When
my son was 15, he and two of his friends went down to the park at the
end of our block after dark to play war with their BB guns where they
proceeded to run around, hiding behind trees, and shooting at each
other. A neighbor, hearing the shots, called 911 reporting gunfire in
the park. The police responded with a helicopter using its
searchlights and several cars which descended on the boys and
officers approached the boys with guns drawn. After the boys were
questioned, the officers confiscated their BB guns, loaded them in
the back of the car unhand-cuffed, and brought them home. They were
released into my care and issued citations for being in the park
after hours.
My
son and his friends are white.
Granted,
this was 17 years ago before the NRA decided that every home in the
country needed to have 10 guns, the more powerful the better, but I
have no doubt that even 17 years ago if my son and his friends had
been black they would have been shot first and questioned later. If
they survived being shot and the questioning, they would surely have been
hand-cuffed and hauled off to jail. If it happened today to my white
son and his friends I feel sure that they would be brutalized and maybe shot. If
they were black, they would most certainly be killed before any
orders of compliance were issued and none of the cops would be
charged with their murders.
Killing
blacks with impunity in this country is nothing new. As slaves their
owners killed them with impunity, when freed their neighbors killed
them with impunity, and now the cops kill them with impunity.
Much
has been said by whites shielded by their white privilege about these
recent and continuing murders of black people by the cops mostly
amounting to saying that if those black people had just complied with
police orders, if they had just showed some respect they would still be alive. But the fact is that these
victims aren't given a chance to comply, aren't treated with respect, before they are shot dead,
tased into unconsciousness or death, or brutally beat up. The police
have done this so often with no repercussions that they are out of
control. They respond with deadly force first and ask questions later
knowing that all they have to do is say they felt their lives were in
danger. According to the white officer Darren Wilson who murdered a black teen, just being black makes cops feel endangered. If
these cops are so fearful for their lives while they do their jobs
that they shoot first and immediately, that they unload their guns
into unarmed citizens, then these people need to get a different job.
We
hear about how most cops are good cops, that only a small percentage
of cops are racist sociopaths but when good cops
won't stand against bad cops, when good cops don't stop a bad cop
from being unnecessarily brutal, when good cops allow bad cops to
continue, just how good can 'good' cops be? They close ranks
and protect them. Grand juries refuse to indict them. They stand by
and watch a fellow officer employ an illegal chokehold on an unarmed
man for selling single cigarettes, a chokehold so tight that he
crushed the man's trachea and killed him. Not one of the other
officers on the scene tried to intervene and stop it.
More
training the pundits cry. But the problem is not lack of training.
The problem is extreme racism in the police forces. Ask any black
cop. The problem is hiring sociopaths, the problem is not requiring
a certain level of intelligence to become a police officer, a person
who is supposed to protect and serve.
A
bunch of white separatists can point guns at and stand off police and
federal agents and they aren't even arrested. A 12 year old black boy
playing with his legal toy gun is shot dead within moments of the
police arriving. White guys parading around in stores or on the
streets with their semi-automatic rifles aren't even approached by
police. A black guy holding a toy gun in a store that sells toy guns
in an open carry state is shot dead basically on sight.
The
problem is not lack of training. The problem is not lack of
compliance on the part of black people.
The
problem is, this is a racist country with racism rampant in the
police departments and in the white population. The problem is that
black and brown people are targeted for search and harassment just
for being out in public. Even all the protests and rioting caused by
the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager among others, with all
the publicity and evidence shared massively through social media, the
police have not even paused.
So
now the 'solution' is to have all cops wear body cameras as if that
is going to make a difference. We already have plenty of video out
there showing police brutality. It doesn't matter. No one will
indict a cop. They don't even lose their jobs. And until they do,
nothing will change.
Until
this country stands up for, stands with, stands behind it's black and
brown citizens, then we have no moral ground to criticize other
countries for human rights violations.
I
have focused on the racism in this country because most of the police
brutality and murders are inflicted on people of color but the fact
is, white people are also brutalized by police and in growing
numbers.