Police Commissioner Michael Cox, who sat with Wu, made the case for how the Boston Police Department now treats black Bostonians differently following his public apology. Cox suggested that the police department has evolved.
But has that really happened? Years before the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, and before Boston adopted the “radical” reforms recommended by the Boston Police Reform Task Force, nearly a decade ago, the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report outlining the results of an analysis of the Boston Police Department’s own field operations data. The report found that the Boston Police Department targeted the city’s black community with racist stop and search practices. It was not the first or last such investigation, nor was it the first commission to recommend policy changes. Moreover, both then and now, the Boston Police Department claimed to have made progress in remedying unequal treatment of black Bostonians, but it is unclear what progress was made.
Indeed, my research team has found that large racial disparities continue to exist in Boston residents’ reports of encounters with police. Recently collected survey data from a random sample of Boston residents about police encounters and perceptions of police not only reported significantly higher rates of being stopped without cause while driving and being stopped and searched without cause while walking or driving (consistent with findings from the ACLU and others), but also reported significantly higher rates of five other types of harassment than the city’s Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and white residents.
Moreover, black residents of Boston understand that they are treated differently and perceive the discriminatory treatment of them and their neighbors as racially motivated.
Importantly, and consistent with previous research, we also found that police harassment was strongly associated with subsequent poor outcomes, predicting not only deep distrust of law enforcement and a sense that law enforcement is not making communities safer. But police harassment is also a precursor to trauma symptoms. When asked to think about memorable police encounters, black Boston residents not only agreed more with statements indicative of trauma, such as intrusive thoughts, re-experiencing the encounter, avoidance, and physical reactions such as sweating, difficulty breathing, and nausea, but also over-agreed with statements indicative of trauma. Of nine possible statements, a variation of a subset of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Civilian Checklist used in previous studies, a much higher percentage of black residents agreed with six to nine. It seems clear that the trauma suffered historically by Boston’s black community continues to this day.
Finally, just as aggressive police practices and the stress they cause have been linked to increased chronic health conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity, in other cities, police harassment and the associated distrust and trauma were found to be strongly correlated with chronic health conditions in Boston for each of the major racial groups. Thus, through the various forms of harassment that are routinely and disproportionately perpetrated against black residents, Boston also practices what Princeton University professor Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.” “This is a violence that happens gradually and invisibly, a violence of delayed destruction dispersed across time and space, a debilitating violence that is not usually considered violence at all. … Time can be a camouflage for the long-term damage to society’s most vulnerable people, whose full humanity is routinely disregarded.”
But slow violence doesn’t appear out of nowhere. In Boston, as elsewhere, it is often rooted in ineffective and inequitable policies designed to contain and control marginalized people—policies that are fully supported by the current mayor and police commissioner. While Mayor Wu has publicly pledged to “build the Boston Black people want” and to work on policy interventions that are “data-driven” and “evidence-based,” she and Cox continue to support policies like gang databases and ShotSpotter technology that lack evidence and leave Black Boston residents disproportionately harassed by the Boston Police Department, creating more fertile ground for mistrust and trauma.
At a December 2023 press conference, Wu thanked the Bennett family for accepting the city’s apology and for believing in the city’s ability to improve. Not only has the city failed to earn the trust of the black community on this issue, but it would be misjudgment to believe the city has the ability to improve.
Sandra Susan Smith Professor of Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School.
