Tag: Policing in America

No. All Lives Don’t Matter, Not in America

Hardly a week goes by without another story appearing about a black citizen, often unarmed, who is killed by the police.

Botham Jean

The latest story concerns the death of Botham Jean.  Mr. Jean was shot in his own apartment by an off-duty police officer, Amber Guyer.

Amber Guyger

According to officer Guyger, who lived in the same apartment complex, she mistakenly entered the Mr. Jean’s apartment after dark.  Seeing a menacing black man standing in what she believed was the front room of her apartment, she shot him.

Pause for a moment and see how many obvious questions that very odd scenario raises in your mind.

A neighbor, however, reports that he heard banging on Mr. Jean’s door and then a conversation between Jean and Guyger.  Ms. Guyger is alleged to have yelled, “let me in.”

The Texas rangers are investigating.

Call me kooky, but forgive me for not trusting the police to police themselves.

Mr. Jean’s mother.

Mr. Jean’s family describes him as a Christian man, active in his local church. He had never been arrested, nor had he ever had a run-in with the police, that is until officer Guyger shot him dead.

Ms. Guyger was arrested briefly and released on her own recognizance after only a few hours.  She seems to have used some of that time to scrub her computer.  I wonder why.  Oddly, she forgot to erase her Pinterest page which contains a good deal of hateful, violent and racist material.

Mr. Jean, on the other hand, has suffered from post-mortem character assassination.  The police quickly obtained a warrant to search his apartment.  Apparently, in Dallas, Texas being the unarmed, black victim of a police shooting — in your own home, no less — is reason enough to be suspected of criminal activity.

The police didn’t discover any weapons but reportedly uncovered a bag of marijuana.

Excuse me again if I take another moment to pause and wonder if that bag was planted by the officers conducting the search.  After all, for some police departments, planting evidence is more common than shooting unarmed people in their homes (see here and here).

Only in the twisted world of Fox News is the ex post facto discovery of a bag of marijuana relevant to the killing of an unarmed man with no criminal record.

But, of course, we can’t forget that Mr. Jean was black.  Neither can we

NYC action in solidarity with Ferguson. Mo, encouraging a boycott of Black Friday Consumerism.

forget that this happened in America.

Several recent studies reveal that black Americans are 2.5 to 2.7 times more likely to be shot by police than are white people. The disparity becomes even more striking when we turn to the shooting of unarmed people.

People of color compose about 37% of the US population, yet they make up 62.7% of the unarmed victims shot by police.

Another study investigating police killings from 2014 to 2015 concluded that:

“The disproportionate killing of black men occurs…because of the institutional and organizational racism in police departments and the criminal justice system’s targeting minority communities with policies—like stop and frisk and the war on drugs—that have more destructive effects.”

Demonstrators march in protest against a grand jury’s decision on Monday not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014, in New York. The grand jury’s decision has inflamed racial tensions across the U.S. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Obviously, something has gone dangerously wrong in the way America’s police officers are being trained and the atmosphere in which they do their jobs.

All lives do not matter in America today.  All lives are not equal here.  Some lives count more than others.  Mr. Jean’s death and the behavior of the Dallas police department is only the latest evidence.

Many who sneer at the Black Lives Matter movement are moral posers, pretending to a superior moral judgment by pasting “All Lives Matter” (the moral universalists) or “Blue Lives Matter” (the ethical particularists) bumper stickers on their cars. Tragically, such protests simply reveal how very, very deep are the wells of ignorance and incipient racism in white America.

To insist that “all lives matter” is to fain innocence while whispering behind a raised hand that “black lives don’t matter.”

Such reactionary slogans are rhetorically camouflaged “f**k you” bombs, equivalent to the old segregationist signs directing “Negroes to the Back of the Bus.”

Honestly, to insist that “all lives matter” in response to a movement led by African-Americans working to change a society where people who look like them are shot, killed, and arrested by police at wildly disproportionate rates is a stunning display of white privilege in and of itself.

It is a bold-faced lie to say that all lives matter in the United States.

That is why, as a Christian, an evangelical, a disciple of Jesus Christ, a citizen of God’s kingdom on earth, and the grandfather of a precious little black girl, I believe that every follower of Jesus must stand up and say, YES, BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Durham, North Carolina First To Ban Police Exchanges With Israel (The Forward)

The first paragraph from today’s article in The Forward reads:

“The City Council in Durham, North Carolina, has voted unanimously to bar the city’s police department from international exchanges in which the officers receive ‘military-style training’ in a slap at such programs held with the Israeli army and police.”

This is excellent news. I hope that it is a first step in a nation-wide movement to delegitimize (as Benjamin Netanyahu loves to lament) the military policing tactics used by Israeli authorities.  They are criminal methods as employed within Israel and the Occupied Territories.  They remain abhorrent, criminal and immoral when exported elsewhere — as I mentioned in an earlier post about police lynchings in America.  It is a travesty that an international exchange program allowing Israel’s apartheid policing philosophy to infiltrate this country was ever condoned in the first place.

I encourage you to read the article if you want to know about Israel’s influence in our police academies.  I intent to write about this in the near future.  For now, here are a few additional sources (here and here).

Official State Lynching in America #blacklivesmatter #policeviolence

Hardly a week goes by without another tragic incident where police kill an unarmed African American.  This week’s victim of unjustifiable, excessive use of deadly force (can I possibly be any more redundant in making my point?) is Saheen Vassell.

Saheen’s only crime was being black while walking on the sidewalk in his own neighborhood holding a piece of shower-head pipe in his hand.

For such threatening carelessness in 21st century America, he paid the ultimate price.

Watch this Democracy Now interview with Saheen’s mother and father as well as an eyewitness to the shooting.

The police pulled up in an unmarked car.  They (apparently) failed to identify themselves.  They did not address Saheen in any way. No warnings. No questions. No “put up your hands!” or “lay down on the ground!” or “drop what you are holding.” Nothing.

Two police officers simply began shooting.

Nothing but 10 shots fired at Saheen within seconds.  Saheen was unarmed.  He didn’t even have time to throw his deadly shower-head.

Saheed’s only crime was walking in public with a piece of pipe in his hand; something that most guys, including white guys, have done at one time or another.

But Saheen was black.  What else can we call this but an execution?

Such executions of unarmed black people are the current form of state sponsored lynching in America.  And no matter how outlandish the circumstances, the police officers involved are rarely punished and often go back to their job.

Actually, these crimes are not so new, are they?  Many lynchings in our country’s history have been sponsored by the state in one way or another.  Often the local police, sheriff, deputies, mayors, council members and other elected officials were the leaders of the Klu Klux Klan rallies executing the lynching.

Imagine the outcry if today’s victims of police brutality were middle-class whites; if week after week, month after month, year after year the American public was presented with graphic images of white men and boys pulled over and shot, strangled, beaten, detained and pistol whipped, their bodies pumped over and over again with lead bullets, five, ten, twenty times or more.

Aren’t the police pledged to “protect and serve” their communities?  As a youngster, I was always told that the policeman was my friend.  I could count on him/her for help.

I suspect that black mothers and fathers have rarely if ever felt secure in offering that assurance to their children.  In fact, watch this brief video showing the kinds of talks the African-American parents are required to have with their children, including their own stories of police abuse.

NO ONE should have to experience this kind of dehumanization anywhere at any time, much less in America.

Nowadays the mantra of “protect and serve” appears to be the police officers’ Orwellian twist on “shoot first and ask questions later.”  Protect yourself and serve your own interests, no matter how many innocent men and women you victimize in the process.

Apparently, the goal of police work today – not for all, I realize, not even for the majority (I hope), but certainly for far too many – is to stay well clear of even the remotest chance of bodily harm.  For example, watch this newly released video showing how the officers who killed Stephon Clark (for holding a phone in his hand in his own backyard) stood back and waited for 5 minutes (for fear that he was pretending to be dead) before they approached to offer medical assistance.

I am sorry, but that is not policing.  It is cowardice; cowardice mixed with an abhorrent lack of concern for a fellow human being.

I cannot help but wonder if the growing trend of sending US police departments to Israel for training with the Israeli Defense Forces (the IDF) has a role to play in all this.

Unfortunately, the IDF only enforces a military occupation of the Palestinian people.  The population they monitor is considered the enemy.  Protect and serve are alien concepts to the IDF. Brutality and lethal force are always the first resort when Israeli soldiers confront Palestinian men, women and children.

I fear the growing similarities between the IDF and US police may not be accidental.

Our police forces are increasingly militarized.  They look more and more like invading storm-troopers, not your neighborhood friend.  They seem to view our neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods with high concentrations of people of color, as hostile territory to be exited as quickly as possible.

Of course, police officers DO face danger and hostility on a regular basis.  We cannot forget that.  But something somewhere along the way (whether in recruitment, training, supervision, or leadership) has gone very, very wrong in American policing.

Every resident of every color in every neighborhood throughout this nation, in our cities and in the countryside, needs to stand up in protest.  We all deserve the same protections, especially against state-sponsored violence.

We need to scream and shout.

We need to demand accountability for the cold-blooded lynching of Saheen Vassell, Stephon Clark, and every other innocent, unarmed person whose life was cut short by a trigger-happy cop whose highest priority was not community service but self-preservation.

When Police Officers Become Executioners

 

John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute and author of the book Battlefield American: The War on the American People, has written an important and very timely article at The Greenville Post.  It is entitled “Enough is Enough: Police Violence Plagues America.”

The ghastly stories about unarmed black citizens, such as Stephon Clark, being gunned down by police officers have become an almost daily occurrence.

It is unconscionable.  It has to change.

Below are the article’s closing paragraphs.  I encourage you to read the entire piece:

“You want to save lives?

“Start by doing something to save the lives of your fellow citizens who are being gunned down every day by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

“You want to cry about the lives lost during mass shootings?

“Cry about the lives lost as a result of the violence being perpetrated by the U.S. government here at home and abroad.

“If gun control activists really want the country to reconsider its relationship with guns and violence, then it needs to start with a serious discussion about the role our government has played and continues to play in contributing to the culture of violence.”

The gun control movement needs to confront this looming shadow of an increasingly militarized police force that all too frequently (and needlessly) resorts to deadly force, especially when confronting people of color.

Thankfully, African-American students at Parkland High School are beginning to gain some attention as they describe their fears as black citizens living in an increasingly militarized America (here, here, and here, for only a few examples).