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Bankole: Why Tlaib won and Detroit's old Black guard lost
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But voters saw something totally different: They admire Tlaib’s firebrand style of politics. For weeks on my radio show on 910AM engaged listeners talked about how they love the fact that she’s not afraid to confront an issue. They want a fighter who won’t back down on racial justice issues like facial recognition technology, which research shows can be faulty and falsely identify Blacks as suspects in the search for criminals.
For example, while the City Council under Jones’ leadership once held what amounted to a softball Q&A session with Detroit police Chief James Craig regarding the use of facial recognition technology, Tlaib visited the department to see the Real Time Crime center for herself, which displays video footage from both traffic lights and businesses in the city. She later engaged in a very tense public debate with Craig over its use, and urged him to hire more Black analysts to work in the facial recognition department. Even though her recommendation incensed Detroit’s top cop, it was by far the strongest public pushback against the technology from an elected official in the city.
Since then a Black man, Robert Williams, who came forward in June of this year, explained how he was wrongly identified as a shoplifting suspect by the technology from a 2018 incident. The following month the case of Michael Oliver, another Detroiter, became public after he was misidentified last year as a suspect and was facing felony larceny charges that were subsequently dropped. Despite the severity of these two cases, the City Council that Jones leads has yet to convene a pair of special public hearings on the reported cases.
True to form, Tlaib, during her first term in Congress, has established herself as an elected official who would ask penetrating questions during congressional hearings, including a notable exchange with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, where she squeezed the Fed boss about helping locally distressed cities like Detroit.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2020/08/05/bankole-why-tlaib-won-and-detroits-old-black-guard-lost/3298494001/
But voters saw something totally different: They admire Tlaib’s firebrand style of politics. For weeks on my radio show on 910AM engaged listeners talked about how they love the fact that she’s not afraid to confront an issue. They want a fighter who won’t back down on racial justice issues like facial recognition technology, which research shows can be faulty and falsely identify Blacks as suspects in the search for criminals.
For example, while the City Council under Jones’ leadership once held what amounted to a softball Q&A session with Detroit police Chief James Craig regarding the use of facial recognition technology, Tlaib visited the department to see the Real Time Crime center for herself, which displays video footage from both traffic lights and businesses in the city. She later engaged in a very tense public debate with Craig over its use, and urged him to hire more Black analysts to work in the facial recognition department. Even though her recommendation incensed Detroit’s top cop, it was by far the strongest public pushback against the technology from an elected official in the city.
Since then a Black man, Robert Williams, who came forward in June of this year, explained how he was wrongly identified as a shoplifting suspect by the technology from a 2018 incident. The following month the case of Michael Oliver, another Detroiter, became public after he was misidentified last year as a suspect and was facing felony larceny charges that were subsequently dropped. Despite the severity of these two cases, the City Council that Jones leads has yet to convene a pair of special public hearings on the reported cases.
True to form, Tlaib, during her first term in Congress, has established herself as an elected official who would ask penetrating questions during congressional hearings, including a notable exchange with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, where she squeezed the Fed boss about helping locally distressed cities like Detroit.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2020/08/05/bankole-why-tlaib-won-and-detroits-old-black-guard-lost/3298494001/
