How can Long Beach address systemic racism in policing? It’s complicated

Activists for police reform have long asked two questions: Why are Black and Latino people overrepresented in criminal justice data – and how does society fix it? In Long Beach, officials have begun looking for answers too.

May 31 of this year was unlike any other day Long Beach had seen in recent memory.

Thousands descended on the city’s downtown area to protest police violence against Black people, and to demand justice for the recent killing of a Black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis.

The protest, while joining the national wave of demonstrations against police violence, also focused on Long Beach and its Police Department’s relationship with the city’s Black and Latino populations – with many calling for local reforms.

Among the crowd, which joined a wave of demonstrations sweeping the nation, was a woman who confronted police officers clad in riot gear.

She cried out a single, plaintive question:

Why?

Why, the woman wanted to know, did a White police officer in Minneapolis kneel on Floyd’s neck for several minutes on Memorial Day – killing him? But she and others also wanted answers to a more general question: Why are Black and Latino people more likely, according to data, to be killed by police?

In the Black community and beyond, activists and protesters have said, the answer has long been clear: Systemic racism.

“I think it’s an awakening for people who maybe haven’t been in the Black community,” Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, who teaches classes about social inequality at Cal State Long Beach, said during a June 5 protest, “but for the Black community, this has been their reality.”

In Long Beach, city officials have declared systemic racism a public health crisis.

And policing – as well as the criminal justice system more broadly – plays an undeniably critical role in that crisis and in solving it, health experts, local Black activists and others say.

About 27% of people stopped by police last year were Black, for example, even though Black people comprise approximately 12.5% of the population in Long Beach, according to city data.

And from 2014 to 2019, 72% of those involved in police shootings were Black or Latino, city data shows.

And the disproportionate impact of violence on Black residents isn’t limited to their interactions with police.

Long Beach’s 90805 ZIP code – in North Long Beach, which has among the city’s highest concentration of Black and Latino people – had 116 homicides from 2000 to 2010, the most in the city, according to a 2015 Press-Telegram analysis.

Homicide, in fact, is one of the top-five leading causes of death among both Black and Latino residents, according to the city’s 2019 Community Health Assessment. From 2010 to 2015, three-quarters of all homicide victims were Black or Latino.

These statistics have underpinned two questions that have received renewed focus from city officials and community activists in the wake of Floyd’s killing: Why are Black and Latino people overrepresented in criminal justice data – and how does society fix it?

“It’s about: How are we defining community safety?” Dawn Modkins, a leader of Black Lives Matter Long Beach, said in an interview last month. “Who gets to define what safe means and what that safety looks like, and what is the right expertise, to keep our communities safe and to meet our communities’ needs?”

Efforts to change

Long Beach officials, for their part, appear to be trying.

The City Council, for example, recently approved a 112-page report as part of its Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative. That report has 32 criminal justice-related action plans, including how best to improve policing, such as by reimagining a police oversight body, exploring non-police alternatives to emergency response and redesigning police tactics.

Some of the ideas, like reforming the Citizen’s Police Complaint Commission and expanding its investigative capacity, will take time to figure out how – or even whether – to implement.

But other ideas are already in the works, including providing ongoing training to officers on topics like implicit bias and de-escalation techniques, and civilianizing certain police services.

The Police Department, for example, will move 34 jobs from those done by sworn officers to civilians this fiscal year.

Long Beach’s current budget, which the City Council approved in September, also cut $10.3 million from the Police Department, though it’s unclear how much of that was directly related to reforms or because of the economic crisis the coronavirus pandemic has caused.

The cuts were met with mixed reactions from residents. Some lamented any downsizing of the public safety budget, while those who advocated for defunding the police said the reduction did not go far enough.

The People’s Budget Coalition, composed of multiple social groups from around the city, presented the council with its own presentation the night the panel OK’d the city budget. In it, the coalition called for significant investments in social services by diverting more money from the police.

The council did not budge.

“You’re not making any significant changes to the budget or delaying or really taking it into consideration at all,” resident Jordan Doering said at the meeting. “Defund the police and take a bold stand against police violence. Divest from LBPD and invest differently in our community health and safety.”

Police Chief Robert Luna, for his part, has said the department is open to changes. But, he added, the process needs to be thought out and not rushed.

Specifically, he pushed back against giving some tasks to civilians – particularly police calls that don’t initially seem overly fraught.

Although a call for service may get dispatched for something minor, Luna said, situations can turn out to be something entirely different.

“If you’re dealing with issues with the mentally ill and people suffering from drug addiction,” he said, “they’re very unpredictable and they can get chaotic in seconds.”

Luna said the department’s Mental Evaluation Team, which pairs police officers with a mental health professional from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, already achieves what some activists have recently called for. The department also have a Quality of Life team that focuses on connecting the homeless population to services

Together, MET and the Quality of Life team have 11 sworn, armed officers and seven civilian county health professionals, said LBPD spokesperson Arantxa Chavarria.

“They rarely ever get involved in uses of force,” Luna said of the team. “They help countless people in complete crises to get the help they need.”