Columbia art center says race was main factor in its artist being cuffed by police
After a Black artist living at an art center was detained by Columbia police as a possible intruder, the center says it believes race was the reason the artist was scrutinized and put in handcuffs.
In a statement, the executive director of 701 Center for Contemporary Art said Columbia Police Department officers have entered in the past looking for a possible intruder and stopped a white resident of the building’s apartments. But those encounters “resulted in courteous apologies.”
“The difference? Race,” 701 CCA director Michaela Pilar Brown wrote in a statement Friday. “Mr. Sims is a black man; the other incidents involved a white man.”
After officers found an open door to the center around 2 a.m. May 17, they searched the place, finding John Sims in an upstairs apartment, according to police. They drew guns on him, shouted commands and cuffed him for about eight minutes while they check his identification and for criminal warrants.
Sims has been living at 701 CCA as the artist in residence since early May while working on art and displaying an exhibit that attacks the Confederate flag.
The 701 center “has the responsibility to shine light on injustice it encounters and to be part of an active dialogue to make real and discernible change,” Brown said. “We cannot ignore the relationship between the white supremacy that permeates our culture and the racial profiling we believe infected John Sims’ treatment” by Columbia officers.
In response to detaining Sims last week, the police department put out a statement saying its officers acted within policy and were right to detain Sims. The only mistake officers made was not allowing Sims to take photos as he requested, according to the police department.
“Recent events around the country have brought policing issues, such as transparency and accountability, community trust, officer and public safety, and use of force, and implicit bias to the forefront in our public dialogue,” Chief Skip Holbrook said in a previous statement. The Columbia Police Department “has taken advantage of every opportunity to be a part of the national conversation about community-police engagement and criminal justice reforms through training, policy and culture.”
The 701 center acknowledged that Holbrook, members of the Columbia City Council and Mayor Steve Benjamin have made “constructive efforts ... to visit Mr. Sims’ exhibit at CCA and to speak with Mr. Sims.”
“We are hopeful those visits mark the beginning of a dialogue that will lead to an acknowledgment by the Columbia Police Department of its shortcomings in this incident and the need for continuing improvement,” Brown said in a statement.
Brown said the art center wants the Columbia Police Department to “examine carefully its policies and practices related to racial profiling that unnecessarily escalated this incident and put the life of an innocent man at risk.”
She asked the department to make sure public statements are accurate and don’t “shift blame to the victim, as happened in this case with Mr. Sims.”