By Patrick Adrian
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CLAREMONT — The Claremont City Council passed a resolution in which it pledges to collaborate with city partners, including the Claremont Police Department, to stand against incidents of racial injustice and police brutality and strengthen community diversity, in part through education and violence-prevention programs.
The city council adopted a resolution Wednesday night by a majority vote of 7 to 1, with one abstention, condemning police brutality and supporting racial justice. The resolution says the city council will condemn all acts of brutality and excessive force by law enforcement members, and work with the city manager to ensure that the safety needs of all members of the community are met.
Councilor Abigail Kier, who proposed the resolution, said that systemic racism is relevant to rural communities like Claremont, contrary to some public perception. While incidents of police brutality have declined in many metropolitan areas, these incidents are on the rise in suburban and rural areas. Kier also noted that about 20% of rural communities in America are non-white, according to 2010 Census data.
One thousand people have been killed by police in the past year, Kier said, which is substantiated by The Washington Post’s database on fatal police shootings. According to National Violent Death Reporting System data, black persons are 2.8 times more likely to die due to use of lethal force by law enforcement per million than their fellow white civilians, even though black victims were more frequently to be unarmed than their white counterparts.
Additionally, in all fatal police shootings that occurred between 2013 and 2019, only 1% of those cases resulted in an officer being charged with a crime, according to Kier with data from Mapping Police Violence.
“If you’re looking at these pieces of data, it becomes so much easier to understand why there’s so much [reaction] around this,” Kier said. “The context is really important.”
The resolution has received support from both the Claremont Police Commission and Police Chief Mark Chase, who endorsed the document as “both a police chief and a Claremont citizen.”
Last month Chase publicly condemned the actions of the four Minneapolis police officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd, who died while officers were apprehending him. Chase had not only rebuked the officer Derek Chauvin, who was recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck, but also the three other officers for not intervening.
“As we saw in May, inaction is almost as bad as action, and there were several people who didn’t take action,” Chase told the council. “This is a small part the city council and the city can take action on, at least in condemning and talking about this.”
The resolution received approval from all but two councilors, both of whom are former Claremont police officers. Councilor Andrew O’Hearne abstained from voting and Councilor Jon Stone voted against the resolution.
“This resolution should also reflect that the police officers killed in the line of duty in 2020 is at 135 as of today,” Stone said in opposition. “I think this resolution does a disservice to police departments everywhere and I will not support this.”
Kier said she wrote this with city employee Rebecca Vinduska, who had volunteered to help Kier with the draft.
Kier emphasized that she did not solicit Vinduska for assistance and learning of Vinduska’s interest through City Manager Ed Morris, who shared the information with Kier.
Kier said she wanted to get the nature of Vinduska’s involvement on record, partly to share the credit but also to establish no city codes were broken. City councilors are not allowed to give direct instructions or tasks to city employees.
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