Following the release of a study on the presence of racial profiling in the University of Pennsylvania Police Department, the family of Spruce College House Associate Faculty Master Rui DaSilva -- whose assault by police touched off the investigation -- is still waiting for an apology from the University.
"We are pleased at the amount of work [the committee] put into" the report, said Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, DaSilva's wife and director of Latin American and Latino Studies at Penn. "We would hope that in the wake of this report either Vice President [for Communications Lori] Doyle, Vice President [for Public Safety Maureen] Rush or some other member of the administration would find a way to apologize."
"For us, the report does not provide any closure as a family," she added.
The family did not file a complaint after the incident -- in which DaSilva was arrested and pepper-sprayed by a UPPD officer while attempting to deliver donated bicycles to the Quadrangle -- because it hoped that the committee's investigation would provide some sort of recourse.
"It's now clear that we should perhaps file a complaint directly with the UPPD," Farnsworth-Alvear said.
"We wonder if there's going to be some other mechanism for determining whether or not excessive force was used," she added.
Committee Chairman and School of Social Work professor Dennis Culhane explained that the committee's mandate was not to investigate DaSilva's case in particular.
"Our charge did not involve drawing conclusions about that specific incident, and so we did not do so," Culhane said. "We did not have any kind of legal authority for calling witnesses, determining rules of evidence and these kinds of formal review procedures."
"Our review was really to provide background and to raise issues for our further consideration with regard to the overall policy," he added.
Culhane also said that legal restrictions prevented the committee from interviewing the officer involved in the incident.
"The collective bargaining agreement between the University and the Fraternal Order of Police does not permit officers to be interviewed as part of any review by external entities, and so we did not have access to the officer," Culhane said. "We did have the officer's report about the incident," as well as a transcript of an interview performed by the officer's supervisor, he said.
Farnsworth-Alvear was pleased with the contents of the report, however.
"It's clear that having diversity training in place that's done competently is a good thing," Farnsworth-Alvear said. "We were very glad that this report may stimulate a new set of training initiatives on the part of the UPPD."
Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, agreed that improved training -- a key emphasis of the report -- was an important first step in tackling the complex and sensitive issue of racial profiling.
Complaints can be reduced "if much more emphasis in police and communities was put on the rules of discourse -- how police should speak to people, how people should speak to police," Sherman said.
He added that police should be more specifically trained in "how to develop the effective communication and language for investigative situations, especially proactive stops."
Sherman explained that the use of proper police language and attitude can help prevent situations from escalating to the use of force.
"What the police profession has to confront is the idea that they're using 19th century language in the 21st century," Sherman said. "It's a lot more insulting to order people around now than it used to be."
Farnsworth-Alvear agreed that effective communication is key when police encounter people.
"No one minds being politely stopped," she said. The "humiliation is what's upsetting, not the stop."
