On Feb. 27, UW-Madison community members received a familiar “Timely Warning” email that highlighted the ongoing threat of burglary on campus. UW-Madison is obligated to send these emails under the Clery Act, which requires campuses to report specific crimes, such as homicide, sexual offenses and robbery. While these emails often describe the alleged perpetrator, rarely do they include identifying photographs like the one circulated on Monday.
It is disheartening, if unsurprising, that the UW-Madison Police Department chose to circulate incriminating photos when the suspects are two young black men. The images in Monday’s email undermine the former UWPD Chief ’s efforts to respect campus concerns about the ability of Clery Act emails to perpetuate racial profiling, thereby threatening the safety of black students on campus. The Daily Cardinal’s decision to tweet the “Timely Warning” and share the photographs contributes to the same broad injustices.
Suspect descriptions are allowed under UWPD policy at their discretion and Clery Act emails often use race as a central identifying category. However, a quick search of previous “Timely Warning” emails reveals that those regarding theft and burglaries did not include photos, names, or past criminal records of suspects.
Given the web of surveillance that made it possible to produce multiple photos of the suspects in Monday’s crime warning email, it seems unlikely that the absence of photos in crime warnings about white suspects was due to a lack of images. With few exceptions, white suspects—even ones who have committed acts of violence against others—are not pictured.
Such biased reporting reflects and reinforces the criminalization of black bodies by reaffirming conscious and unconscious, personal and institutional, beliefs that all black people are a threat to “the community.” And as we have seen time and time and time again, such affirmation can place black and brown people in serious danger. This violence is preventable. Over the past few years, students have been actively pressuring UWPD not to mark racial categories so as to avoid perpetuating negative stereotypes about black men. This practice has been adopted by other campuses, such as the University of Minnesota, which has made efforts to limit the reporting of racial characteristics.
With all due to respect to the victims of these recent burglaries, the true threat to UW-Madison community safety is white racist students who take advantage of a permissive environment to continually challenge the presence of non-white students on campus through intentional and unintentional, everyday acts and words of violence. This campus is only 2 percent black; despite that, white students regularly question their presence. Last year, for example, UW-Madison student papers covered the story of a male aggressor who spat in the face of a black woman and “hurled hateful language about race and socioeconomic status” at other First Wave scholars in a dorm.
More recently, a white student began recruiting for a white supremacist organization on campus. Ironically enough, while Chancellor Rebecca Blank sent a campus-wide email expressing “concern” and reiterating her respect for the safety of the campus community, she did not name the student (Daniel Dropik) or include a photograph of him.
This, along with the chancellor’s misguided suggestion that UW-Madison reconsider its admission policy of not requiring students to report their criminal history (a policy adopted by other universities that disproportionately harms students of color), perfectly captures how the administration often stumbles in protecting students of color. In fact, the past few years seem to suggest it will go to greater lengths to protect campus buildings and property than the students within them.
To reiterate, sending photographs incriminating black teenagers in a burglary to tens of thousands of email inboxes reinforces the criminalization of black bodies, as well as white UW-Madison students more particular and hateful notions that black people do not belong on campus. It puts the lives of black students and community members at an even greater risk of surveillance and violence. UWPD should do better and follow the precedent they themselves have set by not highlighting the race of offenders, in order to ensure the safety of students of color on campus—in particular, black students.
We hope they apologize for their actions and that the most recent email does not represent a new norm for the new Chief of Police.
What are your thoughts on the most recent campus-wide “Timely Warning” email? Should UWPD include photos of suspects for safety reasons? Or would this in fact do more harm than good for students of color on campus, perpetuating negative stereotypes? Please send any and all questions, comments and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
