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Criminal Justice Reformer Ellis on the Zimmerman Verdict, Stop-and-Frisk, the Future

Ask formerly incarcerated Eddie Ellis, an internationally known prison reformer, if there are lessons to be taken from the current lawsuit against alleged racial profiling by some members of the New York Police Department and the verdict in the Trayvon Martin killing case and he will say he cannot give an optimistic answer.

Yes, Ellis, 72, said, there have been valid protests over what many see as an unjust acquittal of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot Martin.

And a New York court continues to hear a class-action lawsuit filed by those who claim the NYPD has resorted to a race-based “stop-and-frisk” campaign targeting black and Latino young men, said Ellis, founder and executive director of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions.

There also is renewed talk about formally training youth of color to avoid becoming easy targets of racially profiling by vigilantes or police, and about what minority youth should do when they suspect they are being racially profiled, he said.

That may be a worthy discussion, added Ellis, who also has been a criminal justice consultant to organizations such as billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute. But it is not a strategy for moving forward, Ellis said.

“At the end of the day it doesn’t speak to the fundamental reasons for injustice,” said former Black Panther Ellis, who spent almost 25 years in the Attica Correctional Facility and other state prisons after being convicted in 1971 for a murder he says he never committed. He blames that conviction on law enforcement officials, including the FBI, which the courts later concluded had falsely charged the Black Panthers for a series of crimes.

For 20 years, when he was a paralegal and an organizer for Neighborhood Defenders in Harlem, Ellis helped run a “What to do When You’re Stopped by Police” program for young black males. Currently groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union produce an informational pamphlet with a similar name and provide support to community groups that want to train youth of color on the subject.

Those might be admirable projects, said Ellis, a researcher fellow at Medgar Evers College’s DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy. “But these programs are of very minimal value. The onus of responsibility is not [people who are profiled]; it is on the aggressor. No amount of training is going to do much to change that.”

“We have to have an agenda. I don’t see that,” Ellis added. “There has to be a different way to demonstrate your outrage … The agenda for change has to be focused, specific and sustained.”