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Health & Fitness

JP Can't Afford to Profile Black Youth.

With recent home burglaries becoming news, JP residents need to be very, very careful not to profile our youth. We can manage the loss of possessions, we cannot afford the ramifications of racial profiling.

If you take a stroll past the Federal Courthouse, you'll notice an interesting inscription quoting a very wise man: "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." Frederick Douglass stated that in 1886, and it could not be more true today.

Recently, the organization Neighbors for Neighbors broadcast a message from the Boston Police Department that Patch also reported on:
"August 29, 2013 - District E-13 discovered a pattern of three young black males, teens, entering through windows during the early to mid evening, sometimes just reaching in and stealing a laptop or other items in the South Street area.

Although, these incidents are under investigation, BPD is asking us to help them prevent further victimization by observing their “Protect your Home” tips outlined here."

More home break-ins were reported in the past few days as well. I'm sorry for those whose laptops and other items were stolen, and having had two laptops stolen myself in the last two years, and having been mugged by teenagers years ago in Buffalo, I can relate to the stress that it causes. Some tips for others with laptops: get renters insurance, use a cloud-based file backup system, and install free prey.com so you can lock-out your computer if its stolen. Hopefully people can afford those services; what we absolutely cannot afford, though, is the profiling of our youth.

The first tip that was listed is "Call 911 to report suspicious behavior." What qualifies as suspicious behavior? I've spoken to young men of color who have gotten frisked by cops on their way to community events--the crime of Walking While Black. Growing up outside of Rochester, NY I remember hearing about how petty crimes were used as justification to "shake down" all the young Black men in the area. White neighbors wrote articles offering tips of how to identify and report gangs, which they loosely defined as any group of young Black men hanging out together. This is not the right direction for Jamaica Plain to be headed, we need to turn this ship around.

Further, in the era of reckless shooting of young Black men with impunity in the name of protecting neighborhoods, it was reckless of the Boston Police Department to issue this notice. Doing so prioritizes the value of a few laptops over the value of all of the young Black men in our community being able to walk down the street without suspicious glares and taunts, or at worst a Zimmerman-style chase. Some might argue that here in Massachusetts we have different values than people in Florida so that wouldn't happen here, but let's not wait to find out.

Our community will not thrive if our response to small thefts is fear and suspicion, and more police. Instead, we need to more actively listen to the needs of our youth, and support wonderful youth-led and youth-supportive organizations such Jamaica Plain's own Beantown Society and South Street Youth Center, the Boston-Area Youth Organizing Project, and The City School. Look at Dudley Square--they have a shiny new expensive police station, but for example the artistic graffiti park down the street is being closed down. The more funding that goes towards policing our youth, the less that goes into supporting our youth. Let's tip that scale toward the latter and get behind our youth.


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