Obama told N’DIGO, “is to be rooted in the African-American community, recognize it as your base, and yet not be limited to it.”
Rickey Hendon had been trying for years to get a racial profiling bill through the state senate. Hendon had been pulled over by the police himself, so he’d shared the humiliation of black drivers who were treated like criminal suspects because of their color. But Hendon’s proposal—which would have mandated sensitivity training for officers guilty of profiling and yanked state funds from departments that wouldn’t comply—never won the support of Republicans or police chiefs. At the beginning of the new session, Emil Jones approached Hendon with a demand.
“I want you to give Barack that bill,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Hendon shot back. “I’ve been working on that bill forever. When the Republicans were in charge, we couldn’t pass it.”
Hendon saw what was about to happen. He’d carried the ball ninety-nine yards on the racial profiling issue, and now Obama was going to score the touchdown. But Hendon gave up the bill. As he would later tell a reporter, “Mama didn’t raise no fool.” Going along with the senate president could only help his political career.
Obama began his lobbying campaign with the Fraternal Order of Police. The FOP and the black caucus had an antagonistic relationship. Whenever they’d tried to discuss racial profiling in the past, the blacks had accused the cops of racism, and the cops had folded their arms, refusing to even consider a bill. Ted Street, the FOP president, was still irked about a meeting in Chicago when 125 black ministers crowded into a small conference room: an obvious ploy to intimidate the police, he thought. Street’s organization saw Emil Jones as a cop basher more interested in playing the race card than working out a deal with law enforcement.
When Obama arrived at the FOP’s office, Street realized immediately that this was a different kind of black legislator. Obama wasn’t hostile, first of all. He wasn’t there to accuse the cops of targeting black motorists. He was there to draft a bill that would satisfy law enforcement and the black caucus. Street wasn’t used to that approach. During a series of meetings in Chicago and Springfield, Obama tempered Hendon’s bill, making it easier for the cops to accept. The state would conduct a four-year study of traffic stops, keeping records of every driver’s race. All police officers would go through diversity training. The punishments were gone. The cops were happy. They were sure the study would prove they’d been engaged in law enforcement, not racial profiling.
“From a layman’s perspective, Barack was able to reduce the sting to make it palatable,” Street would say. “He was able to get it down to where our view in the end was, ‘It’s another piece of paper to fill out.’ ”
Obama lobbied hard for the bill. His senate desk was in the back of the chamber, near the bathrooms. Whenever a senator came out, Obama would ask for a moment. Once, Obama got into a heated argument in the bathroom with a black colleague who demanded to know if he really understood what it was like to be a young black man getting a pat-down from the police just because he’d been standing on a street corner. The implication was that he didn’t understand the streets or the black experience. So Obama talked about the tough neighborhoods he’d seen as a boy in Honolulu and the projects he’d worked in as a community organizer.
Three months into the session, the bill came up for a vote. Kirk Dillard, Obama’s most devoted Republican admirer, rose to speak in favor.
“About two to two-and-a-half years ago, Senator Obama and myself began working with Senator Hendon on this particular topic,” he said. “Barack and I had many, many early morning, seven A.M., breakfast meetings with former attorney general Jim Ryan, who along with a cast of—of—of—of hundreds from law enforcement from throughout America, helped us understand the difficult issues which Senator Obama has put together so well to make this difficult subject workable.”
The bill passed unanimously. While Hendon thought it was watered-down, he would come to see that it was effective. Random stops of black motorists decreased, because the police knew someone was counting.
(On the other hand, Obama’s success intensified the antipathy some black legislators still felt toward him. State representative Monique Davis, who had spent years working on a racial profiling bill in the house, felt “snubbed” and “shut out of history.” Davis and Obama both