Vivian Medithi
Today, the University of Iowa will run a test of the Hawk Alert system. Hawk Alerts are emergency notifications for UI students, faculty, and staff, using texts, emails, and calls to keep our community abreast of emergency situations from weather warnings to criminal threats.
It’s this latter category that has left many black students at Iowa feeling uneasy. In December of my freshman year, a Hawk Alert warned us that a robbery had happened; the suspects were “three black males in hoodies.” Good work, UI police, you just put an APB out on every black man anywhere near downtown.
This week especially, the deputation of common citizens by state bodies seems eerie. Monday morning in the Big Apple, millions of phones buzzed with an alert that read: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” Wireless emergency alerts are familiar in the form of Amber Alerts, which turn private citizens into the police’s eyes and ears. Such alerts are typically detailed, giving information on car make and model, color, license plates, and suspect/victim descriptions.
Monday’s alert in New York was inexcusably vague. All this alert details is someone’s name, age, and gender. I couldn’t use that same information to identify someone in a 30-person discussion class, let alone a fugitive from the law in a city of 8 million. “See media for pic?” 11 p.m. essays due at midnight have more relevant information than this half-baked emergency alert.
So, to quote the Bard, what’s in a name? Nothing, really, unless said name leads to ethnographic profiling in an effort to find a fugitive. Ahmad Khan Rahmani’s name was used by the state, not in a genuine effort to locate a criminal but as a farce to further marginalize Arab and Muslim communities in a city with a deep-seated Islamophobia problem. The warning doesn’t increase public safety; it doesn’t suggest he is armed, indicate he’s dangerous, or say why he’s wanted. Based on the content of the message, people are supposed to call the police on any man who looks approximately 28 years old and look as if he might be named Ahmad. As far as destroying American ideals of freedom and equality, our police are doing a better job than ISIS ever could.
Muslim and Arab people face Islamophobia on a daily basis, manifested interpersonally as well as through state-sanctioned violence, whether that violence is drone strikes abroad killing civilians or federal surveillance of mosques, student groups, and families for their perceived proximity to Islam. Black people have long been familiar with the concept of over-policing, knowing that the color of their skin invites more unwarranted scrutiny and violence from cops.
Wireless emergency alerts and Hawk Alerts alike are a great idea. They are an efficient way to keep a vast majority of the public informed about crucial safety issues. But when these tools are weaponized, deputizing citizens in service of racist policing, they quickly become counterproductive, further ostracizing marginalized communities and inciting general panic. As a nation and as a campus, we should demand better from those who would govern us. Emergency alerts should protect us, not divide us.