James is a Black teenager who is soft-spoken and looks about
three years older than his actual age. On a recent afternoon last month,
I chatted with him and Emma, his thirteen-year-old sister, at their
house in the Upper Dimond neighborhood in the Oakland hills. The two
siblings told me about their first weeks of high school and how they
have enjoyed the freedom at times to walk around Oakland's Chinatown
district without their parents.
But they never walk around their own neighborhood alone.
The tree-lined residential street of large single-family homes
where the Fishers live more closely resembles suburbia than a densely
populated city. Positioned at the top of a steep hill near Dimond Canyon
Park, their house feels worlds away from the busy urban bustle of
MacArthur Boulevard and the Fruitvale district just to the southwest. On
the surface, their block looks like an ideal place to raise kids —
safe, family-friendly, and quiet. Although their individual street is
very diverse — with about ten Black or mixed-race kids now living nearby
— white residents are by far the largest racial group in the
surrounding area. And it's in this neighborhood, perhaps more so than
any other part of Oakland, that James feels most like a target for the
uncomfortable glances that are becoming increasingly common in his life.
Emma and James Fisher don't walk around the Upper Dimond due to concerns about racial profiling.
But he and his parents are not just worried about hurtful stares
from neighbors or passersby. Over the last two years, their
neighborhood has become overrun with racial profiling — but not by
police, rather by mostly white residents incorrectly assuming that
people of color who are walking, driving, hanging out, or living in the
neighborhood are criminal suspects. These residents often don't
recognize that they may have long held racial prejudices or unconscious
biases, but recently, they've been able to instantly broadcast their
unsubstantiated suspicions to thousands of their neighbors with the
click of a mouse.
Nextdoor.com, a website that
bills itself as the "private social network for neighborhoods," offers a
free web platform on which members can blast a wide variety of messages
to people who live in their immediate neighborhood. A San
Francisco-based company founded in 2010, Nextdoor's user-friendly site
has exploded in popularity over the last two years in Oakland. As of
this fall, a total of 176 Oakland neighborhoods have Nextdoor groups —
and 20 percent of all households in the city use the site, according to
the company.
On Nextdoor, people give away free furniture or fruit from their
backyards. Users reunite lost dogs with their owners. Members organize
community meetings and share tips about babysitters and plumbers. But
under the "Crime and Safety" section of the site, the tone is much less
neighborly. There, residents frequently post unsubstantiated "suspicious
activity" warnings that result in calls to the police on Black citizens
who have done nothing wrong. In recent months, people from across the
city have shared with me Nextdoor posts labeling Black people as
suspects simply for walking down the street, driving a car, or knocking
on a door. Users have suggested that Black salesmen and mail carriers
may be burglars. One Nextdoor member posted a photo of a young Black boy
who failed to pick up dog poop and suggested that his neighbors call
the police on him.
Unwelcome at Home: Black Oaklanders on Racial Profiling from
East Bay Express on
Vimeo.
White residents have also used Nextdoor to complain and organize
calls to police about Black residents being too noisy in public parks
and bars — raising concerns that the site amplifies the harmful impacts
of gentrification. On Nextdoor and other online neighborhood groups —
including Facebook pages and Yahoo and Google listservs — residents have
called Black and Latino men suspicious for being near bus stops,
standing in "shadows," making U-turns, and hanging around outside coffee
shops. Residents frequently warn each other to be on the look out for
suspects with little more description than "Black" and "wearing a
hoodie."
"These posts cast such a wide net on our young Black men," said
Shikira Porter, an Upper Dimond resident, who is Black. "You start
seeing this over and over again, and you understand quickly that, oh,
it's the Black body that they're afraid of."
In some Nextdoor groups, when people ask their neighbors to
think twice before labeling someone suspicious, other users attack them
for playing the "race card" and being the "political correctness
police." Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few
vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records
that I reviewed.
This sometimes toxic virtual environment has real-world impacts.
Residents encourage each other to call police, share tips on how to
reach law enforcement, and sometimes even alert cops and security guards
about suspicious activity they've only read secondhand from other
commenters. I spoke to longtime Oaklanders who say the profiling is
getting worse, noting that they have recently had neighbors question
them on their block or in their own driveway — suspicious of whether
they might be up to no good. People of color described stories of white
residents running away from them, screaming at them to leave a shared
garden space, and calling police on young children in their own home. In
some areas, the profiling is further exacerbated by the growing
presence of private patrol officers whom residents have hired to guard
the streets.
Even high-ranking officials with OPD, which has a formal
partnership with Nextdoor, have admitted that the department is
sometimes forced to respond to baseless suspicions about residents of
color — the kind of profiling that can go unchecked in online groups.
"If ... they're all feeding off of the same bias, then that could be
harmful," said OPD Assistant Chief Paul Figueroa. He later added, "Fear
can really drive the application of bias."
Now, a group of Oakland residents calling themselves
Neighbors for Racial Justice
is trying to fight back against the rampant profiling online and in
their neighborhoods. But Nextdoor officials and the white residents who
control and dominate the online groups do not appear to be taking their
concerns seriously or willing to make substantive changes.
And as long as the profiling and prejudiced online posts
persist, Mitsu Fisher, the father of James and Emma, is not letting his
kids play outside or walk the streets of their own neighborhood without
supervision. Mitsu made that an official policy in February 2014 after a
patrol officer in the Oakmore neighborhood — who was working for a
private security company and was not supposed to be armed — chased and
shot a Black teenage boy suspected of committing a burglary, according
to police. The fact that a private guard shot a young suspect was
upsetting enough to Mitsu, but it was the response from his neighbors
online that led him to truly fear for his own kids' safety.
On Nextdoor and a neighborhood Yahoo group, residents celebrated
the private security guard for shooting the teenager — and organized to
buy him a thank-you gift.
When I first met Audrey Esquivel for coffee in the Laurel
district, she handed me a grainy photocopy of a one-page document dated
June 15, 1937. The report, from the government-sponsored Home Owners'
Loan Corporation, offered a formal description of the housing
characteristics and desirability of the Fruitvale district in East
Oakland. Based on information from a City of Oakland building inspector,
the report stated that the neighborhood's "favorable influences"
included its convenience to local transportation, schools, and shopping
centers. There was, however, one main "detrimental influence" that made
the neighborhood undesirable: "proximity to area [infiltrated] by
Negroes." And the area would likely become increasingly less desirable
over the next decade due to continued "infiltration," the report added.
Audrey Esquivel, a Glenview resident, was profiled
in her own neighborhood when a nearby resident feared she might be
trying to break into her home.
Esquivel, who is mixed-race Black and lives in the nearby
Glenview neighborhood, recently stumbled upon the document while reading
about "redlining" — the decades-long process by which the government
and banks systematically enabled white neighborhoods to prosper with
mortgage loans while denying housing opportunities to communities of
color. Like cities across the country, Oakland became very segregated
because of redlining with wealthier white communities thriving in the
hills and poorer Black neighborhoods languishing in the flatlands.
"We can show how the history of the neighborhood is playing out
over time," said Esquivel, who is a member of the Neighbors for Racial
Justice group. "We went from this time when segregation such as this was
legal, and it was okay to be openly racist and little Johnny could call
Black people the 'n-word.' Now, it's 'Don't call them anything. We're
all just human.' There's never been any education on how to successfully
transition to integration."
Oakland is much more integrated today than it was in the 1930s,
although the hills are still largely white. In the 94602 zip code —
which includes Glenview, Upper Dimond, and Oakmore — whites make up 46
percent of the population, Blacks make up 18 percent, and Latinos
comprise 14 percent. The East Oakland flatlands neighborhoods to the
south are majority Latino or Black.
Although Oakland may have come a long way since the days of
redlining, Esquivel said that subtle racial tensions and prejudices are
pervasive in her neighborhood and that she often encounters white
residents who are, to varying degrees, uncomfortable with the presence
of people of color. When she moved from North Carolina to the East Bay,
she thought she would be joining a progressive community — one in which
she would not feel ostracized or unwelcome due to the color of her skin.
But the fears that her white neighbors have when they see her are real
and damaging, she said.
For people of color living in Oakland neighborhoods that are
still predominantly white, many of the concerns regarding racial
profiling stem from community and police efforts to fight crime. Even as
overall crime continues to decline here, Oakland consistently ranks as
one of the top ten cities for violent crime per capita. In terms of
crime prevention efforts, much of the neighborhood-level organizing has
focused on robberies, burglaries, and car break-ins — the criminal
offenses that can plague certain areas in waves and shake people's sense
of security in their own neighborhoods or homes. As a snapshot, through
mid-September, in OPD's Area 3 — which includes Lakeshore, Eastlake,
Dimond, Laurel, and Fruitvale — there had been 651 reported robberies,
1,388 burglaries (893 of which were car burglaries), and 348 aggravated
assaults.
But OPD also responds to a considerable number of calls from
citizens concerned about the people they see in their neighborhoods:
Across the city during the past two years, according to data that the
department provided to me, police have received an average of roughly
730 calls for suspicious people or vehicles every month.
Through Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council meetings and other
local organizing groups, residents in the hills have pressured the city
for years to devote more police officers to patrolling their streets
and investigating property crimes and violent offenses in their
neighborhoods. Motivated by the belief that OPD prioritizes resources in
high-crime areas and does not do enough to protect their homes in the
hills, residents have repeatedly taken matters into their own hands.
Some have formed traditional neighborhood watch groups in which
volunteers walk the streets. Others have installed security cameras. And
many neighborhoods have launched private email listservs that enable
residents to efficiently communicate with their neighbors. In the early
days of the listservs, the idea was that residents could use the online
communities to coordinate efforts to push for police officers — and also
share tips about suspicious activity or crimes in real time.
One of the first in Oakland was a Dimond email listserv that
launched roughly seventeen years ago, according to Ann Nomura, who is
Mitsu Fisher's wife and the mother of James and Emma. "It was very much a
grassroots tool for organizing," said Nomura. "It was really focused on
getting basic services."
But as more of these lists emerged and grew in membership — and
as concerns about crime escalated — the tone shifted, according to
Nomura, who has subscribed to numerous listservs over the years.
Eventually, many groups frequently attracted inflammatory posts or
racially insensitive messages about crime trends and suspicious people,
she said. Nomura sent me one 2012 example from the Dimond group in which
a white woman warned of a "light skinned black female" talking on her
cell and walking her dog. "I don't recognize her. Has anyone described
any suspect of crime like her?" the neighbor wrote. Although some
responded that the post seemed unnecessary, others thanked her for
sharing the information and agreed that the woman seemed suspicious.
Eventually, a neighbor chimed in to say that the woman lived a few
streets away and has lived in the same house her whole life.
When lifelong Oakland resident Leland Thompson joined
"Glenfriends" — a Yahoo group for the Glenview neighborhood that started
in 2001 — he was shocked to see how many posts described suspicious
people with vague descriptions that matched him: "Black man, five-ten,
160 pounds, bald," he said. Thompson told me that he and his wife, who
is white, now have a running joke in which she'll read the listserv and
tell him, "'Oh, you're on Glenfriends again!'"
Oakland native Leland Thompson became so
frustrated with Glenview residents profiling him and fearing he might be
a criminal suspect that he stopped jogging in his own neighborhood.
After seeing so many posts warning of dangerous Black men,
Thompson, who grew up in the projects of East Oakland and has lived in
Glenview for seventeen years, said he stopped wearing hoodies. "It's sad
because people are not seeing individuals. They're just seeing profiles
and they're acting on it," he said. "Even though this is my community
and my home, they just see a silhouette."
Thompson, an executive coach and leadership trainer, used to go
jogging at 5:30 a.m. in his neighborhood, but he said residents would
clearly get scared of him, and eventually he decided it was only a
matter of time before someone called the police on him. He never runs in
his neighborhood anymore. "How come I have to change to make you
comfortable? I have to show you that I'm not threatening as opposed to
you making the assumption that based on my behavior, I haven't posed a
threat?" he said with a loud sigh.
While lists such as Glenfriends became increasingly divisive
over time, they weren't necessarily reaching wide audiences in Oakland
and tended not to have formal partnerships with OPD. But in 2011,
Nextdoor.com
entered the Oakland market, offering a more advanced, well-designed
website for neighborhood messaging — a platform that eventually
attracted interest from police. And both supporters and critics of the
company now agree: It was a game-changer for online communication and
crime reporting in Oakland.
When Oakland Police Lieutenant Chris Bolton first learned about
Nextdoor, it was clear to him that the website offered an unprecedented
opportunity. Bolton — who is the department's social media guru and is
known for his active use of Twitter — said a resident of the Golden Gate
neighborhood in North Oakland suggested to him in 2013 that police
consider using the site to communicate directly with residents. At that
point, there were roughly 7,500 Oakland residents on Nextdoor.
"I was drawn to it personally because of the organic way that
neighborhoods formed and chose to communicate with one another," Bolton
said in an interview. "I just feel that the more people talk with one
another, the more we know our neighbors. And the more we share
information, the stronger that neighborhood can be."
In June 2013, the department launched a pilot partnership with
Nextdoor in North Oakland, which enabled OPD to have a profile on the
site that officials could use to send out messages to residents. In
April 2014, OPD and Nextdoor launched a formal citywide partnership, and
today police regularly publish alerts, suspect photos, missing person
reports, crime statistics, and other public safety information.
Sometimes, police send out citywide alerts, but more often local area
commanders write neighborhood-specific posts for limited clusters of
users.
Since Bolton first heard about Nextdoor, the site's user base
has grown exponentially in Oakland and now includes nearly 43,000 total
members spread out across 31,000 homes in the city, he said. When I met
Bolton in early September, he told me that 2,000 Oakland users had
joined in the previous thirty days. In order to join, users have to
verify their addresses and use real names — so that when police officers
send out messages, they know they are reaching city residents. Bolton
said the department doesn't have access to neighborhood posts and
doesn't monitor crime and safety messages unless users send them
directly to OPD.
Since Nextdoor launched in 2010 with its first neighborhood
group in Menlo Park, Oakland has been at the forefront of the website's
expansion. Headquartered in downtown San Francisco, the company expanded
nationally in October 2011 and now boasts more than 75,000 groups with
an average of 100 new neighborhoods joining every day. The site,
co-founded by tech entrepreneur and CEO Nirav Tolia, has also partnered
with more than 1,200 government entities, mostly police departments,
throughout the United States. That includes more than 35 law enforcement
agencies in the Bay Area. The Nextdoor Oakmore group was one of the
first neighborhoods on the site, and OPD partnered with the company
before it had even rolled out its platform for public agencies.
Today, the five largest Nextdoor neighborhoods in Oakland are
Adams Point, Golden Gate, Maxwell Park, Crocker Highlands, and Oakmore,
according to the company. Because Oakland has long had active Yahoo and
other email groups, Nextdoor was an easy sell for many neighborhoods,
said company spokesperson Kelsey Grady, in a recent interview. "Oakland
has been a community that has been interested in organizing for a long
time. The adoption has been so great there."
In Oakland, roughly 20 percent of all Nextdoor conversations are
about crime and safety. The rest cover events, lost and found, free
items, classifieds, and recommendations. In my review of Nextdoor crime
posts from neighborhoods in North Oakland, East Oakland, and around Lake
Merritt, I found that the vast majority of comments about suspicious
behavior involved Black suspects. In a given month in a single
neighborhood, out of several dozen total crime and safety posts, a small
number of posts — usually three to five — typically feature
descriptions of suspicious behavior with questionable justifications.
And in many more posts that cite reasonably suspicious behavior or
actual alleged crimes, users described suspects with few specifics
beyond "African American," male or female, old or young.
Shikira Porter, an Upper Dimond resident, has
asked her neighbors to stop racially profiling Black Oaklanders on
Nextdoor — but has faced significant pushback from Nexdoor users and the
group moderator.
"I get so nauseous and so angry," said Porter, the Upper Dimond
resident, who is also a member of Neighbors for Racial Justice. When I
met her for coffee, she handed me a stack of Nextdoor Oakmore printouts
with racially biased reports of suspicion.
One user told people to be alert after seeing an "African
American driver" inside a white commercial van, wearing a "bright green
vest," parked on the street at 2 a.m. — nothing else suspicious. In a
post this summer, a resident warned others to watch out for "two young
African Americans, slim, baggy pants, early 20s" who said they were
looking for a lost dog. Noting that they did not have "anything like
bags to carry stuff out of a house they might break into," the woman
said the situation may be "benign," but added, "I have a sense that it
wasn't." In another post, a man warned of a "nefarious individual" — a
Black youth who appeared to be sixteen years old — who came to his door
saying he was looking for his friend. Another posted about a Latino man,
describing him as a "suspicious character" who appeared "visibly
nervous" and was "hiding near the bus stop."
In another case, a user suggested that a Black salesman working
for a security company and going door-to-door was clearly casing homes
in search of a place to burglarize. Even after a resident confirmed with
the company in question that he was an authorized salesperson and
posted that on the message thread, people still chimed in saying he
seemed shady and could be a potential threat.
These kinds of posts aren't isolated to the hills. In a North
Oakland neighborhood, one woman recently titled a post "Attempted
Robbery" and described a "lighter skin colored African American about
6'3" who "kept in the shadows as he approached," then seemed to hesitate
near her and her husband and son. "That guy totally seemed like he was
up to no good," she wrote. There was, based on her description, no
attempted robbery or even any verbal or physical contact whatsoever, but
after receiving encouragement from fellow commenters, she called the
police to report the man.
Near Lake Merritt, residents have increasingly used Nextdoor to
organize coordinated noise complaints against music and parties in the
park — in some cases, mostly white users of the site lament about the
activities of people of color who have long hung out and held social
events there. Earlier this year, OPD responded on Nextdoor, saying
police would be increasing patrols around the lake in response to
people's complaints about noise and parties.
Some Black residents and activists say people of color who have
lived for a long time near Lake Merritt are now subject to harassment.
"These people aren't thugs trying to rob you — these are people who
actually live around here," said Davey D Cook, a Black radio journalist
and longtime Oakland resident. He credited Nextdoor for the increased
police presence around the lake — including recently when a group of
cops responded to calls from a white man about a small Sunday night drum
circle exclusively made up of people of color.
"When we see new people coming in and using these apps, it's
very discouraging," said Theo Williams, a Black Oakland native and one
of the musicians who had to face police questions over his drum circle.
"It's like now you have a new acronym — 'partying while Black!' ... It's
disturbing and sad."
In Adams Point last March, multiple users publicly complained
about a Black boy who was apparently not picking up his dog's poop.
After one woman described him as a "very nice African American young boy
who regularly walks a rather scary looking pit-mix," and asked for
suggestions on how to get him to pick up the dog's waste, one commenter
suggested she call police. That commenter wrote: "Not picking up poop
from your dog is against the law — it's a health violation." This
commenter also suggested she contact the boy's school. Another man
chimed in with an image of the boy: "Here's his photo. OPD might find
this handy."
Later, the commenter who posted the photo suggested that the
city aggressively target his family with fines, writing: "I'm sure they
don't have that kind of money... but they could at least put a lean
[sic] on their home and vehicles."
Cedric Bedford-Chalale, a longtime Adams Point
resident, was horrified when members of his Nextdoor group encouraged
each other to call the police on a young Black boy who hadn't picked up
his dog's poop.
Cedric Bedford-Chalale, a longtime Adams Point resident and
Nextdoor user, was shocked by the conversation. "That was really
crossing the line," said Bedford-Chalale, who is Black and provided me
with copies of the comment thread. "To call the authorities about
something as small as dog shit? This is how little black Boys end up
getting shot." Bedford-Chalale said it feels like the racist posts are
constant in his neighborhood. "Every time there's a Black person, it's
'Call the police! Call the police!'"Bedford-Chalale, who said he is one
of the few voices of color who comments in his Nextdoor group, has at
times posted comments raising concerns about racial profiling. When he
does, few appear to support his message, he said. And sometimes,
Bedford-Chalale's neighbors go beyond simply stating their disagreement
with him. On multiple occasions, users have flagged his comments about
profiling as abusive or inappropriate, he said. One time after he posted
about profiling, a user complained to Nextdoor that Bedford-Chalale
wasn't using his real name on the site, which wasn't true. Nextdoor,
however, temporarily suspended his account.
When users face accusations that they are engaged in racial
profiling on Nextdoor, they often respond with one or more of several
common defenses. For instance, they argue that if residents have a bad
feeling about someone, it's better to be safe than sorry and that
residents should trust their instincts and inform their neighbors. When
pressed about the potential harm of a post that describes a "Black male"
with few other characteristics, residents argue that descriptions of
race are relevant and they should share every detail of a suspect or
suspicious person — even if all they can recall is race.
I've also read posts in which Nextdoor users argue that
commenters who raise concerns about racial profiling are engaging in
victim-blaming — that residents who have faced traumatic crimes in their
own neighborhoods or homes are understandably frightened for their
safety and have a right to post their suspicions without being called a
racist. They sometimes further argue that a majority of the suspects
committing the crimes affecting their communities are Black, and that,
as a result, it's logical to be suspicious of people of color they don't
recognize.
Except for the comments made by a few blatantly racist trolls,
the majority of biased posts in these groups appear to stem from a place
of genuine fear and concern. But activists argue that residents should
proactively work to check their biases and recognize that,
statistically, only a tiny fraction of Oakland's Black population is
engaged in criminal activity.
Debby Weintraub, a white Rockridge resident, has twice had
burglars break into her home — including a recent incident in which
suspects took more than $10,000 worth of her family's belongings,
including many sentimental items. As a victim of these crimes, she said
she understands the pain and fear that people in her neighborhood feel,
but said she is still disturbed that people freely publish their
suspicions even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. She said she
tries to recognize that her own suspicions are simply not worth
broadcasting. "I certainly don't want to go around suggesting that
somebody who might've made me feel uncomfortable for whatever reason is
necessarily [a suspect]," she said. "I don't want to live my life like
that."
Esquivel, the Glenview resident, said there is no acceptable
defense for suspicious activity posts that turn all people of color into
crime suspects in their own neighborhoods. "When lives are on the line
and personal safety is on the line, it ceases to be okay to air these
kinds of beliefs," she said. "And this is ineffective crime reporting.
You need to target the suspicious behavior. Skin color is not a crime,
and skin color is not a suspicious behavior."
The issue became much more urgent for her after she was profiled
in her own neighborhood in 2013. Esquivel had asked her neighbors on
Glenfriends, the Yahoo group, if anyone had lemons to spare. A white
woman responded and said she could come over anytime and grab some from
her tree — even if she wasn't home. When Esquivel stopped by one morning
a few days later, she plucked some lemons and then rang the front
doorbell to see if the woman was home so she could say thank you.
The woman looked out the window and refused to open the door.
Esquivel recalled seeing the woman tell someone on the phone, "No way
I'm opening the door." The woman, it turned out, thought Esquivel was
trying to break into her home. "I was absolutely visibly shaken,"
Esquivel said. "I just started crying." She said she was so upset she
couldn't even drive anymore; her partner, who is white and had waited in
the car, had to take the wheel.
After that incident, Esquivel felt that she had to do something
to speak out about the profiling in her own neighborhood. She
subsequently joined Neighbors for Racial Justice, a small group of both
white residents and people of color who came together in 2013 to speak
out against prejudiced posts on Nextdoor and on Yahoo and Google
listservs (many of which remain active). The group, which now has
roughly twenty members, has given presentations on racial profiling at
community meetings, hosted film screenings on racial inequities, led
Black Lives Matter vigils, and has brought its concerns to OPD,
Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council meetings, and Nextdoor.
The group has also written guidelines about how to report
suspicious activity online, including encouraging users to focus on
behaviors — meaning specific actions that suggest criminal activity —
and emphasizing distinct characteristics, such as shoes, facial hair,
tattoos, and car model. Race must be secondary to all that, and if you
can't describe behaviors and other specific descriptors, then don't
post. Otherwise, "We see African-American men in every single post not
doing anything suspicious," said Porter.
To illustrate the clear racial biases in people's posts and
language, Porter provided me with a handful of the rare Nextdoor Oakmore
posts that feature suspicious people who are white. In clear contrast
to the posts about Black men — described as "thugs" and "thieves" with
baggy clothes or hoodies — users described white suspects in more
sympathetic terms. One, for example, described a "clean cut, college
age-ish white guy" who had a suspicious door-to-door sales pitch.
Another described a "Hippy White guy" who was literally standing in
someone's backyard. A third posted a photo of two suspicious white men
with a lengthy disclaimer, stating that if someone could identify them
as neighbors, she would "apologize to them personally for thinking they
were up to something."
Black neighbors never receive this kind of benefit of the doubt,
Porter said, and even when residents subsequently prove the innocence
of a profiled person, there rarely are apologies or even public
acknowledgements that the suspicion was false. On the contrary,
Neighbors for Racial Justice has faced a significant uphill battle in
its efforts to push moderators of the online groups to actively
discourage racial profiling and adopt explicit, enforced policies
against discriminatory posts.
On Glenfriends, Esquivel has asked her neighbors on multiple
occasions to consider how people of color might feel about their
questionable posts. In response, she has faced harassing, aggressive,
and bullying comments. For example, she once wrote a post that said in
part: "Do you realize when you send fear-based emails that put folks on
HIGH ALERT for a person of color, without describing truly suspicious
behavior, vehicle description, or anything beyond skin color, you are
targeting ME?"
One neighbor responded: "Where the hell do you get off,
Esquivel? Is your presumptuous, condescending, ignorant profiling of
White neighbors the full measure of your mastery of racial
sensitivity? [A neighbor] reported suspicious activity of yet another
crew of black thugs in very temperate, neutral language that was
verified by [a different neighbor's] video cameras."
Esquivel subsequently asked for that commenter to be removed,
and although some supported her, many defended the commenter, saying he
had free speech rights to voice his opinion and that his language did
not constitute abuse. Eventually, the moderator of the discussion, who
is a white man, banned Esquivel from posting on Glenfriends.
"I'm one of the few voices of color that dares to speak on this
listserv and now I'm censored!" she said in an interview. "So, you're
not hearing from any Brown or Black people."
On Nextdoor, moderators are called "leads," and they are often
one of the founding or early members of a neighborhood group. They
manage their neighborhood's Nextdoor Crime and Safety Resources section
and can remove inappropriate messages and close comment threads. In the
Oakmore group, Neighbors for Racial Justice has had significant
conflicts with longtime lead Hugh Bartlett, who is white and has shut
down discussions about race issues and Black Lives Matter on multiple
occasions, arguing that they are not relevant to Nextdoor. For example,
Nomura posted an
Express article about racial profiling on BART —
and Bartlett closed the discussion to comments saying it was not
appropriate for a group focused on neighborhood issues. However, he
has permitted discussions on coal exports in Oakland, pesticide use in the Bay Area, and Oakland teacher contracts.
From his posts on Nextdoor and his comments during a phone
interview, it's clear that Bartlett views the discussion about profiling
as something of an annoyance that unnecessarily clogs up the site's
newsfeed. In shutting down the post on BART profiling, he wrote that he
couldn't permit everyone to post about their "favorite axe to grind."
And once in response to a post about a "super shady-looking dude,"
Bartlett responded: "Not to start a race war, but what skin color was
he?" After immediately deleting one of Porter's posts on racial
profiling, he wrote a message to her that said: "If these posts
continue, you will be reported to Nextdoor."
He told me by phone: "There is definitely, in our neighborhood, a
specific group that is pretty aggressive at being the political
correctness police." He acknowledged that "our neighbors tend to be more
suspicious of African-American people," but said that given the
frequent complaints about profiling from Neighbors for Racial Justice,
"the consciousness in our neighborhood is pretty high."
When I asked Bartlett — who is also the lead organizer for his
local private patrol group — how he felt about the concerns from
families of color who fear that Nextdoor profiling and the presence of
guards is a toxic mix, he responded, "I think it's paranoia."
In the early days of Nextdoor, the company did not envision that
the site would be used for public safety and crime prevention, said
Grady, the company spokesperson. "We've really seen Nextdoor evolve into
the virtual neighborhood watch," she said, noting that she often hears
about new members joining specifically because they are concerned about
safety and want to share and receive information about criminal
activity. From the start, the philosophy of Nextdoor was that residents
would drive the creation and growth of their neighborhood sites — with
residents founding their local groups, inviting other neighbors to join,
writing about the topics that most interest them, and self-moderating
controversial posts and discussions. "What people love about Nextdoor is
it's a very democratic platform," Grady said.
When it launched, Nextdoor published "guidelines" stating that
users should refrain from publishing profanity or discriminatory posts.
And in April of this year — in response to growing concerns about
racially prejudiced comments — the company added a specific guideline
that users should not post anything that could be perceived as
"profiling." Buried in an FAQ section, the company defines profiling as
the "act of making assumptions about a person's character or intentions
based on their appearance or identity rather than their actions." The
Nextdoor "leads" are in charge of interpreting and enforcing the
guidelines, and users can contact the company if they are unhappy with a
lead's actions — or inaction.
For more than a month, Neighbors for Racial Justice has
complained to the company about Bartlett, the Oakmore lead. At one point
in August, a Nextdoor representative agreed that Bartlett's deletion of
posts about racial justice was inappropriate, writing in a direct email
to one of the members: "We deeply appreciate you [bringing] this to our
attention as we take issues of lead abuse very seriously." That
Nextdoor official went so far as to remove Bartlett as a lead. But
emails show that, later that same day, the company backtracked and
restored his status with little explanation.
"He just allows these [racial profiling] posts to fly, and
anytime we challenge that or any neighbors say 'I feel endangered by
this,' he shuts it down," Porter said of Bartlett. She was particularly
frustrated when a Nextdoor representative responded to her complaints
with a message critiquing her posts in the group, writing, "I'd
definitely encourage you to use a bit more tact while communicating your
points to neighbors."
Last week, after much back and forth, Nextdoor agreed to make
Mitsu Fisher a "co-lead" of the Oakmore group alongside Bartlett,
according to Fisher.
Grady said the company takes concerns about racial profiling
seriously and that Nextdoor is considering possibly requiring new
members to sign an agreement saying they will abide by its guidelines.
But she also said she believes that members tend to speak up about
racial profiling when it occurs. "We're starting to facilitate a lot of
really healthy conversations on racial profiling," she said. She further
said that the company rarely receives complaints about profiling from
users, noting that 0.25 percent of all posts are flagged as abusive
(which could be for a wide variety of reasons, including profiling).
But the advocates with Neighbors for Racial Justice, along with
experts on racial profiling, said Nextdoor can and should do much more.
On a basic level, the company could post clear and strongly worded
warnings directly in the Crime and Safety section stating that it will
not tolerate any profiling. The company could also take a more active
role in deleting offensive posts or banning users who continue to engage
in profiling after they've been warned. Activists further suggested
that the company require neighborhood leads to participate in basic
training on profiling and how to moderate comments.
OPD — which Nextdoor says has been one of its most successful
municipal partners — has also emphasized that it does not want to get
calls about suspicious people who aren't actually doing anything
suspicious. Bolton, the lieutenant who spearheaded the Nextdoor
partnership, noted that he has heard officers responding to calls for
service ask, "Why, exactly, am I going to this call? You haven't given
me anything. ... What do you want me to do with this?"
Internally, OPD has long been plagued by racial biases within
its department with data consistently showing that police stop and
search people of color at disproportionately high rates; Black residents
made up 57 percent of 2014 police stops, even though they constitute
only 27 percent of the city's population. OPD, which is under federal
oversight due to its history of racially biased policing, has been
working to combat its biases through ongoing training and research
efforts. But experts note that police departments are more limited in
their ability to eliminate profiling when it comes to citizens' calls.
In other words, when residents engage in racial profiling, police
generally have to investigate, which creates yet another pathway for
people of color to face unjustified contacts with police — beyond the
racially biased stops and searches cops are already doing on their own.
"If they are just looking around furtively or they look out of
place, that's not a valid basis of suspicion," said Jack Glaser, UC
Berkeley public policy professor and expert on racial profiling. "If you
call the police on them, it puts the police in this bind. It forces the
police to deprive them of their constitutional rights."
Figueroa, OPD assistant chief, said the department is working to
eliminate racially biased policing at all levels, not just in stops and
searches. That includes ensuring that a citizen's questionable report
of suspicious activity does not lead to an unwarranted and biased police
response. But he acknowledged that when people opt to call police on
anyone they deem suspicious, it can put a person of color on a path into
the criminal justice system, which is plagued by many biases.
After citizens call police, for example, dispatchers who have to
translate that information and pass it along to officers may be
influenced by their own unconscious biases, Figueroa explained. Then,
the officers "apply their own judgments as to what they're hearing, how
to react, and how they're going to approach the call," he said. Even if a
subsequent stop is, at that point, legally based on "probable cause,"
the officers' biases can influence what steps they take during the stop,
he said. "There are so many layers involved in this. ... I am focused
on trying to determine where implicit bias enters the process, then how
can we control for that at each step."
But as long as profiling by neighbors and police continues, the
damage remains severe — for all residents. Glaser noted that when police
spend time profiling innocent people, they are diverting resources away
from those who are actually engaged in criminal activity. Profiling
also breeds deep mistrust in law enforcement, which in turn makes it
much harder for police to work with communities of color and investigate
and solve crimes.
For those who are profiled, the psychological and emotional
suffering can have lasting effects. It can make people afraid to leave
their own house and walk to the grocery store at night or make them
cautious about spending time in certain public places. And the harsh
reality for some is that they aren't even safe from profiling in their
own homes.
Shikira Porter said a white man recently stared her down while
she was in the driveway of her Upper Dimond house one morning, getting
ready to take her son to school. "Finally, I said to him, 'Yeah, I live
here,'" she said. And two white women, she added, recently questioned
her when she pulled over and briefly parked her car a few blocks from
her home to answer a call on her cell from her son's school. When these
incidents happen, it can feel difficult to resume normal activities.
"You're supposed to go into your day and show up to work and not be
angry," she said. "It's all these ways people of color have to try to
hold it together."
Leland Thompson, the Glenview resident, told me that white women
have darted across the street to avoid him on his own block. He said
that when that happened recently, he became so angry and frustrated that
he was visibly shaking by the time he got home.
Vanessa Graham, who is Black and has lived in Rockridge for two
decades, told me that about eight years ago, someone called OPD on her
sons while they were home alone in their backyard after school one
afternoon. The boys, then in sixth and eighth grades, came face-to-face
with an OPD officer who showed up to their yard and demanded that the
boys prove that they belonged there, she said. "'How do I know you
really live here?'" the cop told her sons, she recalled. When the
family's Labrador retriever started aggressively barking at the officer,
he said something to the effect of, "'If you don't get that animal
under control, I will shoot it,'" she said.
Graham still thinks about the incident to this day — especially
when she sees people raising suspicions about young Black boys in her
Nextdoor group. She wonders what would've happened if the officer had
fired at their dog. The question that really haunts her is, "What if he
had missed?"
After a private security guard shot a Black
teenage burglarly suspect in their neighborhood, Mitsu Fisher and Ann
Nomura decided not to let their kids walk alone in the Upper Dimond
anymore.
For Ann Nomura and Mitsu Fisher, it's not worth the risk to have
their kids out in their neighborhood alone. "This looks like a good
neighborhood until you get on the internet and see some of this
craziness," Mitsu said. Ann added: "I have no assurance that police
would not grab my kid for no good reason."
When I asked their kids James and Emma if they were frustrated with
their parents' policy demanding they stay indoors in the Upper Dimond,
they expressed ambivalence. "It's just not a very comfortable experience
to live in a place where your neighbors might call the cops on you,"
Emma said.
James said he wasn't sure what would make him feel safer in his
neighborhood — but said that getting rid of private patrols would be a
good place to start. "It's kind of unnerving to see a fake cop ... hired
by the neighbors driving around," he said, adding, "I don't know what
you can do to stop the racism."
Correction: The original version of this story erroneously stated
that James Fisher is mixed-race Black. James, who is adopted, is not
mixed-race.
Clarification: The original version of this story stated that
Audrey Esquivel said the moderator of Glenfriends had banned her from
posting. The story has been updated to clarify that Esquivel had said
the moderator of a discussion on crime and safety had banned her.
