Speaker: Blacks must take responsibility

The lecture was a YSU Black History Month event.
BY AMANDA GARRETT
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A civil rights activist and founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality challenged the black community to take more responsibility for their communities, families and themselves.
"We can't blame other people for the condition of our communities," De Lacy Davis said during his hour-long talk on law enforcement and the black community at Youngstown State University on Friday. "We're responsible for our community."
Davis urged black parents to give their children quality time, love and attention.
A lack of discipline among black parents has caused many young people to go astray, he said.
"That's the reason your child is building a bomb in the basement and you don't know about it until it blows up," he said.
During his speech, which was part of YSU's Black History Month celebration, Davis also talked about the responsibility of black police officers.
Davis said he developed B-CAP for the purpose of assuring that nobody's rights are abridged by the police, especially in urban America. The B-CAP organization's members are advocates for people who aren't given equal treatment by law enforcement officers.
"We don't care who the actor of the brutality is," he said. "You can be a black person, a white person, a green person or a purple person. If you're beating people up, we're going to testify against you."
Here's the situation
Unfortunately, he said, police culture hasn't changed much in the last 50 to 100 years: Whites are largely still in charge even in predominantly black cities, and adding more black officers hasn't necessarily made things better for blacks.
"Just because they look like us doesn't mean they have an agenda that benefits the community," Davis said.
Black cops have to speak out when they see wrongdoing and not compromise their principles.
"When you tell the truth, you feel better," he said. "You feel relieved.
Davis, recently retired as a sergeant from the East Orange (N.J.) Police Department. In 1994, he was awarded the prestigious Renault Robinson Award by the National Black Police Association, an organization that boasts more than 40,000 members nationwide.
He has appeared on MTV, "Nightline," "Ricki Lake," C-Span, "Oprah," "Maury Povich," "Like It Is with Gil Noble," NBC's "Positively Black," Black Entertainment Television's "Teen Summit," and "Tonight With Tavis Smiley."