It's a start. Even though he seems to be explaining "racial bias" as a "mental shortcut" of some cynical police officers -- worn down by their difficult 'seen-everything' dangerous jobs;
Director Comey also calls on police officers to do better. "To design systems and processes to overcome" their racial biases. Including better databases for keeping stats on officer-involved shootings.
Including acknowledging the FBI's own over-reach on tracking civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, back in day of their predecessors. A disturbing legacy that they must now 'own'.
FBI Director To Address Law Enforcement's Relationship With Minorities
by Lauren Hodges, npr.org -- February 12, 2015
[...]
In a speech entitled "Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race," Comey [FBI Director James Comey] plans to highlight research suggesting a bias against blacks among majority white communities — a bias that he says goes largely unaddressed and leads to dangerous practices among law enforcement officials. NPR's justice correspondent Carrie Johnson says Comey wants law enforcement to acknowledge that bias in order to improve relations with minority communities.
"He's going to say people who serve in law enforcement have to be honest and acknowledge most of our history has been unfair to minorities and un-favored groups."
Johnson reports Comey's leading by example in his new post as director. He requires new police recruits to visit the new memorial of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C., as a reminder that the FBI once specifically targeted the civil rights leader.
[...]
Like I said "it's a start" ... but it needs to go further.
Like examining and re-thinking the abuse-filled Officer Quota System.
Like examining and correcting the built-in "Institutional Racism," in the form of Due Process Denied, based on the color of your skin.
Still, I give the Director credit for "starting" this over-due national discussion among law enforcement.
Hopefully Police Depts across the nation will take it to heart. Hopefully Comey and others, will follow up to make sure any un-fair, Un-American behavior get addressed and corrected; such that:
"Some people are NOT be 'assumed to be Guilty', based on the color of their skin."
FBI Director Speaks Frankly on Police View of Blacks
by Michael S. Schmidt, adn.com -- February 13, 2015
[...]
“All of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty,” he said. “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”
Comey said there was significant research showing that all people have unconscious racial biases. Law enforcement officers, he said, need “to design systems and processes to overcome that very human part of us all.”
“Although the research may be unsettling, what we do next is what matters most,” Comey said.
[...]
He also recommended that law enforcement agencies be compelled, by legislation if necessary, to report shootings that involve police officers, and that those reports be recorded in an accessible database. When Brown was shot in Ferguson, Comey said, FBI officials could not say whether such shootings were common or rare because no statistics were available.
“It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police last week, last month, last year,” Comey said.
[...]
Comey concluded by quoting King, who said, '"We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools.'
People really should be 'judged' by the "
content of their character" instead of the color of their skin.
People should be "assumed to" need the Officer's Help -- and not their 'snap condemnations'.
That is, if that "long arc of the moral universe," is ever to be "justly" realized.
Director James Comey, can you make those points, the next time you attempt to mend those many fractured bridges, that our long disturbing "Institutional" legacy, has still to this day, left us?