Thursday’s arrest of civil rights activist and UMB Africana Studies Professor Tony Van Der Meer, which resulted from Van Der Meer defending himself and a student when they were threatened by a National Guard recruiter, was a shock to many of us who had never expected that UMB police would aid xenophobic antagonists by wrongfully and brutally arresting activists on our campus.
The Mass Media’s investigation of Thursday’s arrest shows that UMB public safety officers failed to respond appropriately to the threat made by the National Guard recruiter against the UMB student and faculty member; the forceful arrest of the faculty member, Van Der Meer, only inspires doubt as to the competency of UMB campus police to protect its ethnically diverse community.
When the National Guard recruiter turned to the student and Professor and said, “You should be shot in the head for doing this”-referring to the passing out of fliers in support of a moment of silence on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination the next day-UMB public safety officers, who witnessed the entire confrontation, should have reacted by defending the student and the African-American faculty member as a statement like that sounds racially motivated. What happened, however, was six public safety officers immediately surrounded Van Der Meer, consequently wrestling the professor to the ground and tearing most of the sleeve off of his suit coat, while the National Guard recruiter quickly left the campus unencumbered by the police.
Why did UMB public safety officers endorse the divisive actions of the aggressive National Guard recruiter instead of defending the UMB student and faculty member? In this time of increasing tension over the war in Iraq, public safety officers should be more careful when judging a situation and not be so fast to take sides in heated confrontations. The dramatic arrest of professor Van Der Meer is a perfect example of the police, please excuse the cliché, blaming the victim.
By saying “you should be shot,” the recruiter was not practicing his right to free speech; the recruiter’s threatening words are an assault the student’s and professor’s civil rights. It is unacceptable that the police assisted the recruiter in assaulting Van Der Meer, and effectively employed a tag-team strategy with the recruiter in attacking the civil rights activists.
Two years ago Dateline NBC reported that problems with police misconduct are not new, and that only the investigations and reports of these problems with police are new. Although we have not seen problems with police of such magnitude on this campus, UMB police need to be adequately trained for these types of situations. Our public safety officers should not be so easily manipulated by antagonistic campus visitors and turned against maltreated members of the UMB community.