Sixth Annual N-COPA Conference on Police Accountability
October 4 - 6, 1996
Chicago, Illinois

Activists from across the country gathered in Chicago early in October to share their experiences and strategies with others working on police issues.

On Friday night, Mary L. Johnson (of the Coalition to End Police Brutality & Torture and a Citizens Alert Board member), welcomed participants to the opening keynote from Melinda Power of Chicago's Not on the Guest List Coalition, who spoke on the coalition's organizing and demonstration around the August Democratic Convention in Chicago and the highly questionable arrests that occurred. One of the highlights of the week-end, her talk was followed by a go-around of introductions and local reports from conference participants.

Saturday's session opened with a welcome from Citizens Alert president Gladys Lewis. N-COPA added an international focus this year by featuring a talk by Mr. Sipho Citabatwa from the Community Peace Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa, who had arrived only the night before. After showing a video on "Popular Justice," he described his work as a coordinator of street committees which work with local civic organizations to operate "peoples' courts" to resolve neighborhoods' internal disputes. This parallel form of "non-state policing" grew up under apartheid when the state-run police and courts could not be depended upon by the African townships. South Africa's exciting version of community policing works to achieve peace with "outside" agencies, i.e. the South African Police, through forums accountable to the community at the street committee level. Mr. Citabatwa welcomes inqueries at cpfound@wn.apc.org.

Combined with this alternative view of "community policing" was Eileen Luna's Saturday presentation on "Policing in Indian Country," describing both traditional native means of resolving conflict and the contradictions when mainstream police training is provided on reservations. Both these talks gave participants a broadened perspective for analyzing police problems in U.S. communities, and in fact the Community Peace Foundation is currently further exploring conflict resolution methods used by indigenous peoples both here in the U.S. and Australia.

Minister R. Abdullah and Minister Tele E'mani, a member of Chicago's Coalition to End Police Brutality & Torture, brought an immediate request for help in the unexplained police killing on September 24th of Brother Bilal Ashraf, a member of the Muslim community. A letter of protest to Mayor Daley and Police Superintendent Rodriguez was sent on behalf of those present.

Featured in the last issue of the newsletter, Petra Harris of First Defense Legal Aid (formerly the Police Custody Hotline Program) presented her agency's model of providing immediate free legal assistance by volunteer lawyers to those who have been arrested in that crucial sliver of time before court appearance and assignment of public defenders. Initialy serving a limited area of Chicago, First Defense now serves the entire city.

Caroline Clarke and Nilba Sanchez of Philadelphia's Police-Barrio Relations Project led an afternoon session on "Pepper Spray Initiatives & Updates" which related the PBRP's series of meetings with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Neal to press for greater safety measures in police pepper spray training and guidelines. Lenore Anderson ran down Berkeley COPWATCH's continuing campaign to curtail police use of pepper spray in that community. Others such as Stephane Luchini of Albuquerque and new-comer Cyndi Pickett of northern California reported updates on pepper spray status in their locales. Commenting on the wave of OC product liability suits, some brought by police and corrections officers themselves in response to injuries suffered during mandatory exposure in their own training, Nancy Rhodes noted new research is forth-coming later this fall.

On Sunday morning, Isabel Garcia of Tucson's Derechos Humanos gave a moving presentation of Coordinadora '98, the two-year organizing effort culminating in the first national Latino march on Washington set for the following Saturday. In its agenda, entitled Proposition One, one of seven demands made by Coordinadora is the establishment of independent review boards to monitor poplice misconduct. N-COPA endorsed the historic La Marcha of October 12th and empowered Andres Valdez of Albuquerque's Vecinos United, to convey N-COPA's greetings and support to the rally on that day.

The closing session of the conference, on "Philadelphia's Class Action Suit," was led by Caroline Clarke and Nilba Sanchez of Police-Barrio Relations Project. People from cities considering class action suits for police brutality were encouraged by Philadelphia's unusual success, which consisted not of a montary settlement but an agreement signed by the city of Philadelphia to make a range of systemic and procedural changes. This will actually be monitored over the next two years by attorneys for the community coalition which brought the suit (which included the PBRP, the ACLU and the NAACP). A similar community coalition is currently engaged in a similar lawsuit on the other side of Pennsylvania in the city of Pittsburgh. (The text of the agreement & some relevant Philadelphia media coverage is available from Will Gonzalez of Police Barrio-Relations Project at pbrp@philly.infi.net).

One of the most important functions of the Conference, as always, was to provide an opportunity for victims and survivors of police abuse to develop a network of activists and experts willing to join in their specific struggles.

Mary D. Powers, N-COPA Coordinator
Nancy Rhodes also contributed to this report.