“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
– Audre Lorde
A young Petaluma Black woman goes out to roller skate near her home and is immediately encircled by three white teenagers on bicycles who taunt her and physically try to prevent her from skating away.
A pick-up truck with its engine revving loudly pulls up alongside two Hispanic youths walking home from Casa Grande High school and a young white passenger yells out, “Go back to Mexico!”
A white Petaluma man bangs on his neighbor’s front door before hollering and swearing at the Latino family inside for daring to play Spanish-language music on the Fourth of July.
These are not isolated incidents; rather they are proof that racism exists here in Petaluma just as it does elsewhere in the United States.
Because many of the overt displays of racial hatred in Petaluma have been initiated by young people, Petaluma City Schools last year adopted an innovative new program which has begun training teachers, staff and students in the areas of equity, inclusivity and diversity.
Thanks to recent action by the Petaluma City Council, the schools’ initiative will soon become part of a much larger, broad-based community-wide effort to lessen racial divisions by enhancing communication and building trust and understanding between the city’s different ethnic groups and the city’s majority white population and police department.
In the aftermath of the videotaped murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer last spring, multiple demonstrations were held locally and city leaders were forced to confront an uncomfortable national truth: The bond of trust between police and local people of color is broken.
City officials could have ignored this fact. Instead, they chose to act by meeting with members of the Black, Latino and indigenous population to seek their input on what could be done. A listening session was held in July to solicit community input and the city engaged the services of Tracey Webb, a Black woman, who is providing consulting and community convening services to improve the city’s racial climate and police interactions with minority residents. A lengthy report on the issue was developed, several recommendations submitted and last month the city council agreed to appoint an advisory committee to review those recommendations and take action.
Consultant Webb, who is expected to assist the new advisory committee in developing and implementing new policies and programs to improve the city’s racial climate, told me last week that she feels positive about the potential for change.
One reason Webb is hopeful is the strong commitment she’s seen from city leaders, especially Petaluma Police Chief Ken Savano who has acknowledged that many people of color do not trust the police and that he wants to change that perception.
Because the vast majority of emergency calls to the police are for people suffering mental health crises, drug addiction and homelessness--conditions which tend to affect minority populations more intensely--the city council agreed that expanding mental health services should become a priority. To do that, Savano told me the city has recently begun work to formulate a new program that would provide mobile crisis intervention with mental health professionals for emergency calls involving people suffering from severe mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness.
Faith Ross, president of Petaluma Blacks for Community Development, is also hopeful that change is coming. Noting the fact that Police Chief Savano took her suggestion to heart that his department’s leadership team should visit Emmanuel Acho, host of the online show “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man,” Ross told me, “It really showed that he is willing to listen and resolve these issues.”
According to Savano, the visit with Acho and ongoing training to identify and counter implicit (unconscious) bias is helping officers improve their interactions with minority residents.
But resolving the racial issues will take more than police training and an attitude shift. It will also take money.
The hard reality is that city’s police department has undergone severe budget cuts in recent years while calls for service have continually increased. Staff is overworked and retention is a continual problem as department members seek higher paying jobs in larger agencies nearby.
Petaluma Police staffing ratios remain far below state and national averages at a time when property crimes (burglaries, robberies and grand theft) are increasing. As a result, the time available for investigating and preventing crime is insufficient.
On the positive side, ongoing efforts to better diversify the department are paying off, with eight Hispanic officers currently serving alongside one Black officer.
Thankfully, city voters approved Measure U on the November ballot, a sales tax increase which will provide some of the funding necessary for new mental health services and, hopefully, the hiring of more police officers.
Following the 2015 publication of former President Obama’s report on 21st Century Policing, the Petaluma department voluntarily agreed to adopt many of the report’s recommendations including a professional certification program that measures “best practices” in providing quality police services. As a result of such certification, coupled with the department’s strong public service ethos and zero tolerance policy for unwarranted use of force, the Petaluma Police department has not suffered any reports of police misconduct in recent years.
Despite scarce resources, local police are doing a very good job serving our community and are sincere in wanting to raise service levels for and build trust with minority residents.
Still, many in the community are poorly informed about how the police actually operate.
Some have said they want to “defund” the police, somehow believing that crimes do not need to be investigated or the perpetrators prosecuted. Or that crime will magically disappear once the police are gone.
Others refuse to believe Petaluma suffers from any racial hatred, probably because they are white and never experienced discrimination.
Neither is true, and the constructive course city officials are currently pursuing is exactly the right one.
(John Burns is former publisher of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. He can be reached at john.burns@arguscourier.com)