Police militarization concerns ACLU

MUNCIE – Retired educator Jeanette Jones of Muncie has been appointed to the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, whose concerns in 2015 include militarization of local police departments and the expanded use of domestic drones for police surveillance.

“One of the principal issues now is privacy,” says Alice Bennett, a retired Ball State University biology professor who served until Jan. 1 as president of the state ACLU board and remains a board member.

The Indianapolis-based organization held one of its six First Wednesdays lunchtime discussions last year in Muncie, where the topic was unmanned aerial vehicles and one of the panelists was from the Academy of Model Aeronautics.

Retired after 41 years of special education teaching from pre-K to graduate students in Indiana, Illinois and Ontario, Jones has lived in Muncie since 1984. Her husband, Charles, is a retired professor of math at Ball State, where she earned a doctor of education degree.

“Making sure education is fair and equitable has always been a focus,” she told The Star Press.

While national issues like mass incarceration and drones “touch us in Indiana, they are not as sweeping as in other places,” Jones said. “Individual freedoms seem to be what the Indiana chapter takes on. We’re not in a particular zone where we worry about drones. We don’t have riots to the extent other places do.”

“I like to say to people, when they are critical or skeptical of the ACLU, ‘We are the most patriotic organization in the country, because we defend the Constitution,’ ” Bennett told The Star Press. “People just look at me, but it’s true.”

“Drones are the primary policing tool we will be talking about ... but there are concerns about all technology tools police have access to, including military surplus,” state ACLU communications director Kelly Jones Sharp said. “If those tools are not properly used, monitored and given public scrutiny, you can run into some issues.”

First Wednesdays talks this year are scheduled in Indianapolis, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Columbus, Richmond and Bloomington.

In 2014, the ACLU was instrumental in the campaign for marriage equality in Indiana.

Other highlights from the organization’s annual report:

FREE SPEECH

ACLU won court rulings that said government doesn’t have a right to:

• Prevent Citizens Action Coalition activists from going door-to-door in the evening hours in Yorktown.

• Scuttle the state’s personalized license plate program to prevent a Greenfield police officer from using a plate that says “OINK.”

• Stop an individual from holding a protest sign on Monument Circle.

DISABILITIES

• Represented a Connersville man with autism, diabetes and a low IQ whose services under Indiana’s Medicaid waiver program were dramatically cut by the state.

• Represented a blind, 43-year-old, intellectually disabled quadriplegic man from Vigo County whose benefits were cut by the state.

MASS INCARCERATION

• Challenging the school-to-prison pipeline that funnels students of color out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Despite comparable rates of marijuana use, for example, a black person in Indiana is four to seven times more likely than a white person to be arrested for possession.

JAILS

• Representing seriously mentally ill prisoners held in segregated or extremely isolated Indiana prison environments.

• Monitoring jail overcrowding and poor conditions in jails in counties including Vigo and Monroe.

RELIGION

• Won a federal court ruling that a local church’s erection of 31, six-foot plastic Latin crosses on public property along the city of Evansville’s riverfront was unconstitutional.

POLICE MILITARIZATION

“The shooting of Michael Brown ... is a grim reminder that we often experience two kinds of law enforcement, one that protects and another that frightens people and destroys lives.

“Cheap and plentiful military surplus, including assault rifles and MRAP (mine-resistant, armor-protected) vehicles, has made its way its way to (police departments in) Indiana communities large and small.”

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.