U.S. officials hear from Chester residents about police
For the last two years, Delphine Matthews hasn't had time to grieve. She's spent days that have melded into weeks organizing protests and creating Facebook campaigns, distributing fliers, and writing letters. Letters to Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson, and Michelle Obama. Letters, she said, to anyone who would listen.
For the last two years, Delphine Matthews hasn't had time to grieve.
She's spent days that have melded into weeks organizing protests and creating Facebook campaigns, distributing fliers, and writing letters. Letters to Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson, and Michelle Obama. Letters, she said, to anyone who would listen.
Two years ago, Matthews' son, Frank McQueen, 34, was shot and killed by a Chester police officer. Police said officers returned fire after McQueen shot and wounded an officer in the abdomen. Even so, Matthews said, she questions why her son was shot so many times that a funeral director insisted on a closed casket.
Matthews' story is just one version of Chester - which she told Thursday night to visiting federal officials - but one fueled by skepticism and resentment toward police. In Matthews' version, Chester is the forgotten city among the Baltimores and the Fergusons, with similar problems with police if anyone would listen.
But there is another version of Chester, the one Police Commissioner Darren Alston, a 23-year veteran who took the helm of the force in January, knows well. He sees the force as overworked and understaffed, just 94 officers in a city of 34,000 that is notorious for violence.
In just five months, police have responded to 27,000 calls - one call every nine minutes. And 13 homicides.
Even with all of that, Alston said, there were just three police-involved shootings resulting in deaths in the last four years. Still, he said, some residents are quick to turn on police.
The two dueling versions are not new to Chester, but the U.S. Department of Justice is now listening. At a meeting Thursday at Widener University, federal officials heard from residents, including Matthews, over and over again.
"The cops don't know how to treat us, but they want us to treat them with respect because they've got a badge," said Regina Minter, 33. "They're a gang, the most powerful gang, and they do what they want."
For two hours, more than two dozen residents aired their complaints about Chester police. They've been racially profiled, residents said. Arrested again and again. Misunderstood by a police force that they say no longer represents them.
Last month, the Justice Department announced that it had entered into a "collaborative reform" initiative with Chester police, a probe Chester officials requested. Chester is just the 12th city in the country - and by far the smallest - to voluntarily ask for a reform.
The initiative is starkly different from the Justice Department's "pattern-or-practice" investigations that have been opened in police forces across the country, including Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. Considered a more intense investigation, federal officials can only open such cases if there is evidence that police have violated the Constitution by using excessive force, biased policing, or other illegal practices.
If violations are found, recommendations are backed by a court order. And if police resist, federal officials can sue.
The "collaborative reform" process comes at lower stakes - in theory, police and federal officials work together. And while the Justice Department still digs into a force's problems and recommends changes over two years, it has few ways to ensure change is made.
So what prevents Chester police from sticking to their old ways?
"Collaborative reform suggests at minimum that you have buy-in from the top executives within a department," said Stephen Rushin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Alabama who has studied Justice Department investigations. "To change a big organization, you have to have buy-in ... so they are already part of the way toward success."
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was the first to ask for collaborative reform, in 2011. Three years later, in a federal report, officials found that its officer-involved shootings had dropped nearly 50 percent. It had implemented 90 percent of the 80 recommendations. It developed a reality-based training program for officers.
Alston said Thursday he knows there are ways Chester police can improve.
"That's part of the reason we're at this point," he said. "We are doing everything to improve public trust, because with our crime rate, we need them to believe in us."
"If we're vulnerable, that's a good thing. We're trying to figure out what we're doing wrong."
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