November 8, 2016

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 8, 2016 VOLUME 107 ISSUE 12 www.UniversityStar.com

Transparency in police shooting: Two Texas State faculty member’s fight By Rae Glassford Assistant News Editor @rae_maybe Police violence has been the subject of national anxiety for some time now, due in part to the fact only 2

“After that incident, we started hearing all the TV pundits saying that we don’t have any way of knowing how many people officers shoot and kill every year—my response being, why don’t

Williams began crossreferencing that list with all open-source articles they could find, including televised news reports, newspaper clippings, and online resources. This comparison eventually

“There’s some roughly 50 thousand reporters in this country,” Williams said. “If an officer shoots and kills somebody, there’s a chance that at least one of those reporters has written a

yielded a 27 percent disparity between reported fatalities and actual fatalities. “The numbers don’t stack up well at all,” Williams said. “The federal programs are collecting information on a little more than half of the shootings that have occurred over the past several years. California is collecting about 70 percent, and Texas is collecting about 75 percent.” The first step in the research process was arduous, Bowman said. Before they could move on to statistical analysis, Williams and Bowman had to sift through the internet to find what they were looking for: deceased persons whose names did not appear in any official state or federal database.

story about it.” T h e results of the study have chilling implications. Texas and California are the only states that are required to report police shooting deaths, so to find out that they are missing at least 27 percent of their data was deeply disconcerting. Williams’ interest in this avenue of research is professional as well as scholarly, as he is a former SMPD Chief of Police. In the wake of a spate of fatal police shootings

that has plagued the nation in recent years, local police departments across the U.S. have scrambled to find ways to reconnect with the public they serve. Sergeant Rolando Bel-

PHOTO BY LAURA RODRIGUEZ | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

states out of fifty are legally bound to report fatal police shootings. But last year, two Texas State professors decided to create change. Scott Bowman and Howard Williams, members of the department of criminal justice, have recently completed the first phase in an ongoing study, wherein their goal has been to determine the frequency with which police-related shooting deaths are not reported. “The Federal government lacks the authority to mandate states report this data,” Williams said. “Texas and California, on the other hand, both have statutes that require any custody-related death be reported to the Attorney General’s Office, essentially.” Williams has been conducting research in arrest-related custody deaths for some time, but this particular project evolved shortly after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

we know?” Williams said. “So I just decided, I want to know how many, and I started counting.” In the case of the National Vital Statistics Service, it is mandatory that police departments report deaths, but only if a shooting involving an officer has been recorded as the official cause of death on the victim’s death certificate. That leaves only two states mandated to collect and report shooting data, and the other 48 lack any accountability measures. “Often, if someone is shot and killed, that’s all it says on the death certificate—the fact that a policeman did the shooting will be omitted,” Williams said. All reported data is collected by the Attorney General, whose office is required to disseminate that information. Therefore, there is a list of reported officer-related shootings on public record. Bowman and

mares of UPD said the department regularly hosts events like ‘Chat with the Chief ’ and ‘Coffee with a Cop’, where students are encouraged to discuss safety concerns with law enforcement directly. These events are meant to help officers connect with the student body on a personal level, as well as to combat rising tension between civilians and law enforcement officials.“What little in-

teractions with UPD I’ve had, have been very civil,” said Brent Hearn, theater sophomore. “But I’m a straight-looking white male, and I am aware of the bias in favor of me. Honestly, it’s scary that people can get away with more things if they look like me.” The paper detailing the results of the study, entitled The Limitations of Government Databases for Analyzing Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings in the United States, has been published in the Criminal Justice Policy Review, a quarterly

academic journal. “If we want to find ways to prevent or minimize police shootings, then we need to have data on what’s actually going on,” Williams said. “As it stands right now, any assumption we make about these cases can only be half-right, because we’re only collecting half of the relevant information. If we really want to be earnest about trying to reduce the number of shootings, we need complete data.”

UNIVERSITY

Common Experience pays tribute to black WWII heroes By Rae Glassford Assistant News Editor @rae_maybe On Nov. 3, a lecture hall in the Hines Academic Center filled with students, many of whom were in uniform. Veterans, current members of the armed forces and civilians came out to hear journalist and author Linda Hervieux discuss her recently published book, “Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Hom e and at War.” “I am honored to be speaking to you today,” Hervieux began. This was the first time she had delivered her presentation to an ROTC group, she said. As an expatriate from Massachusetts currently living in France, Hervieux has written for a number of newspapers and journals, including The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. “We Americans are told to remember our history, but not all of it,” Hervieux said, in reference

to the erasure of black history from the mainstream American school system. “We are implored to remember the Alamo, but not the war of attrition waged against African Americans during the Jim Crow era. Kids learn about Paul Revere, but not Crispus Attucks.” Part of that forgotten history revolves around the events of June 6, 1944, when nearly 2,000 African-American soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy. “There are many who consider D-Day to be one of the most momentous days of the 20th century,” Hervieux said. “I would argue that to exclude such a significant portion of those involved does a disservice to the American people.” Like her book, Hervieux’s presentation focused on the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only African-American combat unit present during the D-Day landings. “At the time, there were two armies in America: black and white,” Her-

vieux said. “They required separate transportation, separate barracks, separate mess halls…it was an incredibly inefficient way to operate. These soldiers were told they were fighting for freedom…the freedom of a country where they were treated like secondclass citizens.” One soldier was Waverly Bernard “Woody” Woodson Jr., a promising pre-med student who enlisted at the earliest opportunity, rather than wait to be drafted. Initially trained as an anti-aircraft artillery officer, Woodson was reassigned to train as a medic because he was ineligible for promotion due to the color of his skin. When the Allied invasion of Normandy came, Woodson collapsed after providing medical aid to fellow soldiers for a period of no less than thirty hours while wounded. For this feat, he received a Purple Heart, a belated Bronze Star and a nomination for the Congressional Medal of Honor – an award which was

instead given to a white medic who performed a similar feat, without having sustained any wounds. For many members of the audience (military personnel and civilians alike), the contents of Hervieux’s presentation were shocking. Her mention that German POWs held in United States internment camps typically received better treatment from white Americans than black Allied soldiers elicited a raised eyebrow among the audience. “Most of this stuff isn’t talked about,” said Daniel Duncan, army cadet and physical geography sophomore. “It was a shock to me. History is surprising.” The lecture was coordinated by a number of entities active on-campus, including the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, the History Department, the Honors College, and the Center for Gender & Diversity Studies. “There was so much information I didn’t know,” said Shaquille Henry, army cadet and criminal

Linda Hervieux and her book ,”Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War,” are a part of this year’s Common Experience events. PHOTO BY CASSANDRIA ALVARADO | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

justice sophomore. “It’s insane to see how much the army has changed.” The army may have changed for the better, but Waverly Woodson still hasn’t received his medal of honor. In fact, none of the 1 million African-Americans who served in WWII received the nation’s highest honor until the Clinton presidency, over fifty years after the war’s end—despite the fact that many

of them were awarded equivalent medals by the French government immediately following the war. However, there is a movement to have Woodson awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. “There is an entire generation of Americans of color whose contributions have not been recognized,” Hervieux said. “It’s not just black history, it’s American history.”