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Monday, March 20, 2006
Charges Against Dr. Akom Dropped; Corrigan Denies Racial Profiling; Walkout Planned For Wednesday
Justice For Dr. Antwi Akom, and an end to racial profiling.
Lots of new developments in the case against Dr. Antwi Akom, the San Francisco State professor who was racially profiled by campus police when he went to campus to get some books for a lecture.
He has since been falsely accused of assaulting police officers, when in fact, he was confronted by police officers who arrested him essentially for being in his own office. More background on the case can be found here.
In a clear victory for Dr. Akom, San Francisco DA Kamala Harris dropped all charges against him last Thursday.
However, in a misguided effort to save face on the larger question of racial profiling on campus, SFSU President Robert A. Corrigan has begun attacking Dr. Akom's integrity. Corrigan insists that no racial profiling has taken place, and that the campus remains "a just and trustworthy community."
This follows a report by former Mayor Willie Brown and former DA Louise Renne, requested by Corrigan, which found that SF State police may have coached six of the seven witnesses--keeping them in the same room with each other, and handing witnesses documents to read from during this process.
Only three of these tainted witnesses agreed to be re-interviewed for the report. There were numerous inconsistencies in the stories of the security guard and the police. Yet Corrigan has characterized the report as stating "no racial profiling took place", a conclusion that the facts of the report do not support.
There is little mention of previous student, faculty, and staff complaints of racist harassment by police, one that they argued added up to a pattern of racial profiling at this institution of higher learning going back years.
The report finds that one 2004 incident at the June Jordan School of Equity was "not directly relevant to Dr. Akom's arrest", and that investigating that matter "would have exceeded the original investigative mandate, prolonged the inquiry and delayed a report on this matter by several months."
The report states that the SFSU Police Chief Wible herself acknowledged five incidents over the last five years, but that investigations--conducted by other police--exonerated the officers who were involved in them.
The pattern is plain as day and Corrigan's efforts to deny racial profiling at a campus like SF State are a strained effort to recast reality, an effort that SF DA Kamala Harris evidently refuses to dignify.
But the reality is that racial profiling is a reality on even the most liberal, multiracial, and allegedly tolerant campuses in the country. It is an issue that no amount of soft-shoeing and lie-telling can mask over.
If you are in the Bay Area this Wednesday, join the College of Ethnic Studies in walking out on Wednesday.
And please visit the Justice For Akom website now, to send a letter to President Corrigan and the CSU Board of Trustees to let them know: The only way you get rid of racial profiling is to deal with it, not deny it.
posted by Zentronix @ 11:39 AM
 
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2 Comments:
Not racial profiling? How often does a non-black professor gets arrested like that?
_eric
the sad thing is, it happens everywhere. it is so pathetic to see and hear of these board committee members trying to cover it up. a few semesters back we had an incident with an africana professor and a military recruiter. check it out... http://www.afrocubaweb.com/tonyvandermeer.htm
-bobby
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