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  Date / Time: 2/25/2008 3:30 PM UTC

  ALL MEN CREATED EQUAL
  

  Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws. "

  
  

  
  
  By Brian H. White
  Chair, Power in the Hood Campaign
  
  On December 27, 2007, Kalamazoo City Commissioner Stephanie Moore had a family night out and attended a basketball game in Battle Creek. At some point during the game, there was a disturbance which involved a physically disabled African-American teen and Battle Creek Public Safety officers. Concerned for the young man’s safety, Commissioner Moore began videotaping the incident in an attempt to protect him and to teach her children how to be responsible citizens.
  
  The officer, who was apprehending the young man, became irate once he noticed Commissioner Moore videotaping the incident with her cell phone. He demanded that she put the phone away. Feeling that the young man was being mistreated, she continued videotaping. This sent the officer into a tirade as he began to yell obscenities in her direction. In lieu of the presence of children, Moore questioned the officer on his choice of words and behavior which led to more verbal abuse.
  
  Consequently, Commissioner Moore deemed it necessary to contact the Battle Creek Public Safety department and lodge a complaint against the officer. She then proceeded to wait at the scene for an additional 2 hours at which point a sergeant showed up and took her complaint. She called the chief the next day and he assured her that he would look into the complaint and get back to her. They talked several times over the course of a week and not once did he mention that she was the subject of an investigation or that a warrant for her arrest was being issued.
  
  Almost a full two weeks after the night at the basketball game, Commissioner Moore learned that there was a warrant out for her arrest by watching the 6pm evening news. This was an obvious attempt at destroying her, politically. Once learning of the warrant, which cited resisting arrest and obstruction, Moore immediately called the Chief and agreed to turn her self in the next morning. Upon arriving at the Police station she was physically taken into custody and transported to the Calhoun County Jail where she was booked, strip searched (totally naked) and incarcerated for several hours while she waited to be arraigned by a judge.
  
  This case, which I learned about at a forum regarding judiciary matters, is particularly distressing because I remember as a kid being told about stories like this which happened in the 50’s and 60’s. As an adolescent I assumed that these days were long gone. Was I ever wrong.
  
  Question: When has any Black person, in the history of America, ever resisted arrest and obstructed justice and not been arrested and/or beaten on he spot?
  
  Question: When has anyone resisted arrest, stayed at the crime scene for two hours afterwards and allowed to return home?
  
  Question: When did prosecutors start announcing warrants through the media especially when they know where to find the person?
  
  Question: When did it start taking officers two days to file police reports especially one as serious as alleging resisting and obstruction?
  
  This, plain and simply put, is police misconduct and malicious prosecution. The travesty however is not merely the possibility of Commissioner Moore losing her freedom and position. It lies within the community where people, Black and White alike, choose to blindly lend their support to law enforcement even when the evidence suggest otherwise. Also, there are several cases across this state and country where African-American leaders are made targets of malicious prosecution, incarcerated and kept in prison even after evidence surfaces proving their innocence.
  
  “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” wrote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from jail
  
  Thus, we must unite to have the charges against Ms. Moore dropped immediately. On January 25, 2007, I along with Councilwoman Joann Watson and the Mary Church Terrell Council for Community Empowerment organized a rally at the Calhoun County Prosecutor’s office demanding that the charges be dropped. We will return in the coming weeks if nothing is done to clear Commissioner Moore’s name. We have to realize that we all are one basketball game away from facing the same ill-fate Commissioner Moore is facing. The only crimes committed in this instance were by law enforcement.
  
  When they fabricate and pursue charges against Whites as we saw with Prosecutor Mike Nifong, in the Duke Rape case, they are scrutinized and in his case disbarred. But for some odd reason, especially given the history in this country, African-Americans are guilty as charged long before the trial gets underway, even in the opinion of other African-Americans. Not all law enforcement officers are bad but the culture of protecting those that are is alive and well.
  
  Wake up people, we are asleep at the wheel!
  
  To get involved please contact the MCT Council for Community Empowerment at (313)344-9014 or www.im4justice.com.
  • Tags:
  • STEPHANIE MOORE
  • KALAMAZOO
  • JUSTICE
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