‘Walking while black,’ a 2-way street
A college dean faces a backlash after a Texas police chief rebuts her published account.
HOUSTON — After African American journalism dean Dorothy Bland complained that police in her north Texas suburb racially profiled her, a police car’s dashboard camera video of the stop spawned a social media backlash that challenged her characterization of the incident, with thousands calling for her removal.
Debra Walthall is police chief in Corinth, about 30 miles north of Dallas. She first heard about Bland’s stop when the Dallas Morning News contacted her to respond to an editorial Bland had written alleging racial profiling, headlined, “I was caught ‘walking while black.’”
“I was shocked,” Walthall said, adding that the officers, who are both white, had been “cordial” with Bland. The chief wrote a response, published simultaneously, headlined, “No, officers were doing their jobs.”
Police then released dashboard camera video of the stop, which the chief said shows the officers acted properly. Walthall said they handled the situation so well that she is using the video to train officers about the importance of correctly activating dash cameras.
“It can save the officer. If we hadn’t had the video and she came in and filed a complaint that she was being racially profiled, we would have to investigate that without the benefit of what the video shows,” Walthall said. “One of the perfect things they did was pull up behind her, not beside her,” turning on flashing lights, which activated the camera.
Walthall has been swamped with emails since the dash camera video went viral, with more than 870,000 views on YouTube.
“Every contact between an African American and a white police officer is not racial profiling. I’m not saying racial profiling doesn’t exist — I’m saying this isn’t racial profiling,” said Walthall, chief of the 32-officer department for seven years.
Walthall said she wishes more people trusted police.
“We’re going to be robocops soon,” she said. “A police officer’s word used to mean something. Today we have to equip them with body cams and audio, and people think that’s the saving grace. But people’s perceptions are still going to be what they want them to be.”
Bland, who is the dean of the University of North Texas journalism school in Denton, about 10 miles north of Corinth, did not respond to calls or email.
Claims still abound that she fabricated details of the stop, although the rumor-busting website Snopes last week dismissed them.
“I wrote the column to share my perception of my experience. This happened to me,” she told the Denton Record-Chronicle. “It was my opinion. I respect law enforcement and respect they have a difficult job.”
Police stopped her Oct. 24 as she was walking down a street for exercise and asked her for identification.
Several days later, Bland wrote that she had been stopped for “walking while black.”
“I guess I was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood,” she wrote. “For anyone who doesn’t think racial profiling happens, I can assure you it does happen.”
Bland noted that she is not related to Sandra Bland, the African American woman whose case gained national attention after she was found dead in a southeast Texas jail cell this summer, but “I thought about her, Freddie Gray and the dozens of others who have died while in police custody.” Gray died after he was arrested by Baltimore police officers in April.
Walthall contended that the officers were looking out for Bland.
“They had a legitimate purpose to stop her,” Walthall said, saying the officers had spotted Bland walking while wearing ear buds, seemingly unaware of a pickup that had stopped behind her, “just totally oblivious.”
“They didn’t tell her to get on the sidewalk; they just said walk safe in traffic,” Walthall said.
As for asking Bland to show identification, Walthall said, “They are required to ID people who they stop. They didn’t profile her.”
One of the officers involved in the stop was a trainer with years of experience, the other a trainee, Walthall said.
Walthall spoke with Bland by phone in late October. She said Bland told her “that she was ready to let this go and move on.”
“I told her, ‘I wish you would have talked to me before you wrote the article,’” Walthall said, adding that they could have watched the video together and discussed it.
She said Bland told her that a comment the trainee officer had made particularly bothered her: When she mentioned she didn’t like to walk in the rain, he said his dog didn’t either.
“It was not intended to be racial,” the chief said. “He was a young officer in training trying to make conversation.”
“People see what it is they want to see” in the video, Walthall said. “Some people will see racism and some will see race baiting.”
Willie Hudspeth, president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in surrounding Denton County, said that he had watched the video and was not drawing conclusions until he talked to Bland and the police chief.
“I didn’t notice anything she did that warranted the attention. I don’t know what the motive was,” Hudspeth said, but he said he was equally wary of “making accusations without proof.”
The challenge in interpreting such videos is the context, including the state of race relations in the country and ongoing tensions between African American communities and police, experts said.
“Part of the reason it’s controversial is it’s right at that boundary where lots of people have been stopped and feel like they were in an occupied space, where they can’t even feel safe and comfortable in their own neighborhoods,” Phillip Atiba Goff, president of UCLA’s Center for Policing Equity and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, said of the Dorothy Bland video.
Goff was in Fort Worth on Friday, discussed the video with local police he was working with, and concluded, “Officers not only did everything by the book, they did better than the book.”
While officers could have done a better job of explaining why they requested Bland’s ID, he said gathering that information is what allows experts to detect patterns of police profiling.
Bland is now facing an online backlash: Opponents have posted an online petition urging the university to remove her as dean.
“In regards to race relations, Ms. Bland’s article and various points made throughout do little to further dissolve any racial tension that undoubtedly does still exist in the United States and in Texas,” the petition says. So far, more than 4,200 people have signed.
University officials released a statement saying that Bland did not act improperly and that they encourage people “to read the columns that ran in the Dallas Morning News, and then watch the video to draw their own conclusions.”