Duke University Police Department officers did not violate any policies during an Aug. 26 incident at Café Parizade in which students alleged police misconduct, according to a summary report released Wednesday.
Duke University Police Department officers did not violate any policies during an Aug. 26 incident at Café Parizade in which students alleged police misconduct, according to a summary report released Wednesday.
After nine Durham Police Department officers and six Duke officers arrived at Parizade in August 2004 to break up a party, four Duke seniors filed a formal complaint alleging that Duke police had an excessive presence and were disrespectful. The students reported that several officers refused to give their names and badge numbers and accused one officer of singing the African-American spiritual “We Shall Overcome.” They alleged the police reaction to the party—hosted by Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity from the historically black North Carolina Central University—was racially motivated.
Following an official Professional Standards Inquiry, DUPD found that University police had responded appropriately to a call from a Durham officer and the officer who sang the spiritual was a black officer with the Durham Police Department.
The Durham officer is no longer permitted to work off-duty assignments with Duke police, and his conduct was reported to Durham police internal affairs. Although the investigation, conducted by DUPD Lt. Jeff Best, found no wrongdoing on the part of Duke officers, DUPD is working with the Office of Institutional Equity to develop a training module on police and citizen interaction.
The response is part of holding police to a “higher degree of professionalism,” said Kemel Dawkins, vice president for campus services, noting that DUPD is working to address the perception that black and white students are treated differently by DUPD.
Senior Pascale Thomas, president of the Black Student Alliance, said DUPD’s report addressed issues appropriately and recent efforts to address tension between police and minority students have been positive. The report revealed that the August incident was “really a problem that should have been taken up with Parizade’s management,” she said.
According to the report, Parizade was full to capacity when a manager asked a Durham police officer hired for security to clear the area.
The report estimated that 150 guests were inside and 300 were waiting to enter. Igor Gacina, manager of Parizade, said Wednesday night that maximum capacity is about 250 people when seated and more if they are standing. He said more than 300 people were already inside Aug. 26.
Gacina rejected any accusations of racial bias, noting the diversity of his staff. “Everybody thinks because they are NCCU there are so many police,” he said. “But I cannot have no more people inside because of fire capacity.”
According to the report, the Durham officer providing security did not believe he could control the crowd alone so he called Durham’s 911 center and asked for “additional units.” The operator dispatched the request as a “disturbance,” which draws all available officers to the area. At least 16 officers from Durham and Duke came to the scene.
Clarence Birkhead, chief of DUPD, said the response was a matter of timing. “Typically whoever is in the area responds if they’re not previously occupied, so you could make the same call the next night and have five officers arrive,” he said. “It’s a function of who’s available.”
Because large student-run parties tend to disturb neighbors at the beginning of the year, police were patrolling the areas near East Campus in higher-than-normal numbers. The incident also took place during one of the first weekends DUPD had jurisdiction to aid Durham police off campus.
Birkhead and Dawkins both clarified that officers did not know the party was hosted by an NCCU fraternity or that most of the guests were black when they responded.
Durham police could not be reached for comment.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.