Opinion: Chapel Hill Police Department's desire to own up to flaws is notable

Protesters nationwide have been chanting the phrase “Black Lives Matter” since the hashtag was created in 2012 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. After Mike Brown’s death and Darren Wilson’s non-indictment in 2014, these chants gained popularity to once again highlight police brutality against black people — a symptom of the larger issue of institutionalized racism.

In New York City, Patrick Lynch, the president of New York City’s largest police union, blamed protesters for the deaths of two officers even though demonstrators — including Mike Brown’s family — had called for nonviolence.

Pro-police rallies created in response to #BlackLivesMatter effectively miss the point by refusing to acknowledge that racial discrimination is a problem in the first place. These actions aim to discredit protesters by polarizing the argument: to be anti-police brutality is cast as being anti-police. The movement has been calling for police accountability for injustices against black lives, but has often been misinterpreted.

But police killings of unarmed black people are only the most severe manifestation of discrimination and implicit racial bias, which are problems that affect communities everywhere, including our own.

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice, black and Hispanic drivers, when stopped by police, were more likely to be searched than white drivers. A similar trend exists in Orange County, as black drivers are disproportionately subjected to searches compared to white drivers in traffic stops, according to a UNC study. Black drivers are also overrepresented in traffic stops compared to the county’s general demographics.

The overall reaction from police locally has been significantly different from those in New York City. At a two-hour public forum, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue, Carrboro Police Chief Walter Horton, and Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood were invited by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP for a conversation about policing in Orange County.

All three said they believed most officers do not have any conscious intention of discriminating against a particular race, but that they were willing to address the problem.

But discussions of intention can only take us so far, as they move the focus to conscious thought as a dead end rather than implicit attitudes that can be influenced by the environment and possibly changed. But intentionally targeting implicit attitudes will at least bring us closer to a solution.

The police departments of Orange County should continue working with communities of color and developing programs to challenge discrimination. Keeping in mind recent events in other parts of the country and using that knowledge to act on local concerns is the minimum of what our police departments should be doing. Yet even that seems to have been too much to ask of police departments elsewhere.