Prometheus 6

This, the third in the series of three brutally honest articles on suburban policing around Philadelphia by the Inquirer, is the most hopeful of the set. 

Forging bonds
Coatesville has a long history of racial strife and high arrest rates for minor crimes. But the town has new leaders, and they are reaching out to develop new solutions.
By Mark Fazlollah and Keith Herbert

The article presents the current police chief, William H. Matthews, quite well. He's made changes, has messed up and apologized, and he's actually trying stuff, you know?

Not stuff like getting 10,000 guys to take responsibility for all of history, mind you...

In a real way, Coatesville is still troubled by a murder - one nearly a century old.

Ask any African American about race relations in Coatesville, and the conversation usually turns to Zachariah Walker, the last man lynched in Pennsylvania.

In 1911, Walker was under arrest for killing a white steel company guard. He was dragged from a Coatesville hospital and burned alive in a field just south of the city as 5,000 spectators watched - women and children in the front. Pleading for his life, Walker tried to climb out of the flames, but townspeople pushed him back.

A county grand jury called witnesses but said that "a conspiracy of silence was formed among the citizens of Coatesville."

Coatesville's police chief and 15 others were charged in the killing, but everyone was acquitted. The chief ran for reelection and won.

In December 2006, local historians succeeded in putting up a memorial plaque on the lynching site, saying it was long past time for the city to confront past sins. "We've lifted the curse. The curse of Coatesville is no more," said Samuel C. Stretton, a West Chester lawyer.

Curse or no, the legacy of racism has continued to haunt Coatesville.

In 1957, Coatesville was one of three Pennsylvania school districts that the state identified as being the most segregated. When city school officials agreed to integrate, white parents responded with protests.

In 1973, a group of black workers filed a class-action suit against the city's largest employer, Lukens Steel Co. The company paid $3.7 million after a federal judge found that workers were "exposed to a wide range of racial harassments."

Soon, Coatesville began going the way of other rust-belt towns. Lukens and other factories began closing, and whites began leaving.

As the town struggled to find a new, post-steel age future, city planners rolled out one redevelopment plan after another. One was built on nostalgia, a theme of bringing back the old days when Coatesville was a bustling shopping center.

The plans foundered, one after another. A big reason, leaders concluded, was crime.

By the late 1980s, Coatesville was becoming Chester County's main drug marketplace, with a rising tide of gunplay and felonies.

Police responded by ramping up arrests, using statutes such as "obstructing" sidewalks to clear the streets in high-crime areas.

In 1990, blacks represented 40 percent of Coatesville's population but nearly three-fourths of the people arrested - mainly for minor offenses, FBI data show. On a per-capita basis, police made more arrests than only a handful of other American cities.

It would be a pattern that continued, with minor fluctuations, for 15 years.

These practices eventually wore deep scars of resentment in the African American community.

One researcher found that a belief in police bias was practically gospel in Coatesville's black neighborhoods.

"The police use a strong show of force whenever confronting any African Americans, no matter how small the infraction," wrote William J. Loewen, in a 2000 University of Pennsylvania study.

"They appear unable to differentiate between law-abiding blacks and law-breaking blacks."

This is down in the middle of the article, but at least it's there.