Opportunity for reform in Durham police force

Earlier this month, Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield announced the forced resignation of current Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez. Reactions to Lopez’s tenure have been mixed. Positive responses mention the decrease in violent crime early in his career as well as outreach efforts like the Mental Health Outreach Unit and those towards the Hispanic community. Lopez, however, was often criticized for overseeing a department guilty of racial profiling, a number of high profile officer-involved shootings and deaths and an alarming spike in violent crime in the two years after the initial decrease.

It is impossible to separate Lopez from the broader police force during his tenure. Last year, we wrote to evaluate police conduct in Durham, noting that the Durham Human Relations Commission’s report confirmed racial bias in Durham Police Department practices. A national activist group, Campaign ZERO, has also researched and collected a variety of police reform policy recommendations that we urge DPD to closely examine. While pushing for systemic change, we also urge the police department to better address concerns in high profile cases, like when the vigil for Jesus Huerta, a teenager who shot himself in the back of a police car, turned violent and police used tear gas to control the crowd. Other incidents, detailed in the News and Observer’s “Timeline of Troubles,” include the two fatal shootings of Jose Adan Cruz Ocampo and Derek Walker by police officers in 2013 and most recently the shooting of La’vante Biggs three weeks ago.

We recognize that we are not experts—groups such as the DHRC have spent countless hours working on these concerns, but we hope to increase awareness among Duke students because of our University’s close ties to its surrounding community. In the last year, members of the Duke community have engaged with police issues in different ways, highlighted by the campus-wide reaction to the noose hung on the Bryan Center plaza last April. As evidenced by the crowd that came out for the Chapel forum, members of the Duke community are open to engaging with issues of race and justice. A number of Duke students were at the December 4 protests last year for police injustices in Ferguson, New York and around the nation. Yet, there still seem to be too few conversations about the Ferguson in Durham.

When students claim to care about racial justice and equity but fail to actively educate themselves about the issues communities of color in Durham are dealing with, their claims ring hollow. We encourage everyone to read about Jesus Huerta, Carlos Riley Jr. and the protests outside the Durham County jail. At the same time, we urge students to become more actively involved in different parts of the Durham community through educational efforts like tutoring and even simply venturing into Durham. Doing so, though not in any patronizing kind of way, recognizes the privilege and power that Duke as an institution has compared to its home city and the inherent power dynamic of relationships between Duke students and communities of color in Durham.

We should be supporting people and organizations rooted in Durham and applauding those who have been doing important organizing and activist work like the Durham Solidarity Center. Without that sort of active, intentional engagement, we let the status quo persist where simple corrections can be made with large amounts of pressure.