In an interview with USA Today, Broome County District Attorney Michael Korchak defended his inaction over white supremacist threats. It was up to the Susquehanna Valley school and the State Police, and not his office he said, to act on the mass shooting threats made by student Payton Gendron:

“The school did what they were supposed to do and called state police” Korchak said. “And state police did what they were supposed to do and referred him for a mental health evaluation”… “What more could have been done?”

Indeed. What more?

There is more than a bit of white-washing going on here.

Perhaps Korchak has forgotten that he funds retired police officers’ jobs in schools all around Broome County—including in the Susquehanna School District where a former Vestal Police officer and SWAT team leader has worked for 12 years as a school resource officer.  What does all this policing and surveillance directed by his office produce?

Korchak is not alone for policing Broome’s schools is big business. Last December Broome County Sheriff Harder, who runs his own school officers, responded to reports of social media threats by reassuring the public and press that there was “no evidence” behind the rumors. Local school officials did the same.

People and the press need to ask questions.

What do these police officers patrolling schools do, day in and day out?  Perhaps they don’t hear or report violent threats from within the school? Do they not know when the State Police are investigating their students? Or perhaps they are incapable of hearing, much less acting on, violent racist threats?

Might their training and experience in all-white police forces be a factor? 

Or are they simply representing and enforcing the county’s racialized record of arrests, prosecution, and incarceration?

The Color of Justice
Broome County Black Incarceration Rate: 2,076
Broome County white incarceration rate: 292
NYS white incarceration rate:  158
NYS Black Incarceration Rate: 1,123

2018 Rate/100,000. Source: Vera

Or might racist behavior be the norm and legitimized? Reports from inside the county jail are especially grim, as in one man’s statement to a local activist organization that

“I’ve been called Nxxxx, monkey, and other degrading names… when we speak up we get punished by being put in the Box… animals get treated better than Broome County inmates.”

Its a common report by incarcerated Black persons. A licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience in juvenile correctional settings testified in a recent lawsuit that “youth spoke of the Correctional Officers carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their ‘nxxx beaters’.” The Sheriff and County lost that lawsuit.

Another ongoing lawsuit recounts how a local teenager was stripped and beaten while being told “do what you’re told, N-word”).

Might it be that constant protests and lawsuits against overtly racist behavior by city, county, and university police and schools need to be recognized and pursued? 

And these are only a sample of the cases that have been publicly reported in the press and to county legislators, the NYS Attorney General’s office, and elected officials.

***

There is a lesson here that local and state officials are working mightily to cover up:  the problem of racism cannot be isolated to “exceptional” or “evil”  individuals, it is systemic,  reproduced daily by the forces and administrations of the city, county, and state.