Philly Mayoral Candidate: 'Police Interactions With African-American Men Do Not Happen In A Vacuum'
By Dom Giordano
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Mayoral candidate Doug Oliver talked with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT midday host Dom Giordano about his comments recently at a forum that Philadelphia police officers should be afraid of African-American men.
"If the words were inartful or the wrong ones, then let me change the words. It doesn't change who I am or how I feel. That should be the standard."
Oliver wanted to clarify his comments that were cut short due to a time shortage, saying that it was not what he intended to say.
"The behavior of one African-American man is not necessarily, nor it should be extrapolated to be the behavior of all anymore than it would be or should be that way for police officers. I was trying to highlight the fact that our experiences as youth or as adults even on the streets of Philadelphia when we see even one police officer abuse that authority in our neighborhood it does, whether it is right or wrong, start to inform our opinions on all police officers. That's not right, but it is...these things don't happen in a vacuum. They happen and then they bounce off all of our other experiences and then we draw a conclusion."
While he admits that the judgments that occur are wrong, the mayoral candidate hopes use his experiences to correct them.
"I feel that way with police and we shouldn't feel that way about African-American men, but we do, and until you identify that we've got challenges in our police department and we've also got challenges in our neighborhoods you can't seek to solve. Let's fix it in our neighborhoods and lets fix it in our police department and therein lies the solution."
Oliver's platform for mayor will be focused around education saying that it "number one, two and three" of the most important issues that he would hope to address.
