Adjunct Professor of Public Policy Offers Unique Perspective on Race and Social Justice Issues Affecting Baltimore, Ferguson and other Cities
Takoma Park, Md. (May 1, 2015) Adjunct Professor of Public Policy Colin Wellenkamp, who teaches in Washington Adventist University’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies, offers a unique perspective on the race and social justice issues that are currently affecting Baltimore, Maryland.
According to Wellenkamp, “A community’s relationship with its police force is linked to the severity and character of that community’s stress. As the stress ebbs and flows, so does the challenge of enforcing the law.”
Wellenkamp grew up near Ferguson, Missouri, and has, in his professional life, represented the cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia in Washington, DC.
Pointing to the success of law enforcement programs in the late 1990s through mid-2000s that enhanced community engagement and lowered recidivism rates for offenders by providing them with education, housing, health care, and transitional services, Wellenkamp makes the case that the issues playing out today in cities like Baltimore have much to do with the economic stresses and government program reductions that began during the recession. He also points to the increasingly militarized police tactics and equipment in recent years to combat what was perceived to be a growing terrorist threat.
He suggests that the solutions to race and social justice issues are three-fold: 1) supporting justice assistance programs at all levels of government by embedding community policing in all facets of police work; 2) funding more oversight training and technology to better protect both the public and police during law enforcement activities; and 3) focusing more attention on education, job training, youth mentoring, and at-risk youth.
For Wellenkamp’s entire statement on his perspective regarding the Baltimore unrest, see below. Wellenkamp also participated last September in the “Dialogue on Ferguson” that Washington Adventist University co-hosted with Saint Louis University. The dialogue can still be heard in its entirety at https://www.wau.edu/audio-files/dialogue-on-ferguson.mp3
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Washington Adventist University is Montgomery County’s only four-year private college. Part of the Seventh-day Adventist system of higher education, Washington Adventist University has been educating college students since 1904 on a 19-acre campus in suburban Takoma Park, close to the nation’s capital. A total of 1,100 students of all faiths participate in the university’s eight graduate and 32 undergraduate programs. The 2014 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked Washington Adventist University among the best regional colleges in the north.
Media Contacts:
Angie Crews, 301-891-4134, acrews@wau.edu
Donna Bigler, 240-286-1169, dbigler@wau.edu
May 1, 2015
I was raised next to Ferguson and worked for Baltimore:
A perspective on race and social justice issues
By Colin Wellenkamp
Adjunct Professor of Public Policy
School of Graduate and Professional Studies
Context of the Issues
As someone who grew up a couple of miles from Ferguson, Missouri and represented the cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia in Washington, D.C., recent events in my hometown and in cities I worked with for years to create policy solutions strikes a chord and forces me to ask “what creates lasting change?”
I advocated for community policing, worked with mayors, advised on public policy to help neighborhoods and empower communities. I see what’s happening and I’m trying to take stock of the past and see a path forward for the future. I think I have a handle on the policy situation underlying the unrest in Ferguson and now Baltimore. But, it was all very scholastic until one of my students, who grew-up in Sandtown, laid out for me that what has transpired through the perspective of public policy also occurred in very human terms on the ground – this was my greatest epiphany and relief.
“Officer ‘Friendly’ left in the 1980s until Mayor O’Malley came into office”
There is a context to what we are seeing play out in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. A community’s relationship with its police force is linked to the severity and character of that community’s stress. As the stress ebbs and flows, so does the challenge of enforcing the law in those communities.
We first saw a change in the character of policing with the onset of the war on drugs. As drugs entered neighborhoods at an unprecedented level, public agencies responded with an emphasis on suppression. It was during this time that my student who grew-up in Sandtown, said that the relationship with the police began to deteriorate. When intervention and prevention entered the mix, however, the impact was less violence and more community engagement. One of the results of this was the 1994 enactment of the COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program. From the time it began until 2005, the COPS program provided $10 billion across 12,000 police agencies. The point of the program was to hire police officers and train and equip them for deeper engagement with the community.
Baltimore used the program, but also supplemented COPS with other efforts. At the time, Mayor Martin O’Malley and Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm realized that crime was not a symptom of police activity. Rather, it was caused by other factors that fed a recidivist-prone system of offenders and re-offenders. So, Mayor O’Malley created the Ex-Offender Task Force in 2003 to provide those coming out of state supervision with education, housing, health care and transitional services. Something must have worked, because Maryland’s recidivism rate dropped 11 percent from 2000 to 2013. But, the early 2000s were relatively good years with a growing economy. Corroborating this, my student shared that Mayor O’Malley and Mayor Dixon both came out into the communities. He told me that seeing them interact on the street made a difference for people.
However, during the recession, the stress on communities began to grow. Unemployment rose and community program spending dropped. Coupled with increasingly militarized police tactics and equipment to combat what was perceived to be a growing terrorist threat, and you get a severe decline in community policing and an increase in suppressive policing.
The economic stress would have been harsh enough, but add to that decreased federal support and you have a recipe for serious problems. The National Criminal Justice Association conducted a survey of the impacts of cuts to national criminal justice grant programs. Since FY2012 the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) program has been cut by 34 percent, the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring grants by 44 percent, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by 75 percent, the juvenile delinquency prevention initiatives funded by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Part A (JJDPA) by more than 50 percent. What we are seeing play out today may be linked in part to these cuts.
“I would get harassed just for sitting on the steps in my neighborhood”
There was frustration in my student’s voice as he said this to me even many years later – sharing that it was completely baffling to him why the police would come and charge them with loitering. My policy mind takes over. I can think of several reasons why tactics like this may be employed, but then I reflect on how it would make me feel, regardless. I would feel angry and resentful, asking myself why I am a target. Policy analysis takes a backseat for a moment as I listen to my student’s experiences and hear the pain…even today. My policy mind begins to take control again because I want to find an answer, I want to prevent this from continuing.
Compare and Contrast to Ferguson
What differentiates St. Louis County and the City of Baltimore is a tremendous difference in the way the local governments are managed and organized. With St. Louis County, there has been much discussion and examination of the county’s 90 municipalities and how they compete with each other for resources to support such duplicative services as 60+ police departments. We’ve been looking at and hearing about how these dynamics create municipal funding gaps that localities have tried to fill, in part, through suppression and enforcement activities. The financial strain on local governments has caused friction. It could be argued that community policing, like many things, fared best when there was sufficient funding for both community policing services and local government functions.
Solutions
There are three parts to addressing what we face: 1) support justice assistance programs at all levels of government – this means community policing is not a separate program in and to itself, but is intrinsically embedded into all facets of police work; 2) fund oversight training and technology so both the public and police are better protected through the carrying-out of law enforcement activity; 3) give majority attention to education, job training, youth mentoring, and at-risk youth through the bolstering of programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone. When MSN published its listing of best and worst run cities, two primary indicators were spending on education and law enforcement.
The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing issued its report in March, emphasizing the need to create a permanent national crime and justice task force. Something I would add is a stronger focus on interagency cooperation. We tend to talk about the role of the Justice Department in all of this, but need to also address the role of the Department of Education in bringing police officers back into the schools — not to patrol, but to talk to the kids about what it is that they do.
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