EVANSTON, IL — The former Northwestern University student who reached a $1.25 million settlement with Evanston to drop allegations against the city and several of its police officers called for increased efforts to reduce implicit social bias.
Lawrence Crosby, 28, who is black, was falsely identified as having broken into his own car by a fellow Northwestern student, who is white, in October 2015. The woman called 911 and followed Crosby through Evanston until police arrived.
What happened next, although recorded on audio and video by cameras in Crosby’s car and police vehicles, was disputed in the course of the lawsuit. Police claimed Crosby was resisting arrest when he exited his car with his hands in the air to explain he was the registered owner of the car they believed he had stolen. Crosby asserted he had been battered by police — officers reported striking him with hands and knees — and maliciously prosecuted by city attorneys.
The settlement of the suit, reached last month just as jury selection was due to begin, was unanimously approved last week without comment from most city officials. The city paid more than $110,000 to fight Crosby’s claim, according to the Evanston Law Department.
“The settlement is a compromise of disputed claims and the parties have not admitted any liability or the validity of any defense in the litigation,” City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz has said. When asked if any law department policies or procedures had changed as a result of the suit, city attorney Michelle Masoncup explained, “We evaluate each matter on a case by case basis and make a determination on the merit.”
In a statement provided to Evanston for inclusion in the City Council minutes, Crosby said the end of his lawsuit marked the completion of a three-year effort to clear his name. He offered a proposal and a challenge as part of the next step of his journey.
“My proposal is to engage in a conversation. My challenge — to myself, and others — is to reverse the flow of the river of implicit bias running through this country,” Crosby said. “First, identify it. It may not happen in a day, or a year, or even our lifetimes. But now is as good a day to start as any.”
Crosby, who completed his PhD in material engineering last year, said he plans to use his experience as an example to help make it less likely for anyone else to suffer the same experience. He invited the public to join a forum in the spring with students and faculty at his alma mater, Stanford University. In his statement, Crosby said he had also invited experts in law enforcement, media relations and forensic animation to be part of his efforts at reducing implicit bias.
A recent study by researchers at Northwestern, Yale and New York universities found social bias encompassing race and gender appears even among children as young as 4 years old. Preschool-aged participants were shown images of other children, and the response to black boys was significantly less positive than any other groups. Previous research has indicated the effects of implicit bias among children can be reduced if children are trained to individually process the faces of people of other races.
Crosby requested people take an implicit bias test from Project Implicit, which offers online tests of biases based on race, gender, religion and other factors.
Read Lawrence Crosby’s full statement:
Introduction
Good morning. My name is Lawrence Crosby, and I’m here today to ask you to join me in identifying and reversing the effects of implicit bias in our society. I have just completed a three year journey to clear my name. But my journey is not finished. Today I am starting on the next leg of that journey.
Throughout my twenty-eight years on this Earth, I have tried to conduct myself in a responsible fashion. I thought, through hard work and following the rules of American society, I would earn the respect of others and be able to make a meaningful contribution to society as a scientist. I have been committed to treating people with respect and dignity. Throughout my life, I have respected and followed the rules, whether they were the rules of the road or the rules of physics. I have not presumed that certain people or ethnic groups will act in a certain way. I have shunned stereotypes, choosing, instead, to evaluate each individual as the person that they are. Every day I remind myself not to judge a book by its cover and not to judge a person by their color, their age, gender, or ethnicity.
My experience
I want to take my experience and use it as an example for change—change that leads to society where what happened to me is less likely to happen again to anyone. My desire is to also use my experience as a reminder of what can happen and have it serve as a constant catalyst to ask ourselves questions. Questions such as:
- Why does something like this occur, ever?
- How frequently is it occurring, and how many other ways is it manifesting in all aspects of our culture and society?
- What are the most effective steps we can take as a culture to create a society where it never happens again?
- Are we as individuals asking ourselves what we can do to improve how we think about and treat each other?
These are just four questions that I hope we are all inspired to ask ourselves as a consequence of the experience that I am here today to share with you. While not an exhaustive list, I believe that they are a start–a beginning that leads to answers, initiatives, and solutions.
A conversation is a two-way communication. Each person speaks and each person listens. A conversation does not occur by one person giving orders or using violence rather than listening.
In October 2015, I wasn’t afforded an opportunity to engage in a conversation. There was no communication. There were orders and violence. I truly believe that all of this could have been prevented if I had been able to engage in a conversation at any number of points.
Proposal and challenges
I’m here today to make a proposal and to pose a challenge to the people of this country. My proposal is to engage in a conversation. My challenge – to myself, and others – is to reverse the flow of the river of implicit bias running through this country. First, identify it. It may not happen in a day, or a year, or even our lifetimes. But now is as good a day to start as any.
I invite all of you to join me to have a conversation in testing ourselves, to see if we understand and recognize implicit bias. Please go to implicit.harvard.edu and take the test with me (or Google “implicit bias” and “Harvard”).
After you have explored this assessment, we can have a conversation together with our neighbors, coworkers, spouses, friends, to lift up social consciousness and change the way we look and feel about each other.
Education
I would like to start by educating the educators. Not that I can teach anyone, as I’m not an expert, but I will ask them to listen. This spring, I will return to my alma mater, Stanford, to engage a forum with students and faculty. I invite you all to join that forum. I will share my experience in hopes of preventing this from happening to other people.
Consider long-term solutions rather than short-term fixes. Raise awareness of the issue of implicit bias by police officers when dealing with minorities. I know it because I lived it. I am not saying that this is the only place that implicit bias exists. But it is as good a place as any to start the conversation.
Going forward
I am not only presenting a challenge today, but extending an invitation. I have invited experts in the fields of law, law enforcement, media relations, online reputation management and forensic animation to become part of this initiative. I have invited Dennis Waller, an expert in law enforcement; Tom Shaer, an expert in media relations, Thomas Varghese, an expert in online reputation management and search engine optimization, and Scott Roder a forensic animator to become part of this initiative and, if possible, to be participants in the conversation.
I’m inviting everybody here to be a part of the conversation. To address the insidious nature of implicit bias, we need to engage in a dialogue about what it is and what the consequences are for our neighbors, friends, loved ones, teachers, students, and our society as a whole, and how we can recognize and prevent these biases from manifesting in negative consequences.
We cannot go backwards, only forwards. So let’s go forwards and make our communities, and the world, first a better place. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Now let our conversation begin.
Read more: Evanston Pays $1.25 Million To Man Accused Of Stealing Own Car
