By Vivian Medithi
Iowa City is engaged in a manhunt. After the retirement of former Police Chief Sam Hargadine in June, our city is on the lookout for a replacement. After creating a recruitment profile, Iowa City hired Slavin Management Consultants in July to conduct a national search for candidates. Four semifinalists (all white) were selected and then interviewed by a panel made up of city staff and community members. Now, with three finalists (all white men), the city will conduct a meet-and-greet and seek public input before making a final decision. But in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the shadow of a highly polarizing election, this decision is under immense scrutiny.
City Manager Geoff Fruin is well aware of the increased attention on relations between law enforcement and the minority communities they police. In their application police-chief candidates were asked what Black Lives Matter means to them, as well as how increased focus on race in law enforcement has affected their approach to policing. Fruin sees this question not “as a political statement, yet rather a very real practical issue that requires strong leadership from the police-chief position.” In an election season that saw numerous incidents of anti-police violence, hundreds of cases of police brutality, and a flood of racist rhetoric, a social-justice oriented approach to policing. On the other hand, many feel that the search for a police chief has been unsatisfactory. Melyssa Jo Kelly, a 65-year-old activist who spent her childhood between Washington, D.C., and Iowa City, takes issue with the gap between what the city said the police search would look like and how it actually progressed: “Intent means nothing, what matters is impact.”
Kelly feels the city should have collected an optional demographic survey from applicants to help ensure the candidate pool was not only full of qualified police officers but diverse ones. She said it’s telling that in Iowa City’s Police Department, no women or people of color met the experience qualifications to apply for the chief position, indicating barriers to success for minorities even after entering law enforcement.
The hiring of Slavin Management Consultants complicates matters. Fruin said the city “deferred to [Slavin’s] standard recruitment practices, which do not include a voluntary demographic survey.” Slavin also reached out to groups such as the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives in an effort to create a diverse candidate pool. Kelly calls this a deflection, saying that in a personal meeting, Fruin said that he had considered a demographic survey but ultimately decided against it. Furthermore, Kelly said if Fruin wanted Slavin to gather demographic data, it would have been a simple request, given that the city hired it to conduct the applicant search.
Race in America will always be an uncomfortable subject for many. But discomfort shouldn’t lead to silence. To discuss race in America in the present tense, we must look to the past. Black people in the United States have long been relegated to the status of second-class citizens. School segregation was outlawed in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, only 62 years ago. To suggest that the playing field between white people and black people is level ignores the accumulation of wealth and other advantages conferred by racial discrimination past and present. Colorblind recruitment processes will invariably favor white male candidates because of the effects of white supremacy and patriarchy on our day-to-day lives.
Kelly graduated from West High in 1969, a little over a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She recalls her first protest, when she was 13, on the steps of the Iowa City Post Office, then the only federal building in the city. To Kelly, questions about racial bias in hiring practices and policing go deeper than the “academic, theoretical, political … this is about people’s lives.” With people’s lives on the line, being “colorblind” seems more like averting your gaze.