“This problem is bigger than us,” says Wauwatosa Mayor Theresa Estness of black Milwaukee’s longtime complaint about suburban police making “Driving While Black” (DWB) stops.

She’s right. And, over the years, it’s been a problem too big for the criminal justice system in Milwaukee County. With a few notable exceptions, law enforcement and the judiciary have poo-poo’d every shred of evidence showing racial disparities in law enforcement throughout the county.

As a result, very little has changed while the streets of Milwaukee got meaner, jobs never materialized, and the learning gap between black and white children in the state grew to embarassing porportions atop the national test score registers. African-Americans who ventured to St. Francis and other areas in the south suburbs to canvas last fall during the presidential race were routinely stopped by police. Call it CWB - Canvassing While Black. Or Walking While Black.

The problem is much bigger than Milwaukee Ald. Michael McGee, Jr., who last week had his own brush with DWB — in this case it might better be described as “Dating While Black” — and now faces resisting arrest and disorderly conduct tickets in Wauwatosa Municipal Court. He emerged this week from a meeting with ‘Tosa Mayor Estness with a promise to hold a task force on “race relations” that would start in ‘Tosa and could encompass all of southeastern Wisconsin.

Specifically on police practices and criminal justice, chief Judge Patrick Sheedy arranged a summit in 1997 after Wisconsin Correctional Services released a report on the stark racial disparities within the county criminal justice system. The results of that summit were, among other things, a marijuana ordinance for the city of Milwaukee and snazzy power-point demonstration by then-Deputy Police Chief Monica Ray, followed by drug offender and sentencing studies that showed alarming disparities in the county’s three drug courts.

Still, problems persist, suffering from a lack of political will to make changes and invest resources in various programs aimed at minimizing the harm of the war on drugs and crime in general. However, although the arrest statistics have revealed racial patterns, they’ve never stuck, mainly because, metro Milwaukee routinely turns a blind eye to police behavior — until someone like Frank Jude Jr. is savagely beaten by overtly racist cops or a mentally ill person like Thomas Jackson dies in police custody.

Suburban police forces routinely get a pass, a fact of life in metro Milwaukee.

Back to McGee: Will another summit or task force produce more positive results? Will the task force be up to the serious nature of its mission?

Not likely. Despite the fact that Ald. McGee has Mayor Estness agreeing that it’s “not about me” as he did in securing the promised task force, the very serious issue of DWB and race will get short shrift with McGee’s Blockbuster parking lot incident in the mix. In the public eye, the task force and the incident will be inexorably linked, and the work will bear the stain of McGee and Blockbuster and the ‘Tosa police.

McGee will have his day in court — although it doesn’t look as though it will be one of his better days, judging by the extensive police reports on the matter. (The cops apparently realized they were in for a public fight when they arrested McGee and have been meticulous in their reports). The incident is just not as incendiary as the alderman would have us believe. He doesn’t appear to have much of a case; his official statement issued the day after can be described as misleading.

In the end, the McGee Blockbuster yelling incident and rough arrest should be filed under “What not to do after hours when dropping off a lady friend who left her car parked in a Blockbuster parking lot.”

While our sympathies should go out to McGee for being bothered by police while minding his own business, it should also be noted that McGee’s lady friend — whose identification and vehicle description have been Sharpie’d out of the police reports posted by Journal Sentinel — appears to be more of a witness for the prosecution and not McGee, if she comes forward.

If metro Milwaukee is serious about a discussion of race relations, the police and the horde of socio-economic issues that accompany life in the rust belt, we should take our cue from how the mystery lady reacted when McGee began shouting at Blockbuster employees who had called the cops.

She got in her car and drove away from McGee, apparently fast enough to miss the ensuing traffic stop, “Smackdown” banter and arrest.