NEWS: Decal system to go ‘live’ April 1 at all County Convenience Centers. PAGE A3
MARCH 18–24, 2021 WWW.YOURISLANDNEWS.COM
COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
POLICING THE POLICE LOLITA HUCKABY
Building division Can we talk some more about growth – good and bad?
Benefit of the Doubt Who gets more tickets in the Lowcountry, minorities or whites? And who gets a pass?
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BEAUFORT t was interesting that Island News Editor Mike McCombs had a frontpage story last week about the missing historic marker from the corner of Bay and Scott streets. There seems to be even greater public interest in the potential missing history of much of downtown Beaufort, indeed, the city's character. As this point in history, the "mystery" is centered on Port Republic Street where 303 Associates and Dick Stewart have plans to covert much of the two block area into two major new buildings with 24 apartments, more than 80 additional rooms, a parking garage and expansion of the existing Beaufort Inn. Suffice to say, much has been said about the proposed projects, largely on social media. But people are talking and there’s no consensus … the people are divided. What will such building projects, if constructed, mean to the small, quaint downtown district. There's the initial construction phase to think about and then the addition of people … and their cars. For many, the proposals mean progress and that means $$$ for restaurants and retail shops now struggling to overcome the financial setback of COVID. As is often the case, action on these major projects is pretty much "out of the barn." City approvals have been given and precedents have been set. It is true that plans for the latest controversy, the corner of Charles and Port Republic streets, are in something of a holding pattern since the Historic Review Board, after a feisty meeting on March 10, agreed to the demolition of the old Edwards building, but only if final plans for the three-story apartment building proposed for the block are approved. The issue of parking – always a hot topic in town – is to be satisfied by a proposed four-tier parking garage on Craven Street, also a 303 Associates project. Preliminary plans for the structure were approved by the city, aka the Historic Review Board, in 2017 and have received two extensions by the staff since then but no final approval. To date, no ground has been broken for the garage although a nice, predominately vacant parking lot sits where Nippy's Grill use to serve lunch and, before that, Beaufort’s Alvin Ord's was
By Mindy Lucas When Lisa Allen got the most recent data back from the City of Beaufort earlier this year, she was pleased by what she saw in one set in particular. For November and December, the data showed a 20-point swing
in the number of citations, or tickets, between Black and White people. In October, the percentage of citations given had been equal, but just a month later, the percentage of White individuals cited had increased by 10 percent, while the percent for Black individuals cited
had decreased by 10 percent. The numbers seemed to be moving more toward each group’s percentage of the population – a good sign, Allen observed. For Allen, a former news journalist and founder of the Citizens Task Force for Law Enforcement Accountability, the 20-point difference was a positive trend that also piqued her natural curiosity. “Having dealt with data for years, whenever you get a statistically significant change in data, one wants to know the reason why,” she said. While it remains unclear why the swing occurred, Allen said any number of factors could have caused the change – from police officers doing something differently while out on patrol to the population behaving differently. At the same time, the data also showed an increase in the number of warnings given to Black residents, which suggested officers were giving this population the benefit of the doubt, Allen points out. Either way, it’s all part of what she and the 30-plus member task force has set out to look at as part of the group’s mission to increase the trust, collaboration and communication between residents and law enforcement. Allen and other members of the task force started meeting with the heads of local law enforcement agencies last summer. As part of that effort, the agencies release their data to the task force, while Allen shares the task force’s reports on the data with the agencies before releasing them the community. The number of traffic stops, citations and warnings are part of a larger pool of data the group asked the agencies to make public. Since then, the task force has received nearly all of the data requested from the four major law enforcement entities in the area. That in itself is saying something, Allen said. “No one likes to have someone looking over their shoulders,” she said. “This is new to a lot of the local law enforcement agencies, and overall they’ve all been very cooperative and understanding of the need to provide this information to the community.”
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BYAC Tiger Sharks place fifth at Swimming Championship.
SCDNR is asking for South Carolina residents to take down bird feeders until April.
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ABOUT THIS SERIES The Island News takes a look at the work of the Citizens Task Force for Law Enforcement Accountability, created in 2020, and their findings.
WHAT IS THE CITIZENS TASK FORCE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY? A grassroots, community based group, the Citizens Task Force for Law Enforcement Accountability was formed last July by county residents in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the worldwide protests that followed. The task force is guided in part by recommendations from the 2015 President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The group’s mission is to “increase the trust, collaboration and communication between residents and law enforcement, which in turn will make everyone — officers, deputies and residents — safer.” That task force is currently working with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, the Beaufort Police Department; the Bluffton Police Department and the Port Royal Police Department. The task force also wants to “improve the transparency of Beaufort County’s police and sheriff departments’ policies, training, and staffing, as well as track traffic stops, arrests, use of force, citizen complaints, and incustody injury or death by age, gender, and race.”