Mobile NAACP reacts to Kenyen Brown report on MPD policies and procedures
MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — Mobile NAACP President Robert Clopton said he wasn’t surprised that the Kenyen Brown report findings mentioned that the Mobile Police Department’s policing was harmful to Black communities.
Former U.S. Attorney Kenyen Brown did a comprehensive review of the Mobile Police Department’s policies and procedures after six use-of-force incidents last year.
In all six incidents, the person who was either killed or injured was Black.
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“The reason I’m not impressed with them due to the fact that they fall in line with what we felt were true as we analyze the facts or the data that we had received,” Clopton explained. “And from our analyzation of those facts and data that we receive up to in speaking with the families, okay, we formulated an opinion; therefore we formulated an opinion that an injustice was done.”
Even though Clopton wasn’t surprised by that fact, he explained the problem isn’t just within the police department. He says it is part of a larger systemic issue of policing and Black communities.
“We got to have transparency,” Clopton explained. “The narrative cannot always focus on the negativity of the African-American or the person who has, you know, been assailed by an assailant and that assailant being the police. The correct response would be, we have an incident and we’re looking into it.”
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Suspended Police Chief Paul Prine said Kenyen Brown’s report has been used to further divide the Black community and police departments.
“This is why people distrust policing so much,” Prine explained. “There’s absolutely no doubt that politics was brought into it and nothing more but to stir up the emotions, in my opinion, of the Black community.”
However, Clopton said the report itself doesn’t really help or hurt that stigma.
“If anything, it compromises it, but what it does do is give Mobile an opportunity to make a change,” Clopton said. “If there was, as they were, improprieties inflicted upon African-Americans then they were that were unconstitutional and it should be looked into.”
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