The Paragraph Stacker

Why Des Moines’ racial profiling ordinance is a failure before it starts

A well-meaning Des Moines City Council passed a racial profiling ordinance this week. The idea is to prevent police from picking on minorities when enforcing the law.

Racial profiling ordinances feel good, but they don’t amount to much.

Make an ordinance that says don’t do it.

Fine.

The problem is it’s unenforceable.

Then a cop pulls over a minority.

The minority says he was racially profiled.

The cop said it was a broken taillight.

Cop said. Minority said.

Now what?

Des Moines police already have a policy against racial profiling.

There’s one important difference: A police policy allows the department to investigate patterns of behavior.

The city can only look at the single instance in a single complaint.

Single complaints are weak when it comes to something as complex as racial profiling.

How do we know what the cop was thinking the moment those lights came on?

Is he thinking that’s a black guy where he shouldn’t be or is he thinking that’s a car with a violation?

Even the best detectives aren’t psychic. You can’t do much from a single instance, especially involving vehicles at night where darkness often makes the race of a driver difficult to spot through the back window.

Des Moines police also do spot checks of body and car cameras for racial profiling and other tactics.

A single incident of racial profiling is unacceptable.

It’s also hard to prove.

But a pattern?

That’s a trail of evidence that gives police administrators the power to discipline or fire cops who can’t get with the program.

This system is imperfect, too. It requires trust that police can police themselves, a belief some in our community mark akin to fantasy.

The easiest and most reasonable move would be to ask the Iowa Department of Transportation to include race on driver’s licenses.

Then, every time a cop runs a license for any reason, it’s recorded. Because the state collected the race data, there is less potential for police tampering.

You get hard data that shows who is being pulled over or otherwise stopped by police.

That data can also help shake out patterns of bad behavior and lead to getting rid of bad cops or reforms in how officers’ do their jobs.

This ordinance may evolve, but right now it’s a feel-good measure that doesn’t even satisfy the protestors and reformers who pushed for the change.

Daniel P. Finney, independent journalist

Cut loose and cashiered by corporate media, lone paragraph stacker Daniel P. Finney makes his way telling stories about his city, state and nation. No more metrics or Google trends, he writes stories about people and life ignored by the oligarchy.

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Sunday Thoughts: Kirk Ferentz learns the perils of the woke walk

Beware the woke wave. White folks may think they can surf it, but it is just as likely to crash them into the reef and leave them bloodied and broken.

Review the long weekend of University of Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz. Iowa posted a video of their top Hawk talking about listening, learning and growing on the issue of racism that has again gripped national discourse in the wake of a Minneapolis police officer’s killing of George Floyd.

Ferentz went on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt to talk about an open and productive team meeting that included the subject.

Ferentz came across as earnest both in the video and in the interview. I don’t know Ferentz, but I’ve no reason to doubt his sincerity.

But before any white person cuts a video like that, they should ask themselves an important question: How clean is my house?

Ferentz soon learned his house was just as messy as any American institution. Former Hawkeye players came forward on social media with allegations of racist talk and behavior by the team’s strength and conditioning coach and his own son, Brian Ferentz, the team’s offensive coordinator. Others said adapting to the “Iowa Culture” caused anxiety and failure to do so would be costly.

Ferentz quickly regrouped. The strength and conditioning coach is on leave pending an investigation. (That coach denies racism. Brian Ferentz remains on the job.) Iowa will form an advisory committee chaired by a former player.

Ferentz cut a new video and shouldered the responsibility. He choked up talking about the allegations of racism in meeting with reporters Sunday afternoon. Again, Ferentz seemed earnest and his actions seem like more than just reactionary pandering.

Coaches, teams and schools all over the country have posted videos and text messages similar to Ferentz’s. They pledge to listen, learn and grow together.

I want to believe them, yet I am cynical enough to be wary of college coaches gesticulating their concern over racism after Floyd’s killing.

Few institutions reap as much one-way benefit from the talents of African Americans as NCAA college football and men’s college basketball. It benefits coaches to come out and say, “Hey, we support African Americans here. We’re behind you.”

I wonder what percentage, even if it’s a sliver, of these messages are motivated by marketing and recruiting concerns. Did your school tweet that black lives matter? No? Then maybe a prized African-American recruit goes somewhere that did.

But it’s kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

If you don’t, then your program will be labeled racist. If you do — and you don’t know or are willfully ignorant of racial issues in your program — then you will be beset with racial allegations anyway.

Lost in all this is any ability to gauge sincerity.

Like I said, Ferentz seemed earnest. I tend to believe both his videos. Many coaches from across the NCAA and into pro sports posted similar videos or text messages in support of the movement for equality and against racism.

I want to believe them all. I choose to believe them because I want to believe the people I love and celebrate are good and decent and real.

But life is more complicated than that. About 20 years ago, I moved from Des Moines to Omaha for a job. I thought Omaha, about twice the size of Des Moines, to be much more openly racist than Des Moines.

I read a column by a former editor of mine who works in Omaha now. He said he heard the most overt racism in his career in Des Moines. He’s worked in Texas and Detroit, among other stops.

I don’t doubt my former editor’s experience just as he didn’t doubt mine. I believe we see what we want to, especially when it’s our hometown and our home teams.

We are willing to accept information that supports our belief that we don’t do the bad things that happen in other places as if we are somehow exempt from the indecencies and inhuman treatment that plague every other place.

That’s called confirmation bias and I am as guilty of it as anyone.

I made that mistake earlier this month in these paragraphs. I suggested protestors go to Minneapolis where Floyd was killed rather than protest good, hard-working cops in Des Moines.

That was naive on my part, maybe outright ignorant.

Racism isn’t limited to one city, state or nation. They’re protesting in England, France and Germany, too. White people have been terrible toward black and brown people for centuries.

Study colonialism. For centuries, white people showed up in other nations, killed some (or a lot) of the natives and said, “All this is ours now and you’re now ruled by us.”

Ferentz handled his situation with class and dignity, but how it shakes out for the Hawkeyes going forward will be interesting and important.

As for me, well, allow me to come clean: I’m dirty. We are all sinners.

I truly, absolutely and without hesitation do not believe that I am superior to anyone because of the color of my skin.

But I have had racist thoughts. I have laughed at and told racist jokes. And I’ve benefited from a society designed by rich white men to benefit other white men.

I don’t cut myself a break because I was born a ward of the state. I was a white baby boy. I was adopted quickly, though the results of that pairing were mixed at best.

Still, I don’t know how many African-American babies were in the county hospital the same day I was that ended up in foster care and never knew a permanent, stable home.

Racism is a virus in which all white Americans are carriers. The debate is how active it is in our thoughts, actions and deeds.

I have no idea what the solution is. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be unemployed.

All I can say is this, which I repeat often: We are all children of God, created in His image and deserve love, dignity and respect.

Act as if this is true and we will make it true.

How an Iowa nurse practitioner helps fill state’s rural mental health gap

Photo by Mwesigwa Joel via Unsplash.com.

Karla Dzuris sobbed in front of the video conference screen.Sue Gehling, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and owner of Classroom Clinic, was on the other side of the telehealth call.

Karla came to Sue about her son, Mason, a fifth grader at Greene County Elementary School.

Mason struggled with behavior. His mood swings and fits of anger frequently landed him in the principal’s office. Mason hated school. He would do or say almost anything to get out of doing his classwork.

Near the end of Mason’s fourth grade year, the principal called Karla to pick Mason up and take him home.

There was nothing more they could do for her son that day. The news crushed Karla. She worked for the district and often went home in tears when teachers would tell her Mason’s behavior was problematic that day.

“I felt like everyone was judging us as a family and I didn’t know what to do,” Karla said. “I thought I was failing my child and I thought I was going to lose him.”

Karla worried her son’s behavior would get so bad he would grow up to a life of criminal behavior and be at risk for suicide.

Karla lives and works in Jefferson, a city of about 4,300 in rural Iowa where the shortage of mental health professionals is acute.

In all, 89 of Iowa’s 99 counties — including Greene County — are designated mental health professional shortage areas per the Iowa Department of Health.

“I work for the school and my husband works and we couldn’t afford to drive to a big city several times a week for ongoing therapy or medication checks,” Karla said.

Classroom Clinic launched a school-based pilot program with Greene County schools in the fall of 2019, when Mason entered fifth grade. Guidance counselors suggested the service to Karla.

Karla worried about using behavioral therapy and medication. She believed Mason would outgrow his behavioral problems — but that wasn’t happening.

Sue started Classroom Clinic to help fill the gaps in children’s mental healthcare coverage in rural Iowa, where she grew up and still lives and focused on psychiatric needs in schools.

“One of the biggest pain points in schools is dealing with student behavior that is made worse by untreated mental health issues due to a lack of providers,” Sue said. “I live in rural Iowa and it is a wonderful place to grow up and raise kids, but the flipside is we don’t have access that urban areas have.”

Sue wants to help ease school mental health issues by using telemedicine technology to provide psychiatric evaluations via telemedicine conducted in a private room at a school.

Her first clients were Greene County schools and Paton-Churdan schools. Mason and Karla were one of Classroom Clinic’s first families.

Sue listened to Karla describe Mason’s struggles. He slid a chair across a room. He became so disruptive administrators called for a “room clear,” in which all the students leave the room, until Mason calmed down.

When he lost games in P.E., he became angry and inconsolable; he accused others of cheating or not playing fairly.

Sue evaluated Mason via teleconference. She diagnosed Mason with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, a condition characterized by persistent anger and frequent temper outbursts that are disproportionate to the situation.

Sue prescribed a medication designed to regulate brain chemistry. The medicine brings naturally occurring chemicals in the brain into healthier levels, lessening excessive behavioral outbursts.

Karla noticed the difference right away.

“Almost from the first day he took the medicine, Mason was a different kid,” Karla said. “He was calmer. He got along better at school and home. He wasn’t having outbursts. He was even to the point of liking school.”

Mason, who is entering sixth grade, competes in wrestling and is making friends again. His moods and behavior improved significantly, his mother said.

The next time Karla conferred with Sue by teleconference, Karla was in tears again — the good kind of tears.

“I feel like she gave me my son back,” Karla said. “I was so worried he was on a path that was going to lead to trouble in the future or maybe even suicide. Now he’s doing so well. She saved my family.”