Local group, children receive awards honoring MLK

After three years of collecting data, analyzing and designing, the Monroe County Racial Justice Task Force received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award Jan. 19 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.\n"Good social science research is extremely time-consuming, complex and challenging," said Marsha Bradford, director of the Safe and Civil City Program.\nThe Legacy Award was designed to honor a group of people who have made contributions to race relations, justice or human rights.\n"The Legacy Award enables King's dream to continue," said Craig Brenner, special projects coordinator for the community and family resources department. "It's great that people can study a problem and work together to fix it."\nThe 2003 report examines racial disparities in the justice system and provides recommendations for improvement.\nThe data offers community leaders information about sentencing, booking charges and racial profiling. The committee examined more than 1,000 files from the prosecutor's office and offered remedies and recommendations for problems.\n"The big areas that we see disparities between blacks and whites are in arrest, pretrial detention, pretrial diversion and sentencing," said lead contributor Amy Kearns. "One of the most important things to me in this study is that we were able to give the community a very detailed portrait of issues facing the black community in criminal justice issues."\nIf King were alive today, Bradford said she expects he would be applauding the Task Force's efforts.\n"We responded to King's passionate belief that to redress slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, we all must serve as agents of change," said Bradford. "I feel confident that our community will continue to respond pro-actively."\nThe Task Force's strategies for reducing disparity revolved around developing sound criminal justice practices, targeting areas where disparities are significant and monitoring new initiatives and their impacts.\nAfter the Task Force received recognition, the King Commission also announced the winners of the Web site design, which was open to participation from elementary, middle and high school students.\nThe theme of the fourth annual competition was "Bringing Dr. King's Dream to All Americans: Past Struggles, Current Realities and Future Directions." With over 200 students participating, 30 Web sites were designed to honor King.\n"We're so fortunate that the schools support our contest," said Brenner. "We wanted to help the kids get connected to technology and learn about King."\nFirst place winners, Muhammad Ahmed and Jong Min King, 8th graders from Tri-North Middle School, were rewarded with cash prizes for their winning Web site. Not only were they grateful for the monetary award but expressed gratitude about King's message.\n"Thank you, Mr. King," wrote Ahmed on www.mccsc.edu/mlkjbcc.html. "Without you, some of my dreams would not come true"