True Left

NEW YORK — One white court officer in Brooklyn posted an illustration of President Barack Obama with a noose around his neck on social media. Another white officer referred to a Black court officer as “one of the good monkeys.”

A third white court officer commented to a white colleague that he would have done better on a firearms test if he had been given a “Sean Bell target,” a reference to an unarmed Black man killed by police in 2006.

The incidents of overt racism were among several mentioned in a new report about racial bias in the New York state court system commissioned by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore after national protests this summer against institutional racism in the criminal justice system.

Jeh Johnson, a former Homeland Security secretary under Obama, led the team that did the review. His report, released with little fanfare last week, found pervasive racism in New York courts, both explicit and implicit, from judges, court officers and lawyers. The accounts of racial bias the team collected bore a striking similarity to testimony in another review from three decades ago, the report said.
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“The sad picture that emerges is, in effect, a second-class system of justice for people of color in New York State,” Johnson wrote. “This is a moment that demands a strong and pronounced rededication to equal justice under law by the New York State Court system.”
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The officer, Sgt. Terri Napolitano of Brooklyn Criminal Court, was accused of uploading to Facebook an illustration of Obama with a noose around his neck and of Hillary Clinton being taken to a wooden apparatus to be hanged. Napolitano did not respond to a request for comment.

She was suspended for 30 days, her firearm was taken away, and she remains on paid leave with disciplinary charges pending, court officials said. After the posts appeared, three Black court officers sent a letter to DiFiore saying the racist memes were “only the tip of the iceberg.”

The sergeant’s behavior had long been tolerated, the report said, which was evidence of a broader institutional acceptance of racist conduct. It recommended “more robust bias training for nonjudicial personnel, particularly the court officer community.”
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Johnson’s team found that some court officers, in dealing with people of color who were defendants, lawyers or the public, were disrespectful, condescending, and at times, racist.

Court officers were heard using racial slurs and berating minority litigants about the clothes they wore. Black defendants were often handcuffed when appearing in court for minor infractions, while white defendants were not, the report found.
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As part of the review, Johnson and his team interviewed nearly 300 people throughout the court system, including many Black and Hispanic lawyers who recounted incidents of bias.

These lawyers said that they were often mistaken for criminal defendants and were asked to show identification to enter the courthouse while most white lawyers were not questioned. They also said they were often asked to identify themselves when they sat in the front row of the courtroom, which is reserved for lawyers.

Black and Hispanic lawyers told the report’s authors that they are “believed less often” when making statements to judges, a problem that is magnified when their client is also a person of color.

One lawyer said she has been called “aggressive” while her white male counterparts have not when they have made similar arguments before the court, the report said.

Chrishana White, a Black woman who is the director of diversity and inclusion for Brooklyn Defender Services, a public defender organization, said the kind of pervasive racism in courthouses that the report highlighted had led her to stop practicing law. She said when she walked into court she was often “assumed to be less than an attorney.”
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Judges interviewed for the report said there were challenges to diversifying the judiciary. The appointment process, some judges said, required candidates to go through judicial screening committees that were predominantly white.

One judge said the electoral process also tends to marginalize Black and Hispanic candidates. Like the appointive process, it depends on a candidate’s personal connections, and the nominating system, which is controlled by party loyalists, “causes candidates of color to be bypassed or discouraged by party leadership, particularly in upstate counties.”