By Colin Flaherty
Federal Judge Susan Dlott wrote the book on racial profiling in 2002.
Last week, she ripped it into one million tiny pieces when three black people broke into her $8 million Cincinnati home and started beating her and her 79-year old husband.
“There’s three black men with guns at our house,” Dlott told a 911 operator after she escaped the home invasion and ran to her neighbor’s house one mile away.
And just in case the operator did not hear her the first time, Dlott said it again: “My husband and the dogs are still there. There are three black men with guns and masks at the house.”
That’s Racial Profiling 101: Identifying the criminals by race, as if that had something to do with it.
You remember, the same thing NBC tried to pin on George Zimmerman when it maliciously (mis)edited his 911 call about Trayvon Martin.
Dlott became a national heroine of the movement to outlaw -- and define -- racial profiling in 2002, the year after the Cincinnati riots. Another memory refresher: That was when thousands of black people rampaged through Cincinnati for four days, burning, destroying, threatening, vandalizing, beating, defying police -- all because a police shooting reminded everyone that black people are relentless victims of relentless white racism.
And cops were always picking on black people for no reason what so ever. Even Bill Cosby cancelled a concert. That’s how bad it was.
That is what the NAACP said when it sued the city in federal court. Once the NAACP lawsuit was assigned to Dlott, they consolidated all their cases in her court. Because everyone knew they had a kindred spirit on the bench in Dlott.
At the time, the Cincinnati Enquirer described her as an “unabashed liberal.” Which to them was a compliment. “Now the future of race relations in the Queen City may be in her hands. She’s overseeing an unprecedented effort to resolve a racial profiling lawsuit that accuses Cincinnati police of detaining African-Americans because of their skin color.
“The outcome of the case could set a new standard for resolving decades-old problems in race relations, not only here but nationwide.”
And it did -- maybe not the way they expected. Last year for example, it took local media almost a week to figure out that during the Taste of Cincinnati, large groups of black people were gleefully attacking bus riders, commuters, members of a gay country western dance club, little old ladies and even the children of the local DA during and after then annual downtown celebration.
No one wanted to say it. No one wanted to report it. Because in Cincinnati, Dlott helped reporters and public officials long ago figure out that identifying criminals by race is a very bad thing.
The lawsuit in Dlott’s court quickly became more of an arbitration than a trial, with lots of community meetings and “input from stakeholders.” In theory, that meant finding out what was really happening. In practice, it degenerated into lot of angry black people talking about how cops were always picking on them.
With a lot of white media and public officials cowering in agreement.
The police were part of this process, but were mostly left to mumble they were not racists and they were just doing their job by
For all the talk of how black criminals were being treated unfairly, there was little or no testimony about black on white crime and black mob violence in Cincinnati. And how it was wildly out of proportion. And little from white and Asian victims of that crime and violence -- then and now documented with a letter from a Cincinnati cop in that scintillating best seller, Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry.
From the very beginning of the proceedings, everyone pretty much agreed that black people were victims, not the perpetrators. No matter what those racist crime numbers showed.
Writing in a law journal at Duke University, Andrew Taslitz describes the mob atmosphere that permeated Dlott’s federal court. And yeah, he thought it was a good thing: “The 2001 Cincinnati violence and resulting bad press for the police force created an atmosphere conducive to the defendants settling quickly. Plaintiffs took advantage of this situation by offering to submit their complaint to a mediation.”
Dlott and the NAACP made it clear the case was about more than just one cop beating one black person. Said Taslitz:
“But the protests and resulting violence were about far more than the excessive use of force. Protestors were also angered by what they viewed as years of degrading racial profiling by the local police. A teenager interviewed by the Washington Post seemed to capture the sense of the community:
“The riots are not just a reaction to the killing of an African-American male, but to the injustice to our people for so long,” said Christopher Johnson, 16, as he stood on the church steps. “Just walking down the street I get asked [by police], ‘What are you doing?’ I pay taxes like they do. I should be able to walk down a public street.”
It is not known whether the Post actually confirmed the young man in question actually paid taxes.
Whatever: By the time the trial was over, black people in Cincinnati knew they had a new champion, Dlott. And this champion let everyone know that from then on, police would be keeping better statistics of any disparity between white people and black people who are stopped and/or arrested.
Because any disparity between white crime and black crime was the result of one thing and one thing only: White racism manifest in racial profiling.
The mantra of racial injustice has since become gospel for mayors, governors, lawyers, attorneys general, and even the President of the United States. All of whom agree that the only reason there is a racial disparity in law enforcement is because of overpolicing in black neighborhoods.
Just a few months ago, Attorney General Lynch was the featured speaker at a Black Caucus seminar on this topic, where several black police chiefs and lawyers and government officials agreed that if the same amount of police resources were moved to white neighborhoods, police would make the same kind of arrests in the same amount.
So there really is no difference between black and white crime.
That is the essence of racial profiling.
That is how so many people in Cincinnati and in law journals around the country know Susan Dlott.
And that is why so many people in her hometown and around the country were a bit surprised she was so quick to pull the race card in her call to 911: After all, we know far more black people in Cincinnati are arrested for burglary and home invasion. But in her world, white people do it too. In the same amount. They just don’t get caught.
Her friends took to TV and the internet to remind everyone how Dlott has pioneered so many “civil rights” decisions. And how her wealthy trial lawyer husband is a lifetime board member of the NAACP.
"If we lost her, which we would have but for her smart thinking... and a few coincidences, we would've lost one of the great civil rights judges of our time,” her neighbor told a local TV news crew. “It's because of Susan Dlott that we have community policing here and modeled across the nation. She structured that agreement.”
As if somehow excusing black criminality gave her a pass from the consequences of black criminality that is wildly out of proportion.
It did not.
As if somehow everyone should overlook how Judge Dlott was so eager to racially profile the people who threw her husband
“She sounded like she might clutch her purse too if she had one! ,” said another.
“She should have to apologize to these children in court for causing them all these problems. They could have been shot and killed by the very Police she ruled were profiling black children. ”
“I hope I'm a juror on that case, ‘they're victims of white racism, NOT GUILTY.’ “
“Because of people like her. Shaming people who have reason to live with a healthy dose of fear by calling them racists. Judge Dlott's Ivory Tower was invaded and she became one of us for a moment. Oh the shame! Hello pot? This is the kettle. You're black.”
The three home invaders who just happened to be black were soon caught. And remain in jail awaiting trial with bail of at least $2.5 million.
That did not sit well with the mother of one of the alleged invaders, who told reporters her son was a good boy who did not normally do stuff like that.
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