“They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”

These are the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.” The book follows the story of three Black Southerners and their journey escaping racial violence — a sharecropper’s wife who left Mississippi in the 1930s for Chicago, an agricultural worker who left Florida for New York City in the 1940s, and a doctor who left Louisiana in the early 1950s.

Their journey was part of the Great Migration that occurred between 1916 and 1970, where 6 million Black people moved out of the rural South to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West. As a native Texan moving to Southern California, I was curious to learn more about the experience of Black Southerners who moved here before me. I learned that this region held promise of safety and security for Black people escaping the ever-present threat of violence and death in the South. But as Black families found out then and Black communities today know all too well, while the warmth of San Diego’s sun might be gentler than the heat of the South, they both cast the familiar shadow of racial violence that Black people across the country can’t escape.

As a policy associate for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, I advocate for policies that advance police accountability. Recently, our office commissioned a report by Campaign Zero that looked at data from the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and analyzed it for racial and identity disparities.

Here is what the report found:

The San Diego Police Department (SDPD):

• Stopped Black people at a 219 percent higher rate than white people. In 85 percent of SDPD beats, Black people were stopped at higher rates than white people.
• Was 23 percent more likely to conduct consent searches on Black people than white people, despite being less likely to be found with contraband than white people.
• Was more likely to use force and even more severe forms of force against Black people than white people.

The story was not any better at the county level. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department:

• Stopped Black people at a 130 percent higher rate than white people. In every area of jurisdiction, Black people were stopped at higher rates than white people. 
• Was 19 percent more likely to search people they perceived to be LGBTQ or gender non-conforming and 38 percent more likely to arrest them without a warrant compared to people who were not perceived to be LGBTQ or gender non-conforming. This disparity was particularly worse for the Black people in this demographic.
• Used more severe levels of force against Black people and Asian/Pacific Islanders.

This is the reality that Black San Diegans, Black Californians, and Black Americans face on a daily basis. Our movement and freedom is policed more often and more severely than our white neighbors. The sad irony about Black people and families that moved to California to escape violence during the Great Migration is that they and their descendants now live in a state with the most civilian deaths caused by police violence. Of those killings, Black people are disproportionately represented.

A recent study found that nationwide, 1 in every 1,000 Black men can expect to be killed by police. In fact, 13 of the 100 largest U.S. city police departments kill Black men at higher rates than the U.S. murder rate.

Although police brutality and killings of civilians have incredible human costs, there is tremendous harm, both physical and psychological, inflicted by even the most routine police activity. Across the country, law enforcement agencies regularly monitor, harass, profile, stop, search, question, detain, and arrest Black people at rates completely disproportionate to their population.

Just as laws were used to respond to the violence of Jim Crow, we also need laws that protect Black communities from racially disparate policing. California has begun to make headway in this regard by passing AB 392: The California Act to Save Lives, which created a higher, “necessary” standard for when police can use force. Now, we need to raise the standard for when police can stop and search people — in California and across the country.

America has begun to begrudgingly recognize Black people’s humanity, freedom, and civil rights. And yet, there is still so much work to do. When I feel discouraged by the slow progress of racial justice, I find comfort in the words of the Black National Anthem, written just before the start of the Great Migration.

It goes:

Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of hope that the present has brought us,

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

From calling on city leaders to address biased policing to fighting law enforcement’s use of intrusive surveillance technology (i.e., smart streetlights), San Diegans — in solidarity with communities across the country — are marching boldly, loudly, and unapologetically toward that day where freedom also includes freedom of Black movement.

Chelsey Birgisdóttir, Policy Associate, ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties

The country and the world face a public health emergency in the new coronavirus causing COVID-19. The media is filled with concerns about how we will respond. Will we close schools? Cancel sporting events and other large gatherings? Work from home? Avoid public transportation?

But little has been said about one of the most vulnerable sectors of our population: the people in our prisons and jails. Although people often think of prisons and jails as closed environments, they are not. Medical staff, correctional staff, and visitors come from the community into the facilities every day and then return home. People are admitted to and released from prisons and jails, and they go back and forth to court and to medical appointments. There is ample opportunity for a virus to enter a prison or jail, and for it to go back out into the community.  

Once a contagious illness enters, conditions in correctional facilities are highly conducive to it spreading. People in prisons and jails live in close proximity to each other. Many are housed in large dormitories, sharing the same space. Even where people are housed in cells, the ventilation is often inadequate. People in prisons and jails are often denied adequate soap and cleaning supplies, making infection control nearly impossible.

Many people in prisons and jails are in relatively poor health and suffer from serious chronic conditions due to lack of access to healthcare in the community, or abysmal healthcare in the correctional system. While people sent to prisons and jails tend to be young, the harsh sentencing policies of recent decades mean that the prison population is aging. Medical staff are generally stretched thin even in the best of times. Though incarcerated people have a constitutional right to adequate medical and mental health care, the reality is they too often do not have access to it.

All this means that prison and jail populations are extremely vulnerable to a contagious illness like COVID-19. Moreover, prisoners have fewer options for protecting themselves and others. They don’t have the option to stay away from other people when they are sick. They can ask for medical attention, but prisons and jails have few infirmary beds and fewer rooms for medical isolation.

If medical staff become ill or have to be quarantined, there will be even fewer people available to provide care. If correctional staff become ill or need to be quarantined, there will be fewer officers available to bring sick people to hospitals, to the infirmary, and even just to keep an eye on who in the facility is showing signs of illness.

To limit outbreaks of COVID-19 in jails and prisons, officials must act, and they must act quickly. They should coordinate with local public health officials to determine the most appropriate measures to take, given the local conditions and the peculiarities of the correctional environment. While the plans will differ from facility to facility, there are points that should be addressed in any plan:

• How will all people in the facility — incarcerated people, staff, and visitors — be educated so they can understand the risks, protect themselves, and protect others? This will ideally be operationalized and conducted at scale.
• Under what circumstances will staff and people incarcerated in the facilities be tested for the virus? How many tests are needed?
• If people who are incarcerated require quarantine and/or treatment, how will that be accomplished? 
• If medical staff must be quarantined or become ill, how will the facility monitor, quarantine and treat the prison or jail population?
• If correctional staff must be quarantined or become ill, how will the facility operate, both in terms of addressing the virus and in terms of simply maintaining necessary services, safety, and security?
• If incarcerated people must be quarantined or become ill, how will the facility continue necessary operations that are reliant on the prison or jail population, such as food preparation?
• Are there particularly vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, or immunocompromised, and how can they be protected?
• How will the facility meet the challenges of COVID-19 without violating the rights of the people in its custody?

People in government custody, including in prisons, jails, and civil detention, are often forgotten in emergencies. This creates unnecessary suffering and loss of life. We have the opportunity to take steps now to limit the spread of the virus in prisons, jails, and detention centers. But the time to act for the health of those incarcerated, and for the broader community, is now.

Maria Morris, Senior Staff Attorney, National Prison Project, ACLU