Event seeks balance with policing, civil rights

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and other area groups conducted a seminar Saturday to teach Cape Girardeau residents how to use their constitutionally protected civil rights, especially in dealing with police officers.

The Rev. Renita Lamkin, pastor at St. James AME Church in Cape Girardeau, said she was glad to see several community leaders attending during the event at The Concourse in Cape Girardeau.

About 45 people attended, with most of them from Cape Girardeau's black community.

"Our goal here today is to improve the quality of life for everyone," she said.

Mayor Harry Rediger said constructive conversations were an important part of making Cape Girardeau a better place to live.

Lt. Brad Smith of the Cape Girardeau Police Department speaks at the Know Your Rights event Saturday at The Concourse.Fred Lynch

"We have a very good quality of life in Cape Girardeau," he said. "We have a very good police department in Cape Girardeau. ... How do we get to the next level?"

Police tactics, use of force and discrimination have been injected into the national discourse by groups such as Black Lives Matter.

Several participants shared views on how policing affects the community.

Marilyn Sargent, 57, said she once was pulled over and cited for not using headlights in the daytime, causing her to spend the money she would have used to buy Christmas gifts for her grandchildren to pay the fines instead.

"I live in second America," she said. "People don't know there are two Americas."

American Civil Liberties Union representative Mustafa Abdullah discusses an arrest scenario on video during the Know Your Rights event Saturday at The Concourse.Fred Lynch

Others, such as Stephanie Fraction, were careful not to assign all culpability to police.

"A lot of times, aggression [toward police] comes from something being out of place," she said, referring to the tension of an occasionally guilty conscience.

"It could be something as simple as marijuana use or some stealing," she said.

This, in her opinion, contributes to a sort of grass-roots souring of police-citizen relations.

"We're already being taught to think negatively about the police," she said, especially if a relative or neighbor is arrested or incarcerated.

Two Cape Girardeau police officers participated in the discussion.

Lt. Brad Smith of the Cape Girardeau Police Department said a police officer's most important asset is his ability to listen, and nothing in a cop's toolbelt is of much help "if you can't sit down, shut up and listen to somebody."

But police-citizen interactions are stressful and uncertain. Cops are trained to establish a tone of civil authority to ensure the safety of both parties, but residents aren't always prepared to handle them.

ACLU representatives Mustafa Abdullah and John Chasnoff said the most important thing to keep in mind when dealing with police is if protecting one's rights likely escalates the engagement, it's better to have one's rights infringed and sort it out in court later.

Presenters listed how to comply with the law while politely asserting constitutional rights.

If a person is stopped while walking on the street, for instance, they can ask the officer whether they're being detained and, if not, leave.

Some municipalities require residents to provide ID at an officer's request, but patrolman Mike Kidd said Cape Girardeau is not one of them.

If a person finds himself or herself pulled over, he may be able to decline a police search, Abdullah said.

In some cases, an officer is unable to establish probable cause. Broken taillights, expired registration or speeding do not by themselves establish probable cause, but a gun in plain sight or the smell of cannabis would.

"Repeat after me: 'Officer, I don't consent to searches,'" Abdullah led the crowd.

Chasnoff warned the crowd not to acquiesce to police demands or offers without consulting a lawyer. He said cops are legally permitted to lie -- to say they have evidence they don't, for example.

"The best option you have is to remain silent," he said. "You're not going to talk your way out of it better than an attorney will."

"At the end of the day, we wanna get home without anyone in jail, without anyone in the morgue, without anyone in the hospital," Lamkin agreed. "But first, you gotta get home."

In the opinion of Diana Rogers-Adkinson, the first speaker, a first step is fixing the educational system.

Rogers-Adkinson, professor and dean of the College of Education at Southeast Missouri State University, said the current mechanics of public education have become less hospitable to minority children as more schools adopt zero-tolerance policies.

Popularly dubbed the "School to Prison Pipeline," Rogers-Adkinson said the seeds of the nation's large population of incarcerated people can be found in suspension and expulsion policies in schools across the country.

Disproportionate suspension rates are especially troublesome in the Show Me State, she said.

"Missouri is second in the nation," she said. "In. The. Nation. ... Missouri has a suspension problem."

Missouri also has the highest suspension rate for black students in the country.

She said in many cases, incidents in the past that would have landed a student in the principal's office now result in mandatory suspensions.

Things such as non-compliance, talking or being disruptive sometimes are punishable by suspensions, which set students back academically, often exacerbating the problems.

"It's a lot easier to act a fool in a classroom than it is to feel dumb in a classroom," Rogers-Adkinson said.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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