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Why Are More African-Americans Charged With Resisting Arrest In Asheville?

Asheville Police Chief Tammy Hooper is cleaning house after the beating and choking of a black jay walker. APD has suffered a potential setback as news breaks that the department was monitoring local civil rights groups.
Osajus
/
Flickr Creative Commons
Asheville Police Chief Tammy Hooper is cleaning house after the beating and choking of a black jay walker. APD has suffered a potential setback as news breaks that the department was monitoring local civil rights groups.
Asheville Police Chief Tammy Hooper is cleaning house after the beating and choking of a black jay walker. APD has suffered a potential setback as news breaks that the department was monitoring local civil rights groups.
Credit Osajus / Flickr Creative Commons

African-Americans in Asheville are far more likely to be charged with resisting an officer during a police encounter than white people. A five-year analysis of arrest records from the Asheville Citizen-Times shows that 35 percent of resisting an officer charges — sometimes called “resist, delay, obstruct” or RDO — were made against African-Americans, even though black people are only 12 percent of the Asheville population. Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Joel Burgess joins host Frank Stasio to talk about what might be behind the racial differences in resisting arrest charges in Asheville.

Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Joel Burgess, who covers government accountability, conducted the analysis and spoke to many people in the community about the disparity he found.

Burgess joins host Frank Stasio to share reaction from the Asheville Police Department and to talk about what might be behind the racial differences in RDO charges.

Copyright 2019 North Carolina Public Radio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Amanda Magnus grew up in Maryland and went to high school in Baltimore. She became interested in radio after an elective course in the NYU journalism department. She got her start at Sirius XM Satellite Radio, but she knew public radio was for her when she interned at WNYC. She later moved to Madison, where she worked at Wisconsin Public Radio for six years. In her time there, she helped create an afternoon drive news magazine show, called Central Time. She also produced several series, including one on Native American life in Wisconsin. She spends her free time running, hiking, and roller skating. She also loves scary movies.