911:: Re: Racial Profiling

February 16, 2001

Years ago in the 70's and early 80's some white officers used the term

" Charlie Mike " to indicate a " colored " male. We all know that there are bad

apples that can spoil the whole basket. I should say that our area is mostly

white today but we have a much more diverse population now than 20 years ago

with more African-Americans but also a lot of Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans

and especially Mexican-Americans.

One of those cops who used that CM term a lot worked in one of the neighboring

towns on our frequency. One weekday about 15 years ago he had called out a few

times that he would " checking out a Charlie Mike at a certain location. His town

only had about 2000 population with no blacks residing there but had many who

worked at 3 different factories.

One of my cops was very angry about this. He had grown up in Newark where his

father had been a decorated Newark PD officer. " Big Guy " (he is 6'5 " ) came in

by me about 2pm, picked up the phone and called 411 for the number of the

nearest office of the NAACP. Next he told the NAACP rep about this, that he

himself was white and very upset about the practice but wished to remain

anonymous.

It only took a few minutes for us to hear the chief in the other town call

that cop into hq. Before " Jay " could do that he called out with another Charlie

Mike standing on a street corner (near a plastics plant with over 100 black

workers). That chief then ordered him to disregard checking out any more CM's

and to get to hq immediately.

BTW, " Jay " is now a resident of a housing project operated by the NJ

Department of Corrections because he was charged and either convicted or plead

guilty to molesting young boys after he had resigned from the police department.

This part was publicized in the papers.

Now that PD, still under the same great chief, has a lot more newer cops

including one from my town who has quickly earned a reputation for being one of

the finest and happens to be African-American.

Rich Dean

Rich Dean, NJ USA .. secondary email addresses are rldean@...,

deanr@... .. HS Class of 1970, Vol Firefighter since 1973,

Telecommunciator/Dispatch since 1975, Railfan since birth in 1952.. Founder of

Yahoogroups.com groups for NJArea, Fire-Police, NJ_Area_Railpics,

NorthAmericanParades and NorthJerseyVolFire.. Member of many more online groups

such as nysw@..., nysw , tiersightings@yahoogroups,

Fire-L@topica, Firepics@yahoogroups, 911dis

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