By: Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
In Part 1 of the series, we explored the historical context of the cover-up culture within law enforcement in North Carolina and the Triangle area, with insights from Dr. Kimberly D. Muktarian—a Raleigh native, journalist, historian, and civil rights activist. In Part 2, we examined several examples of this troubling culture in law enforcement, where Dr. Kim shared her personal encounters with officers and discussed how politics can either support or challenge this culture, depending on the level of complicity among those involved.
In Part 3, Dr. Kim addresses the core issue of the culture of cover-ups and points out the initiatives she represents, which offer ways for individuals to take action in improving law enforcement practices in Raleigh, Wake County, NC, and across the nation, particularly regarding the treatment of people of color and their communities.
Dr. Kim argues that it only takes a moment for accountability to begin, but it takes individuals and groups willing to break from the status quo and challenge others for a better future.
“I think sometimes it only takes a moment to push a movement. We are conditioning, and I believe overall, our people are in need of a strong break from it,” Dr. Kim said.
Terms like ‘violence’ can be used as a euphemism for Black crime and culture, shrugging off the responsibilities law enforcement has to protect and serve their communities. Dr. Kim explains how the double standard and stereotypes can perpetuate a system of coverups.
“Case in point, the word ‘violence’ is usually associated with us. But we don’t talk about the violence of a city which was stolen, much systematically… it becomes a thing where you don’t look at the city’s corruption as violent,” Dr. Kim said. “And so they’re able to tell you,’ we’re working on it—the system is broken’. They don’t use ‘violence’ as that word; they use, ‘we’re getting more training’. They civilize their violence.”
For her part, Dr. Kim is involved with multiple organizations, programs, initiatives, and movements that seek to improve the justice system and ensure accountability for those who commit flagrant offenses and those who try to cover them up.
“Some of the things that I’m working on now are through a form called Miss Cali’s Adventures. I go back into slavery and I bring us current to show our young people and our adults how we got here. I incorporate politicians today and those who are responsible for representing us,” Dr. Kim said. “We are also working with the United States Department of Justice, who we are challenging to look at the system from a different lens.”
Dr. Kim referenced numerous local incidents of law enforcement brutality, lack of accountability, and the unjustified use of force and harassment throughout the series, but this time she specifically referenced the cases of Brianna Taylor and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. These cases, which played a significant role in inspiring thousands to join the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, are used to illustrate the issues law enforcement agencies face in how they interpret and respond to events within the Black community.
“We wanted to challenge them not just to take a look at policing because policing is given permission by the city and the city is actually run by developers. And when an area such as East College Park, or areas like South Park, where development is supposed to happen, or urban renewal. What we’ll find is that most of our murders are coming from those areas. It’s almost a clearing that happens so that they can justify taking over those areas,” Dr. Kim explained.
Dr. Kim argues that the Wake County Police Department frequently overlooks the root causes of crime rates and high-crime areas, often attributing crime to the racial makeup of neighborhoods. This approach fails to address the underlying factors contributing to crime: “The lack of crime is not the definition of justice; we have to stop that narrative.”
As the president of Save Our Sons and executive director for Raleigh Pack — the Raleigh Police Accountability Community Task Force — Dr. Kim focuses on the root causes of marijuana stops, traffic violations, and any patterns of practice where we see the most engagement between blacks and police officers.
“Holding black officers accountable so that they can be responsible for black deaths outside, we are pushing for that initiative,” Dr. Kim said. “We’re also pushing for making it more feasible to have a community on the inside to handle grievances versus allowing the police to police themselves through their internal affairs process.”
In addition to advocating for an initiative urging state and federal governments to exempt Black Americans from taxes as a form of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, Dr. Kim plans to continue pointing out the errors, immorality, and unjust patterns within law enforcement agencies, from Raleigh to the nation’s capital, particularly in calling attention to the culture of cover-ups. The slaveholders display pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. . . . They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs.”
The U.S. Constitution initially allowed the importation of enslaved people for 20 years. Denmark was the first nation to abolish its trade in 1803. Britain and the United States followed in 1807, with the U.S. ban going into effect in 1808 under Thomas Jefferson. It is also important to note that the words “slave” and “slavery” do not appear in the original U.S. Constitution, and instead, enslaved individuals were referred to as “other Persons.”
The Three-Fifths Compromise remained in effect until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, after the Civil War. However, the end of the Three-Fifths Compromise did not entirely remove the structural advantages it had granted to the South. It was not just about the balance of power between free and slave states; it was a reflection of the nation’s struggle with its own identity and the moral weight of slavery in the early American Republic.
