The Deepest Cut
After kicking in black-owned barbershop doors, Moreno Valley ends up having to pay up
By: James Abraham
You’ve heard of driving while black, right? Well, how about barbering while black?
Hold on a sec and let me explain.
It’s official: The Moreno Valley Police Department will get a lesson or two in racial sensitivity. And they’re not the only ones.
Riverside County officials recently agreed to fork over $32,500 (plus $66,500 in costs and attorneys’ fees) to four black barbers in Moreno Valley who accused the authorities of racial profiling after their businesses were targeted and raided by officers and officials with the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. The ACLU, who was involved in the case, will also get a $99,000 settlement check.
“We are pleased with the agreement reached with the County of Riverside,” Sandra Hernandez, a spokeswoman for the ACLU of Southern California, tells the Weekly. “We believe it will help improve relations between the community and law enforcement.”
If nothing else, the settlement underscores the idea that the bridge between Inland Empire police departments (read: Tyisha Miller) and people of color can sometimes seem like a chasm.
This particular settlement stems from a series of raids of barbershops in 2008 that were conducted by Moreno Valley police officers—actually Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies that were contracted to serve as the city’s police—and officials with the aforementioned state board.
Ostensibly, the raids were characterized as licensing inspections. Sure.
But the barbers and critics challenged them, accusing authorities of targeting black barbershops, conducting the so-called administrative searches as if they were drug raids, complete with armed law enforcement personnel.
The barbers targeted by the April 2, 2008, raids included Kevon Gordon (of The Hair Shack on Sunnymead Boulevard), Ronald Jones, Raymond Barnes (Fades Unlimited on Alessandro Boulevard) and Quincy Brown.
With help from the ACLU and Los Angeles-based law firm Seyfarth Shaw, the barbers sued the city and county.
In published accounts from last December, ACLU staff attorney Peter Bibring said, “This ends what we have learned was a recurring practice . . . improperly using administrative searches to conduct intrusive and unjustified searches. These inspections involved five or six police officers carrying guns who rushed through the store . . . under the pretense that they were solely administrative searches.”
This whole sorry episode finally came to head last week when Riverside County announced it would settle and pay the four barbers.
So, does this mean that by agreeing to a settlement that the county is admitting that officers engaged in racist behavior? Of course not, silly.
“The settlement . . . is a compromise of disputed claims and is not an admission of any party of any liability,” according to a copy of the settlement obtained by the Weekly. “Defendants specifically deny violation of the laws of equal protection, search and seizure and/or any other law, statutory or otherwise.”
I guess that’s why it’s called a settlement.
But it’s a big step forward, according to the ACLU.
“The filing of this lawsuit provided a public forum to discuss racial profiling and policing in Moreno Valley,” ACLU staff attorney Peter Bibring said this week. “The settlement goes a long way towards obtaining what our plaintiffs sought.”
As per the terms of the settlement, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s command staff will need to take some lessons in racial tolerance from the—you guessed it—Museum of Tolerance in L.A.
Plus, county officials will also need to take lessons from another law enforcement agency that’s no stranger to allegations of racial profiling:the LAPD. But there’s still more. The Board of Barbering and Cosmetology in December agreed to revise the way it conducts its inspections and how to avoid these types of incidents.
The settlement “provides training to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to ensure that a similar incident does not happen in the future,” Bibring says. Let’s see what happens.
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