OneMontville Panelists Talk About Being Black in Montville and the Criminal Justice System – TAPinto.net
MONTVILLE, NJ – It’s called “DWB” – driving while black – and resident Kecia Clarke is sick of the thinly veiled racial profiling.
The social justice lawyer and Assistant County Attorney for Essex County spoke at the OneMontville “Just Mercy” movie screening and panel event, accompanied by Wendy Christensen, professor of sociology and criminology at William Paterson University, and Ashanti Jones, who is Community Engagement Manager at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Jones, who is also black, agreed with Clarke’s assessment that she is pulled over about a dozen times a year, simply because she is black.
The OneMontville event, moderated by OneMontville President Shari Schwartz and Montville Township Committee Member Matt Kayne, was a screening of a movie about a black man wrongfully accused of murder, followed by the panel with the three women. But as Kayne said, it turned into an “educational moment” that is “good for the entire community.”
Clarke described how visitors to her house who knocked at the wrong door were interrogated by police, and how a fender bender in Montville by an unregistered driver got turned into a scolding towards her by police for her insurance card that still had one day left on it.
“She was unregistered – it had expired and she knew it – but I got called out because my card expired the next day?” Clarke said. “I’ve had people come to my house and be harassed when they left – they were pulled over for a broken tail light and when they got home – the tail light was fine. I come from a family of police – I know that there are fabulous police officers here – I am not anti-police but there are people here who don’t treat people of color fairly. I want people to know this exists and it’s heart-breaking. The color of our skin makes us different and somehow this has become a weapon – just being brown.”
Clarke said her daughter went through “horrible bigotry” at the high school and that it was “not a one-time thing.”
“The mental health [problems] due to racism – it doesn’t just affect children, either,” she said. “When mothers heard George Floyd crying out for his mother, that affected mothers everywhere. We are still not doing well. This keeps happening to people who look just like me and just like my sons. I want to make it clear that I am pro-police, but anti-police brutality. When it comes to police, we have a different set of rules – we can’t question why we’ve been pulled over, for example. My black sons don’t have the same rights when it comes to police officers.”
Being blamed for what you haven’t done, and the fear of going to jail after being wrongfully accused, are affecting black people’s health, Jones said, calling it racial trauma.
“The probability of it happening to me or someone close to me is very real,” she said. “When you have a cousin who has a violent interaction with police, I will now have a physical response to seeing police. It affects your mental health and the way you’re able to interact. Even when I was pregnant, I knew that the probability of my son being incarcerated was very high and I had to have counseling for the trauma and fear. Unfortunately, we treat people differently in this country.”
Clarke said that medical journals associate racism with higher rates of stress, high blood pressure, heart disease and inflammation of the heart for people of color.
When asked where racial disparity exists, Jones said it exists everywhere. Stop and frisk, ticketing and fine discrepancies among races, and the fact that black and brown schools have more “school resource officers” than suburban communities are examples, she said.
“Racial disparity is in every aspect of our criminal justice system,” she said, “and the system is flawed and needs to be remade. The way we police here is ineffective. We only resolve about 12% of murders.”
Jones went on to say that 91% of young people and adults who are incarcerated in NJ have a pre-existing mental health diagnosis that is not substance-related.
“What that says to me, is that we’re punishing people for having mental illness,” she said. “When you have people who are undiagnosed or undertreated, you may have people who are committing a crime or what is seen as a crime. The approach should not be to incarcerate that person. Instead we need to invest in mental health support where there are gaps. If we funneled the resources into mental health, we would not see the rate of crime that we see now.”
But have the protests affected any change?
Christensen said that the numbers of participants were as large as the protests in the 60s.
“But protests are one part of activism,” she said. “You show up – and it has the cool factor with the selfie. It’s good to have some action come out too. People are getting involved in local politics, so that’s good. It’s a moment we can’t underestimate.”
“What can residents do to help?” Schwartz posed.
Clarke said that she loved the panel but she wants more action.
“If you see something, say something,” she said. “If you see other people being treated unfairly, chime in. I want you to have the conversation with other white people. Also, I want you to put yourself in other people’s shoes. How would you feel if you were them? I think it’s also important to make people feel included.”
Jones recommended supporting legislation.
“We got chokehold banned in NJ,” she said. “That was a result of the protests. Your legislators work for you – identify them and talk to them.”
Christensen added that people should vote and should listen to varied podcasts and newscasts with different voices.
Clarke said she is very enthusiastic about Montville and has overall enjoyed her two years living here.
“I want Montville to know I love everybody here,” Clarke said. “I want to make this a great community for everybody, where everybody is treated equally.”
The screening, which participants watched from the comfort and social distancing of their own homes, and panel, which was conducted via Zoom, were part of OneMontville’s new Racial Bias Commission, a new committee that is part of OneMontville’s charter.
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