that every time I reach for my ID, there's a possibility that I might die." And in minority neighborhoods across the U.S., there's a good deal of ingrained suspicion. Says Ebony Garcia Williams, 17, a junior at Bedford Stuyvesant Outreach: "Little kids from five and six years old learn to hate the cops because they see what goes on in the community." No matter how many parental lectures are given or workshops held, it will take a long time to overcome attitudes like that.

--With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger/Chicago

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger/Chicago