Over the past weeks, questionable conduct by Dearborn police officers has shed light on the dire need for hiring more Arab Americans into the police department, so that it reflects the population of the city. 

In March, the police executed a search warrant at the wrong house, where they entered the home of an Arab family at 2 a.m., handcuffed the father, searched the wife without allowing her to put her hijab on and woke up their three children. Although the incident was an honest mistake, the City did not bother to issue a formal apology.

Last week, The Arab American News obtained a video where a Dearborn police officer tackles a mentally challenged Arab man, Ali Baydoun, to the ground and kicks him repeatedly after the man resists being searched. Soon enough, more cars come to the scene and officers brutalize the man further, as he struggles without seemingly fully understanding the situation. 

Baydoun does not speak English. Dispatching an Arabic-speaking officer to communicate with him could have avoided the entire ordeal.

In a city where at least half of the population is of Arab descent, as of last year, only seven out of Dearborn’s 184 police officers were Arab Americans.  That is less than 4%.

More shocking than the police’s conduct was the City’s response to it. Hours after we posted the video, the City issued a press release defending the officers’ behavior and immediately clearing them of any wrongdoing. 

The statement said the officers followed the “department protocols.” But if the department’s protocol is to randomly search residents without probable cause, and to beat them for not speaking English, then those are protocols we should not live with.

There is a striking contrast between the City’s silence towards the family who was mistakenly frightened and searched by the police in March and its rush to defend the cops in the Baydoun incident.

Baydoun is suing the police department, so it is for the legal system to determine whether the police’s actions were legally justified or not. But the City of Dearborn should have shown more sympathy to this resident who did nothing wrong, other than riding a bike at 4 a.m.

If the officers had more knowledge of Arab culture, they would have known that it is not uncommon for Arabs to be out that late, especially in a city where cafes routinely stay open until that time.

Dearborn has a troubling past in dealing with minorities. Orville Hubbard, the city’s mayor from 1942 to 1978, was an advocate of racial segregation. He made bigoted and racist statements that would not even be appropriate to quote.  While the rest of the nation has moved on from that era, Hubbard’s statue stands firm at City Hall.

While hiring more Arab police officers might not solve all the city’s racial problems, it will lead to more sensitivity in the police department toward the Arab American community.