POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN
The following are excerpts from an article on the website of Reason magazine. To read the full piece go here.
A vocational college in La Crosse, Wisconsin, spent more than $100,000 investigating one of its instructors for allegedly saying the local police department was “full of racists.”
The school is Western Technical College (WTC). The instructor is Nicole Miller, who teaches at the college’s law enforcement academy; she is also a former La Crosse County sheriff’s deputy and former correctional officer. Miller purportedly made the comment while warning a potential recruit against taking a job at the La Crosse department.
When then–Police Chief Ronald Tischer heard about this, he demanded an investigation. The ensuing probe, in which Tischer also enlisted the Wisconsin Department of Justice, lasted more than a year and ended with Miller being cleared of any wrongdoing. But it has cost the public college $103,445 so far in bills to a consulting firm and law firm that it hired to handle the matter, according to figures provided by WTC. . . .
The imbroglio started on August 13, 2018, when Tischer emailed the WTC president complaining that he had heard that Miller had been telling students that the La Crosse Police Department was “full of racists” and “you shouldn’t work there.” . . .
In October 2018, WTC officials met with Tischer and representatives from the Department of Justice. The college laid out its initial investigation, which found there wasn’t evidence to support Tischer’s claims that Miller had said the department was “full of racists.”
Tischer then complained that the investigation hadn’t interviewed enough people about Miller’s alleged bias against the La Crosse Police Department, and he accused her of making several other disparaging remarks about the department and individual officers. In a follow-up email, Tischer suggested that the college could also be sued for her comments. . . .
The college, at the request of Tischer and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, hired a law firm and consulting firm to conduct an outside investigation.
While the investigation was taking place, several other La Crosse Police Department officers reported that Miller had made disparaging remarks about the department, each of which added additional time and costs to the investigation.
In November of this year, after conducting 24 interviews with supposed witnesses, the firms released their final report, finding that there was not sufficient evidence to substantiate any of the allegations. . . .
One thing the report didn’t delve into was whether the La Crosse Police Department was in fact full of racists.
In 2016 the city paid $50,000 to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit by a former La Crosse police officer against the department.
Anthony Clark, one of only two black officers at the La Crosse Police Department at the time, alleged that he was subjected to persistent racial harassment by officers and supervisors. Clark’s suit claimed black officers were referred to as “jigaboo,” that he was called a “house dog,” and that bananas were put in his locker.
After Clark’s complaint went public, he claimed the La Crosse Police Department retaliated by papering him with disciplinary investigations and reprimands. . . .
The only black La Crosse officer who worked with Clark, Nathan Poke, filed a another discrimination lawsuit this January, alleging that he was retaliated against and ultimately fired for trying to report misconduct by a white officer. In a sworn deposition, he repeated many of Clark’s claims about the department. He said another officer referred to him and his music, or anything related to black culture generally, as “jigabooish.”
It seems like the gist of this story is that (1) the prof was correct to say that “the local police department was full of racists,” and (2) an awful lot of the college’s (public) money was spent on an investigation.
(1) Making claims about ALL people of a certain group (i.e., the local police department) or that that group was “FULL of racists” is always problematic–and often exaggerated or subjective.Two complaints by black officers, while more than regrettable, may not represent the full picture–either way–of whether that P.D. was “full” of racists or not.
(2) I suspect that the college’s attorneys — like many in that field — were overly afraid of lawsuits if they had just cleared the prof on the basis of academic freedom or that she spoke the truth based on their internal investigation.
Finally, although it shouldn’t matter, I’d be interested in learning the races of the principal characters, esp. the prof and the police chief. In today’s racialized climate, such details matter.
She said ‘full of’, which is an empirical observation, and I’m just guessing here, you are not in a position to dispute. Attorneys are always in favor of maintaining the status quo, which is based, among other things, on White supremacy. WHY would you be “interested in knowing the “race” of people involve?” Or, as the Black Panthers used to say before they were murdered and framed by so-called police,’ This isn’t about skin color. The White supremacist system , upon which this country was founded operated in its ideological state apparatuses, like universities, and schools, just like it does in its repressive state apparatuses: military and police. By the way, saying anything like racist police is a redundancy, which might call for an academic reprimand for poor articulation of an obvious truth.
Despite my skin color, I happened to have assisted the (original) Black Panthers with recruiting and other efforts in Brooklyn back in their heyday — before the many murders and also before the infamous party at Lenny Bernstein’s place (the “Radical Chic” event), after which the Panthers eschewed much white support. (At the time, I advised them to avoid calling the police “pigs” — on strategic grounds. Because most successful revolutions relied on the police and military to stand down and not oppose mounting revolt. In addition, cops are proletarians, albeit defenders of the ruling class’s privileges; calling them “pigs” only exacerbates the tensions and probably discourages many brothers from joining up and potentially changing the demographic makeup of police departments. Of course, my arguments were politely rejected; I was told that one should “call a pig a pig.”
I happen to agree with you on the role of the Louis Althusserian “repressive state apparatuses” (RSAs) and “ideological state apparatuses” (ISAs) to preserve and protect capitalism. In my Marxist opinion, the racial dimensions of laws, police practices, and other determinants on “Other” communities are an outgrowth of the depredations of Capital. In theory at least, the egalitarian society of true socialism would resolve MOST racial animus. (I did say “in theory,” right?)
All that said, I’d still like to know the races of the principal characters in the original story, not because that knowledge would mitigate any claims of racism (if the prof happened to be black) but because today’s journalism almost always identifies the epidermal pigmentation of the people in a news account, especially one that is racially charged.
By the way, don’t be such a mealy-mouthed academic by such locutions as ” It seems like.” Say what you mean and mean what you say.