Category: Uncategorized

[Editor’s Note: One month ago, the following letter was submitted to the Austin American Statesman

by Texas Civil Rights Review Associate Editor, Tony Gallucci. See further correspondence with the

Austin City Manager below.–gm]

Austin American-Statesman
28 November

2004

Editor:

This latest followup story on the Austin Police Department

comes at a conflicted time for me with regards to a recent incident I witnessed involving the

department. I have a lot to say.

I live 2+ hours outside of Austin, but visit frequently

(2-3 times a month) for professional and recreational reasons. On a visit a couple of weeks ago I was

waiting on Sixth Street to unload equipment. A man was asleep/passed out in the portal of a closed club

within a few feet of where I was waiting.
He appeared to have not bathed or changed clothes in some

time. Judge that as you may.

While I was waiting, a police car stopped in the street on

Sixth, the overhead lights were turned on, and two officers emerged from the vehicle and approached the

man. One of the officers walked up to him and kicked him in the leg. This was neither a nudge to awake,

nor a tentative touch to avoid contact with the obviously dirty man. It was a kick. I heard

it.

Simultaneously, the second officer walked to near the man’s head. There was a can of beer

in a paper sack next to his head. This officer put his foot on the top edge of the can and tipped it

over spilling it on the man’s face. That awoke the man, and the second officer said “Oh, I’m so sorry”

with a strongly condescending tone. The man sat up, picked the can up and set it upright. The first

officer said, “Get the hell out of here.” The man stood up and left without saying a

word.

I was stunned. And momentarily speechless. ‘Who do I call,’ was my first internal

reaction. ‘The police?’ I thought. This was the police. Finally I said to the officers, “I resent what

you just did. It was inhuman and uncalled for.” I was told I could leave too. Then they got in their

car and drove away.

I have battled with myself over this for the last couple of weeks. I

have friends in several PDs, including APD, good cops, who I do not want to either offend or denigrate,

however, I must, to start, counter the ‘we all got in this because we wanted to save the world’ tone of

AAS published letters from policemen. I know plenty who would tell you themselves, even though they all

consider themselves part of a noble profession today, that they grew into that, that the reasons they

became cops to begin with were not often quite so noble – they needed jobs to pay mortgages, they did

not succeed in their intended professions, the money was good, they were shiftless and lost, their

cousin talked them into it, or they came from military service ill-prepared for re-immersion in the

“real” world.

Unfortunately, most people realize this about police – only they

themselves seem to think this self-justification reconciles something with the public. In fact, we do

not need such such shallow apologetics in order to appreciate the dangerous work they do, nor their

initiative in doing so.

So, partly because of friends, partly to avoid being labeled

‘anti’ anything I’m not, I tried to let this incident pass. I find myself unable to, because even

though it does not involve deadly force, it spoke volumes to me about an inherent attitude that I

believe can lead to excessive behavior by some police.

I thought about complaining to APD

but knew neither cops’ name nor that of the man, and figured it would be fruitless. I realize now that

I should have asked for their names. Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve, didn’t. Being out of town made it

seem less likely I could do whatever would be necessary to see a complaint through, if a complaint

would even be considered on something I fear would likely be dismissed as trivial. It was, and is,

not.

I did enough research into this to have run across Austin’s recent ranking as one of

the “ten meanest cities in America,” the only Texas city in the top ten, or twenty. It recurs to me:

What if a policeman had been standing where I was and some fraternity student had walked up and kicked

that man the same way. I imagine that guy would be in jail for assault. What’s the difference? Is the

badge a legitimate difference?

I know this: I lost respect for those cops that night,

and by extension for Austin cops, as that kind of intimidation and humiliation must be regular

practice, if not policy. After all, it was in full public view, not administered Hollywood-style in

some alleyway or dank interrogation room. Moreover, I felt at the time that it was a kind of blatant

showing off for the few of us there to witness it. A kind of ‘Look, we’re taking care of you, the

public, when we kick this guy and treat him like this.’

Maybe I grew up in an America

that doesn’t exist anymore, where we learned something about right and wrong even if we weren’t perfect

about practicing it, and expected certain folks – police, say – to be the ultimate representatives and

models of that; maybe I idealistically believe that cops are still supposed to be the good guys; maybe

inside I want to believe that, though I know there are bad-apple cops, for the most part they are good

-hearted, All-American types, with families and mortgages, and a personal American dream that includes

the melting-pot world we are.

But now, here are the very guys who, because of their

appointed or chosen rounds in the more difficult areas of town, have to be the most professional, the

most disciplined of all, and instead, at least on this one evening (about 7 p.m. on an off-night, with

few people on Sixth), they exhibited the very type of arrogant disdain for humanity that gains all cops

a bad reputation, the kind difficult to dispel or disprove, the kind that, institutionalized, by itself

can lead to that very above the law culture that results in hardcore disparities in racial treatment,

the overuse of force, even rogue units.

Or am I mistaken? Do police, in fact, get to

choose who to treat as human? Do they get to use force against sleeping drunken people as if they were

breaking up a brawl of drunken college students? I don’t actually believe they’d break up a drunken

brawl by kicking them in the legs anyway – that would require ‘use of force’ reports that would be

difficult to explain.

I wonder too, if being a cop in a high-profile “under-the-

microscope” setting such as Sixth Street doesn’t lend itself to some over-strutting by individual

police, some displays of machismo for the sake of effect that aren’t escalating in and of themselves. I

am reminded of the hardcore California police unit that made such bravado of their starring turn on

their own hit TV show only to be disbanded in the wake of abuse scandals. Some of that stuff looks

great on TV, but it’s over the top on the street, where perceptions are made and communities are won

over or lost.

I am thankful for the Austin American-Statesman’s article (and series)

which I have come across somewhat in retrospect here. It was timely for me, and lent some encouragement

for reporting what I saw, if only in forum.

I see the city’s concern with the analysis of

statistics here, and it’s somewhat founded (though some of their critiques of problems with AAS

reporting are due to some rather inane reporting methods on the part of APD itself), even though their

own analysis says virtually the same thing no matter how rosy a hue they try to paint it with. And yet,

there remains the strong flavor of continued defiance of the need to understand policing and community

relations throughout the letters and statements issued by city functionaries. Some of their notes have

a quality to them akin to ‘We would
d
o so much better a job of policing Austin if only there weren’t so

many minority people here . . . and we’re working on it.’

I doubt the situation I

witnessed was described on any “use of force” reports since it did not result in an arrest. I imagine

the lack of an arrestee takes care of the ‘just in case’ commander-speak. That man however had no less

than a police-administered bruise when he walked away. And yet has he no less than a right to police

protection and respect as a citizen regardless of how unfavorably those individual cops regard him? Or,

one wonders, does he ‘deserve’ what he got? How many times does that go on, unreported, daily,

weekly?

When the city fails to understand the frustrations of minorities, and explains

away racial disparity as a consequence of where they are called to and who’s involved (using numbers of

white arrestees outside high-dollar white-college clubs as rationale indeed), it comes from failing to

recognize that a prime ingredient in any confrontation has to do with the attitude in which an officer

approaches it. Is it to defuse? Or is it to “win” as one officer described it? Is it with trepidation,

or the ‘realization,’ that an encounter with a minority will necessarily lead to some greater

confrontation, or are all subjects approached alike? Do cultural fears and insecurities cause

escalation by themselves?

Were it only possible to have a video camera on every cop’s

shoulder to record their attitudes and how they are initially perceived by the subjects . . . but

that’s Big Brother turning the tables, isn’t it? Barring that, we must ultimately rely instead on the

humanity of the officers involved – their recognition that guaranteeing human life, its liberty and

pursuit of happiness, unharmed, unhumiliated, is their mission here, not the cleaning of the streets,

not the protecting of special interests, not the bust, nor the adrenaline, nor the brotherhood’s

circling of the wagons, but ultimately the people, flesh and blood, black, white, brown, red, drunk or

sober, passed out or dishing out $50 tips, straight or gay or in-between, distraught and beside

themselves or saying “yes sir, no sir, thank you sir.”

Protecting victims, it will be

pointed out, is a legitimate concern, but who knows who the victims are until everything has been

sorted out, post-confrontation, post-humiliation, post-force, perhaps post-trial? Only the officers

themselves know themselves inside. But when the public cries out for sensitivity and cultural awareness

training, this is what they’re saying, and saying out loud. Maybe some in the ‘profession’ should do

more soul-searching, or someone else should focus on hiring cops who are capable and willing to treat

their jobs as what they are: service to the people they are sworn to protect, every single one of them.

In my mind that means treating human beings as something not subhuman regardless of their failings and

background. But in all too many of the series responses it seems that “service” to a policeman means

something quite different and for a stricter constituency than it does to those of us being

served.

Unfortunately my recent experience has left the worst of tastes in my mouth. I

don’t know if what they did is professionally considered ‘professional’ or not. If it is then I’d have

to reconsider considering the job itself a profession.

In this polarized time, with fears

of overreaching in the context of security, with diminution of our civil rights clearly at hand, with

fears of Big-Brotherly type technologies washing across the country, and new techniques to accomplish

these things disclosed daily, our only hope is that police themselves have not just the discipline, but

the humanity, the heart, to resist the abuses so clearly enabled recently. We really have nothing else

to hold onto. Collectively it puts our trust of government, and by extension its enforcers, on tenuous

footing. If police desire or require our respect, then they must be willing to exhibit that they are,

indeed, willing to be our servants and treat us all in the manner in which they wish to be treated. It

looks to me as though APD is failing even while it is “making progress.” Why else the parade of

denials, revamped numbers, rationalizations, re-analyses, and insistences.

Sadly, the

next time someone regales me with a story about the hard life of beat cops, or their professionalism in

the cause, or how few tools they have to do the job, I’ll know they may be right, but I’m going to

remember watching policemen kicking and humiliating a sleeping, nonviolent man on the streets of

Austin, one of the “meanest cities in America.” It’s what’s freshest in my mind.

Tony

Gallucci
Kerrville
humboldtiana # hotmail * com

cc: Austin Police

Department
Police Monitor
Austin Mayor
Austin City Manager
Byron LaMasters,

BurntOrangeReport
Greg Moses, editor, Texas Civil Rights Review

---

Reply

from Austin City Manager
Subject: RE: Austin police conduct
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004

21:14:13 -0600

Tony,

I was going to ask your permission to forward this

email to our Police Monitor’s Office for follow up, but got the end and found that you had already

copied the Police Monitor. The Police Monitor’s Office reports directly to me and is the

administrative arm of our civilian oversight process of police conduct. The behavior you describe is

neither indicative nor condoned by our department and I have taken the liberty to make sure our Police

Chief, Stan Knee; our Police Monitor, Ashton Cumberbatch; and our Assistant City Manager over Public

Safety, Rudy Garza; all have a copy of your email for follow up and investigation. Thank you for

sharing your experience.

Toby Hammett Futrell
City Manager
Austin,

Texas

---

Dec. 2, 2004

Hi,

Thank you very much for

your followup on this. In fact, Lt. Richardson of Downtown Patrol Command contacted me within a few

hours of my sending the letter asking for more details. I could provide little more, but was gratified

that an effort was being made. I appreciate also the indication of effort being made by yourself.

Perhaps something to prevent further such incidents will come from this after

all.

Sincerely,
tony gallucci

If we could make just one wish come true it would be that journalists,

bloggers, politicians, and activists would simply include the following claim in their discussions of

admissions policy in Texas Higher Education:

Texas is still under federal supervision

for desegregation in higher education and has promised to use all available means to diversify its

historically white campuses.

That’s it. One wish for Christmas by

July.

Greg Moses
Editor

[Above claim evaded once again in front

page story of New York Times on June 13; see
TCRR coverage of the Texas ten percent plan.]

email

from Cynthia J. Lawson, Exec. Dir. Univ. Relations, TAMU (Feb. 16, 2004)

Before

providing you the comments from Gates you requested, I thought you would want to know that I followed

up regarding the students’ decision
about the rally (per your earlier e-mail to me about the

Battalion article). I was told that the students misunderstood the intention of the rally.

Because the FCIC has some viewpoints about how diversity can best be achieved at A&M,

and
because those viewpoints are different from those of Dr. Gates, apparently some of the students

believed that if they supported the Diversity Rally, some might misconstrue that support as a vote of

non-support for Dr. Gates.

They clearly did not want that misperception. The fact

is… the Office of the President IS a co-sponsor of the Diversity Rally; the students are being

advised of that. Dr. Gates truly believes that while there is, no
doubt, a variety of viewpoints

as to how A&M can best achieve a more diverse campus, those differences are secondary to the purpose of

the rally itself – namely
to demonstrate the broad support for diversity at this

institution.

Having said that, the following are the specific comments you requested for

your article:

“Since assuming the presidency of Texas A&M University more than a year and a

half ago, I have made efforts to enhance diversity — diversity in both
the faculty and student

body — among my highest priorities.

I valued the recommendations of the task force

appointed to consider revising admissions and related policies. There was open and prolonged debate

about the explicit use of race as a factor in admissions, and I carefully weighed all of them.

After much thought, I decided that, for Texas A&M
University, diversity would be best accomplished

by basing admissions decisions on individual qualities — potential and merit — while accompanying

such
assessments with an aggressive outreach effort to attract more minority students. That effort

includes creating nearly 2,300 new socio-economically
targeted scholarships. Based on past

experience, at least half of those new scholarships likely will go to minority students — both African

American and
Hispanic.

Texas A&M University was the first university in the state to

appoint a cabinet-level official responsible for increasing diversity. Also, to the best of my

knowledge, Texas A&M is the only university in the state subsequent to the Michigan decision to adopt

new admissions requirements that create more opportunities for minorities. Be assured that I strongly

believe that we are doing just that — creating more opportunities for minorities.

While I did not expect all members of the campus community to agree with my decision, I

am encouraged by the amount of support this new policy has received. Because of their loyalty to this

university, many who did not support my decision are nevertheless working passionately to promote

the university’s diversity goals. This serves as evidence of the strong sense of community that

permeates this institution.

In the final analysis, each university should, in my

opinion, adopt policies and strategies that offer the best hope — and opportunity — for

increasing
minority enrollment at that specific institution. I believe we have done that at Texas

A&M University, and I am fully committed to attaining that objective.”

Robert M. Gates,

President, Texas A&M University

A Review of Amanda Bright Brownson’s Dissertation on Texas School

Funding

By Greg Moses

Portside, ILCA Online

Indymedia

ATX /

Chicago /

Houston /

LA /

NYC /

Archive

Any hour now, Texas is expecting to read

detailed “findings of fact” from the trial judge who just (and justly) ruled two weeks ago that the

state’s school funding system is flatly unconstitutional. Make no mistake, the facts are plain. And

the future of civil rights is on the line.

In a 2002 statistical review of school equity

in Texas, for example, Amanda Bright Brownson predicted exactly the court rulings that were issued in

mid-September after a six-week trial. Fully two years before the judge ruled that state funding for

education was neither adequate nor equitable, Brownson wrote that, “Issues of both equity and adequacy

must still be addressed as we try to further raise our expectations for schools and students.”

And, with the school funding lawsuit already on the docket (as she was defending her

study before a dissertation committee at the University of Texas at Austin) Brownson even hinted that a

state-mandated $1.50 cap on local property taxes might pose “capacity” problems. The judge, in

striking down the cap, agreed that the cap had reached capacity.

Furthermore, warned

Brownson, “the Legislature will have to proceed with caution if it is not going to lose ground gained

with respect to equity, as it attempts to address capacity.” And on this point, too, Brownson

predicted the structure of the three-point court ruling that now will be taken to higher courts in

Texas for review. While the judge agreed with West Orange Cove plaintiffs that the school system is

under-funded, and that the tax cap should be lifted, he also agreed with intervening districts led by

Edgewood and Alvarado, that the state’s allocation of money is inefficient (the court’s codewords for

inequitable).

Considering Brownson’s impressive run of predictions, an observer of the

school funding trial might stand vindicated for having felt that the state’s defense looked rather

desperate. We’ll get another look at the state’s logic when a formal appeal is filed.

But returning to the Brownson study; even though it presents effective findings, there are

two features of its methodology that worry me in the longer run. First, Brownson’s analysis does not

address the problem of school equity as a civil rights problem. Edgewood interveners, of course, were

more clear on this point, because Edgewood leadership has been working on the problem at least since

1968, when the first “Edgewood” case, Rodriguez vs. San Antonio, was filed in federal court. Although

the US Supreme Court denied the claims of Rodriguez, an eloquent dissenting opinion written by civil

rights legend Thurgood Marshall ended with a footnote in 1973, that suggested a legal appeal to the

Texas constitution. A decade later, the Edgewood cases were resumed, putting Marshall’s advice to good

effect.

Brownson’s study was class-based, with focus on lingering gaps between “all

students” and students who are “economically disadvantaged.” Edgewood interveners, led by attorneys

from the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) also presented statistical gaps between “Anglo”

and “Hispanic” students; between “English speaking” students and those with “Limited English

Proficiency” (LEP)–terms of struggle that speak more plainly to the civil rights legacy of the school

funding struggle in Texas.

At first glance, the example of the Edgewood interveners

might suggest that Brownson’s methodologies can be easily adapted to civil rights applications.

Brownson, for instance, showed that equity gaps increase when expenses per student include costs of

educating specific populations, such as the “economically disadvantaged.” Using the same kind of

model, Edgewood interveners argued that gaps also increase if one accounts for the cost of bringing

mostly Spanish speaking students into a system of English proficiency. In one of the more thrilling

dramas of the courtroom, trial judge John Dietz took the state’s own bilingual expert, and in three

minutes’ time, got her to admit that Texas should triple its funding formula for bilingual

education.

And, just as Brownson used test scores from state-sponsored exams to

demonstrate lingering performance gaps for impoverished children, the Edgewood interveners plugged in

test scores to show gaps that separate ethnicities and language groups. So the uses made of the

Brownson models might seem to be extended easily to civil rights demographics. As long as the state

keeps pumping out standardized test scores, then inequities in education will continue to be measurable

for civil rights purposes. But this is where I think the model will break down in the longer run.

Tests are convenient measurements of “output” for anyone who needs to place numbers on a

scale. For students, teachers, parents, principals, and policy makers alike, test numbers have become

common currency. In the Texas courtroom, test numbers collected by the state posed invaluable evidence

against the state. Not only were overall passing rates on state exams introduced as evidence of

“inadequacy,” but gaps between student “subgroups” were tagged as exhibits to show inequity.

I have an amateurish hunch that the currency of “test scores” is pretty closely aligned with

the rise of the U.S. dollar (read capitalist ideology), and my suspicion is somewhat validated by

Brownson’s gloss on the history of “production functions” in education. Today’s educational

administrator is addicted to the kinds of fixes that “production functions” make possible.

What is both interesting and tragic, however, is that “production functions” were imported

from industry (capitalists) to education (capitalists in waiting) in order to satisfy a civil rights

mandate. It was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that called for a major study of educational equity in

the United States and it was the resulting Coleman Report of 1966 that used “production functions” to

demonstrate that schools were less to blame for student performance than, say, “family and peer group

characteristics.” So it was a capital intensive statistical tool that was used to prove how academic

achievement was more or less “inherently” attributable to social conditions rather than schooling. And

all this was done in the name of civil rights.

Of course, if the plain logic of the

Coleman report’s findings were to be followed out, we would have to conclude that social revolution

rather than school reform would be a wiser mechanism for expanding the intelligence of a people. And

there is a deeper civil rights truth to this line of thought, a truth that cost many civil rights

activists their lives during the sixties and seventies. But in the muddled world of everyday politics

in America, there is an oh-so-patient assumption that social reform, if not revolution, might be

nurtured through school reform. And when you get to thinking about all the things that would be needed

for any semi-coherent social revolution, or when you consider the way th

at status quo defenders in

America simply execute civil rights leaders outright, school reform doesn’t look like such a bad place

to both work and live.

At any rate, the marriage of civil rights to test scores is a

tragic match in at least one respect over the longer term. The more that test scores are standardized,

the more the curriculum must follow standardized tests, and, consequently, the less freedom teachers

will have over time to innovate the very social changes that will be needed to stop re-inscribing the

“inherent” structure of social intelligence as we find it. As Carter G. Woodson argued in the

Miseducation of the Negro (1933), standardized education for white students is going to wind up being a

repressive education for black students. Which means to me that attempts to bring “subgroups up to

standards” through “standardized methods” is a logical prescription for intensified “miseducation,”

precisely along anti-civil-rights lines.

Texas state demographer Steve Murdoch is getting

a lot of credit for spurring the Texas court in the direction of its rulings. Murdoch argued that

trends in poverty and “diversity” (more of both coming soon) demand vigorous educational reform. But

if I’m not terribly mistaken in my memory, it was a similar nationwide demographic report from the

Hudson Institute (Workforce 2000, published in 1987) that coincided with the state’s development of

“standards” in the first place. Something at that time looked a little too slick to me, when “scare

demographics” were answered with “standards.” I didn’t believe then that “standards” represented a

sudden eruption of “good faith” among educational leaders of Texas, and I still don’t believe

it.

Consider a recent out-of-class experience. On a recent Monday morning, a guy starts

yelling at a cashier: “well if you understood English I could tell you!” The guy storms out of the

snack bar, and I feel obliged to buy something from the cashier right away. She hides herself,

however, behind a tall stack of product and equipment, avoiding eye contact as she attempts to regain

her self-respect. Her co-worker steps up to take the next pitch. According to Texas standards, we had

just witnessed a so-called “English-proficient speaker” attempting to communicate with a person of

“Limited English Proficiency” otherwise known as an LEP.

I think it was clear to

everyone in the room who had the real problem with intelligent communication that day, but in the

jargon of Texas education policy, there are lots of LEPs, like that cashier, whose relationship to

English is just this shaming, abusive accusation that “standard English” makes speakers so much smarter

and better than all the other people around. Of course, there is no educational justification for this

attitude whatsoever, which makes it all the more shameful that the confrontation that I witnessed was

played out on a campus of higher education.

The Edgewood interveners are not only

property poor, they are predominantly Hispanic. The students, therefore, are facing not only a class

struggle, economically, but their ethnicity also presents them to the Texas educational establishment

as a “special challenge.” And Brownson’s reliance on standardized test scores, a habit picked up by

MALDEF attorneys, begins to solidify (or “legitimate” if you will) a regime of standardized

instruction.

It was profoundly ironic that on Sept. 15 the trial judge in Texas

referenced the Texas Revolution against Mexico in his prepared remarks after closing arguments. He

said that even Texas rebels wanted better education for their kids. The judge was arguing that

educational commitments could not be severed from the cultural history of Texas law. Yet, the very

next day, Diez y seis de Septiembre, or Sept. 16, would be a lively day of celebration among many

Texans of Mexican descent, in commemoration of a quite different revolution—the one that freed Mexico

from Spain. Between the judge’s Sept. 15 reference to the Texas Revolution and widespread celebrations

in of the Mexican Revolution on Sept. 16 lies a borderland of cultural histories that Texas people

share.

After all, Gloria Anzaldua didn’t live for nothing, you know. Her Chicana,

mestiza, frontera sin fronteras sensibilities were Texas-born and Texas-bred, and we are not going to

bury anything she stood for. I remember a job interview once by telephone: “What do you teach?” Well

I’m teaching Gloria Anzaldua’s new book at the moment. “Hmm, I think our committee would be looking

for something a little more standard than that.” Precisely. What would be the point of teaching

borderland consciousness if your students are busy preparing for standardized Graduate Record Exams?

So Brownson did a brilliant job by anticipating the model of judgment that the judge

would eventually adopt. And the judge has wisely folded claims from Edgewood and Alvarado into the

claims of West Orange Cove. As a consequence, Texas school funding is heading in a helpful direction,

toward better and more equitable funding. So I don’t mean to shout “stop the train!” (as if the

conductor would be listening to me anyway). But I do want to suggest that some major “challenges” of

Texas education will require much more from this state than “adequate and efficient funding” or

standardized regimes of tests. If Texas is going to grow, it will also have to grow up. And this will

mean revisiting widespread assumptions about regimes of standardized instruction, the better to keep

“test scores” and “English Proficiency” from killing the spirit of civil

rights.

Notes:

(1) Amanda Bright Brownson: School Finance Reform in Post

Edgewood Texas: An Examination of Revenue Equity and Implications for Student Performance.

Dissertation (Univ. of Texas-Austin: December 2002). Posted in pdf format by Permission of the Author

at the Texas Civil Rights Review: http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/downloadz/brownson.pdf

(2) And that cashier I referenced in the incident above? She was not Hispanic. She was

Asian.

Greg Moses is Editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of

Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of

Nonviolence.