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One of the most critical political contests for Toledo’s
African-American community in the November 8 general
election is the judicial race for Lucas County Court of
Common Pleas. Overshadowed, obviously, by the hateful
rhetoric of the presidential main event, justice and
fairness throughout the criminal justice system may be the
most prominent issue in this era of Black Lives Matter,
exponential growth of the prison system, aggressive policing
and the decline of community well-being coupled with drastic
reductions in social services.
I spoke with Lindsay Navarre, the Democratic Party candidate
with a high-profile name in this low-key judicial race to
discuss her background and views on critical issues that
affect the survival of the African-American family and
community.
This is part I of our two-part conversation.
Perryman:
So will the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas be your first
political office?
Navarre:
It is. This is my first time as a candidate. I’ve been
pretty involved with our local Democratic party for a while
now. I was on the executive committee and training
committee and the bylaws committee and I’ve worked on other
campaigns, but this is my first time on the hot seat.
Perryman:
What other campaigns have you worked on?
Navarre:
I worked on quite a few judicial campaigns. Ian English’s
campaign, Myron Duhart, and that of Michelle Wagner, in
particular. I also spoke quite a bit this last time when
Mayor [Paula] Hicks-Hudson ran to keep that seat, so I’ve
been really involved with the party and their endorsed
candidates.
Perryman:
You also come from good lineage. Want to talk a little bit
about your family?
Navarre:
Yes, absolutely. So my dad is Mike Navarre and I know that
you know him, he speaks very highly of you. I come from a
line of law enforcement, so my dad was, of course, and still
is a law enforcement officer, so is his brother and so is
their father, my grandpa. I have three siblings, and my
family has always been in Toledo going back to the 1800s.
So I have deep roots in our community which gives me a lot
of the motivation I have for being a leader in our community
and protecting the interest here of our working families. I
have one son. He just turned one on Easter Sunday. My
husband and I have been married, it will be eight years this
November. We have a ton of cousins, aunts and uncles and
just a great big, loud, loving family that I wouldn’t trade.
Perryman:
So where did you attend school?
Navarre:
I grew up in Point Place, so I went to Shoreland Elementary
and then I moved to Perrysburg, so I went to Perrysburg
Junior High and High School and then I went to Butler
University in Indianapolis. I graduated from there and came
back and attended the University of Toledo’s College of Law
the rest of my law degree term.
Perryman:
Great. Let’s talk issues starting with the U.S. Supreme
Court vacancy. Your thoughts?
Navarre:
Well, I have so many so I’ll try to pare them down as much
as possible. My thoughts on Judge Garland himself are, I
think it would be hard to find a more liked and
well-respected and qualified individual for our highest
court. Valedictorian of his undergraduate class at Harvard,
a graduate of Harvard Law School, he has worked in all
different sectors, public and private as an attorney. He’s
been a corporate lawyer, he was a federal prosecutor, sat on
the D.C. Court of Appeals and is a mentor of judges in D.C.
Really, everyone across the board, Republican or Democrat,
has only praise for him.
So, I’m confounded by the
continued determination of members of the GOP to do nothing
with this nomination and it’s disconcerting. I feel awful
for Judge Garland that he has received, what I can only
imagine is, one the greatest honors of his life to be
nominated to the Supreme Court and it almost seems to be
dead on arrival because they’re refusing to do anything with
it in this awful and hostile political environment we find
ourselves, so I’m just disgusted. And I understand kind of
why so many voters are looking at this election and thinking
that they want something different and they want someone
who’s not part of the establishment because this is kind of
a perfect example of why the establishment seems to be
broken. We can’t even get this right.
Perryman:
Well, let’s shift from a dysfunctional political system to
what many consider to be a dysfunctional criminal justice
system. Let’s talk about the broken criminal justice system
in general, and then let’s talk more specifically about
Lucas County and Toledo. What are the problems and how do
we fix them?
Navarre:
Well, I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I do
think that on a positive note, we are at a very exciting
time in the criminal justice system because people are
finally starting to realize that it’s broken and that the
true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
over again for decades and expecting different results.
So finally we are at a
point, we’re actually it seems like on both sides of the
aisle, both Democrats and Republicans realize that something
has to change, we have to do something differently, we have
to think outside of the box. The declaration of the war on
drugs by President Nixon in 1969 was one of the most
detrimental things to ever happen to our country’s system of
criminal justice because it has systemically led to mass
incarceration of minorities and people of lower
socioeconomic status. It has broken families but it has not
done anything at all to reduce drug usage or problems. It
has changed our prison population in the United States by
eight-fold. So, I’m glad we’re now getting to a point where
we’re looking at this differently. In the 70s and 80s and
90s was all about punishing drug users and drug traffickers
and focused on getting rid of the supply rather than the
demand.
But I think if we look at
it from an economic standpoint we will instead start to
focus more on getting rid of the demand and then the supply
will follow. As we’ve seen, you can put one dealer in prison
for 10 years but that supply is always going to be there, so
why don’t we start focusing and spending more of our
resources on prevention, education and treatment, instead of
on prisons and let’s start getting rid of the demand,
because then there won’t be a need for dealers and there
won’t be a need for the supply.
I have so much admiration
for Sherriff John Tharp because he has been on the
forefront, not just in our state, but really nationwide on
thinking outside of the box and really focusing on
education, prevention and treatment instead of just locking
up low-level drug users and repeating the cycle over and
over again, trying to break that cycle of addiction.
Perryman:
What are your thoughts on the school to prison pipeline and
juvenile justice?
Navarre:
Well, I did begin my career in juvenile court, so I was able
to kind of see this firsthand, and before there was really a
name for it, we were talking about it and kind of what to do
about it. There was a theme throughout the courthouse that
so many things were being criminalized now that were just
kids being kids when we were in school and trying to find
themselves and grow up and figure things out for their own,
and now they’re being charged with misdemeanors for these
things?
It just didn’t seem right,
so we’ve kind of been talking about this for a while and
getting back to education, I think we need to start
educating educators about what’s happening because I really
think that…and I’m not sure, to give them the benefit of the
doubt, I think partially it’s a response to school violence
and just kind of living in this constant state of fear that
the school is going to be the next one where there’s going
to be some kind of shooting or there’s going to be some kind
of violence. So, while there is maybe, a feeling of security
by having those school officers there for that protection, I
think they do need to be educated to the fact that they are
now criminalizing things that shouldn’t be criminal, and by
having these police officers there patrolling the hallways,
it’s starting so many at risk youths down a path that it’s
really hard to break.
So I think once we get to
that point where educators realize and really appreciate
that this is happening and see the data, because there’s so
much we have on our end to prove that kids with special
needs or kids who need that extra help and aren’t getting
it, are starting down this path. I think if educators in
public schools want to continue to have school resource
officers, then they should be less of police officers and
more there for the kids to help figure these things out.
I think it needs to be
less about arresting and punishing them and more about
exporting those resources into counseling them and giving
them that added boost and extra attention that might lift
them up instead of keeping them down. Something’s happening,
if children are not present in school. Is it because they
need some extra attention? They might have a learning
disability. Is it because their home life isn’t great? Is
it because they’re coming to school hungry? Is it because
they just don’t like being there? Maybe they need some
counseling because there’s an anger management problem or
there’s some kind of social anxiety. Just at the very
beginning, instead of putting all these resources to build
detention centers and having police officers patrolling
everyone, invest more of these resources into our kids.
I will say, however, I
think our juvenile court here does a pretty good job of
getting it and understanding that kids should be treated
differently than adults, and that kids need to be able to
exit from an environment where they’ve made mistakes because
you learn from mistakes, you grow from mistakes. Every time
a kid makes a mistake it shouldn’t be charged as a safe
school violation.
So I do think that the
juvenile court here understands that and really tries to
work with these kids. The bad thing is, is by the time
juvenile courts, judges, magistrates and probation officers
sees them, that means that they’re already in the criminal
justice system. So, I think that there needs to be some
prevention efforts before that to prevent youth from even
getting to the juvenile court in the first place.
(to be continued)
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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