By Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
For The Birmingham Times
As far as Clarence Cox III was concerned, Birmingham was the ideal location for the gathering of black law enforcement leaders.
“Birmingham had the real struggles I thought we needed to readdress,” said Cox, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE). “We knew we could start tough conversations in Birmingham. We’re hopeful the conversations will lead to action and service in our community, and it will kind of wake us up.”
Approximately 300 black law enforcement leaders were at the Sheraton Birmingham hotel last week for NOBLE’s 2018 William R. Bracey Winter CEO Symposium which addressed issues and challenges unique to black law enforcement leaders. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Alabama senator, were among those who addressed the group.
Cox, of metro Atlanta, said, “I feel in many ways, some leaders in our community have forgotten how we got to where we are and forgot the path that got us there. This has been a vision that God gave me quite some while ago when I was able to pick my location that I would go to Birmingham.”
NOBLE grew out of several African Americans attending a 1976 law enforcement assistance conference in Washington, D.C. While the event was multicultural, the African Americans in attendance – including Johnnie Johnson Jr., who would later serve as Birmingham’s police chief – determined they had similar problems and issues . . . “but no mechanism for talking about them and doing something about them,” Cox said.
The members came up with a way to meet on a regular basis to coordinate and combine efforts to address some of the issues like making sure the “justice we were applying was applied the same way in all communities across the country,” Cox said.
NOBLE’s purpose remains the same, Cox said, adding that there’s a great need today for those same types of conversations.
“History has not changed as much as we’d like to think,” the NOBLE president said. “While the organization has grown tremendously since its inception, problems have grown as well. We feel like the fight is as relevant and valuable as it was in 1976.”
The organization continues to look for an equal playing field with the current administration and others, he said.
One session during the convention – What Keeps You Up At Night – included discussions of continuing gun violence and disparities in combating the opioid crisis as compared to dealing with cocaine.
“When this same kind of drug issue was going on in the early 80s and late ‘70s with crack, it wasn’t a health crisis,” Cox said.
Cox, a former narcotics commander and narcotics agent, also expressed concern over efforts of the president and Department of Justice to seek the death penalty in drug cases.
“Is that a cartel leader who probably oversees and would be responsible for shipping the poison into the United States in our African American community,” he asked, “or would that be Boo Boo standing on the corner who’s responsible for a couple of kilos a month? We’ve asked for a clarification and a redefined effort to that this is not going to be so much for the folks in our community.”
