Triple XXX

Fifteen years ago, thanks to my wife, I became involved with a PACADA group (Purdue Academic Advisors Association) committed to raising white awareness of racism at Purdue University. I was part of a team asked to provide a training session for the Purdue University Police.

We introduced ourselves to each other. Mentioned our hometowns. It seemed to me then that every third Purdue officer had grown up in Kentucky. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is not a lot of diversity in small town Kentucky. There was not much diversity in the department. It made “cultural competency”, to use a phrase borrowed from education, a personal and institutional struggle. Things are better now.

Fifteen years later we have elected an African-American President. In the same week, we have had to investigate a race-based incident at the Triple XXX Restaurant.

Whatever the results of the official investigation, the Triple XXX and the West Lafayette Police Department will be associated in the popular imagination with this racial incident. More than a restaurant window has been damaged.

This situation provides a real challenge for the West Lafayette city administration. I believe John Dennis is a good man. I applaud his addressing the Purdue NAACP gathering last Sunday night. I know he will get this right. I know he is committed to diversity in the police department. (Can you imagine how this evening would have gone if an officer of color had responded?)

But if Purdue students know anything about the Mayor, it is that he was once a Lafayette policeman. It raises their suspicions. Will “We don’t know what happened” (which is seen as disparaging the complainants) become “nothing happened”?

We Democrats are nervous. We know a Dennis campaign worker and contributor has become police chief. We know past police behavior and the response of the Police Merit Commission has been an election issue. We know the owners of the Triple XXX have financially supported this administration. On it’s most recent agenda, the Republican Board of Public Works had one of the officers involved in the altercation up for a promotion. Sinister? No. Cozy? Yes.

I hope the city’s Human Relations Commission will be of some help here. Their composition should allow them to bridge the “gown – town” divide. Councilors Proales (who is a student), Bunder (who works with students), and Thomas (an African-American) will continue to be interested in the investigation. We are pleased that the Ehresman’s and the Purdue NAACP are in conversation. We await a full report on police behavior that night.

But we need to do more than declare this an isolated incident blown out of proportion and then, with perhaps a huff or a smirk, move on. The arc of history does bend towards justice. Maybe in another 15 years things will be much better in our city.