“POP,
POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP!”
There
are too many unnecessary police killings!
An
unarmed black man – shot by the police - eight times, - in the back - in his
Grandmother’s back yard. Twelve other
bullets missed their target. Police
thought Clark had a gun. They didn’t ask
him to drop it. It was his cell
phone. It took less than 17 seconds from
the time the police entered the yard to end a life.
I
read the stories and I see the videos. I
see the anguished look of local citizens protesting in the streets, demanding
change, demanding justice. The perception
of police changed dramatically in the last twenty years. Something went wrong in our society. We need to stop the killings.
I’m
not a police officer, so I can’t imagine the fear and caution they must
experience, even for routine situations, because they don’t know who might have
a gun. Police in Europe, many of whom
are unarmed, don’t have to worry about the prevalence of guns. In Canada, handguns are almost nonexistent. The police there don’t have to be as
afraid.
Are
police shootings that prevalent? Whom do
the police shoot? How does the US compare
to other countries, what changed, and what do we do about it?
So
far, in 2018, police shot and killed 284 people in the US. In 2017, police fatally shot 987 to 1110
people depending on your data source.[i] Compare that to England and Wales where police
shot only six people in 2016-2017 periods.
Whites
in the US represent 80% of the population but only 42% of police killings. Blacks make up about 13% of the population
but represent 20% of police killings according the US Census Bureau.[ii] Think about that. Senator Harris, last week, stated that we had
to put an end to the “implicit bias” in society and police departments. Implicit bias is the new, polite, term for
racism.[iii] Jeffrey Robinson, director of the Trone
Center for Justice and Equality says, “It’s a very difficult thing to admit
that race makes a difference in the criminal justice system, because if we
admit that’s true, it says some pretty ugly things about ourselves as a nation.[iv]
Another
term entered our lexicon a couple of years ago: “white privilege." I don’t get up in the morning wondering if the
police will shoot me or if I will get home at night. I’m comfortable wearing a sweatshirt with a
hood. When I’m pulled over for speeding,
I don’t expect the police to approach my car with guns at the ready. Why not?
Because I’m white. If I were brown, would I feel the same way? Brown and black friends tell me they don’t feel safe in their own community, because of
the police.
My
experience, when a man high on drugs pointed his 22-caliber pistol three feet
from my head, was total fear because I was staring at a barrel that seemed at
least a foot and a half in diameter. Imagine
living with that fear every day when you leave your house for work or send your
kids off to school. The town in which I
live is a solid middle class bedroom community.
Its 170,000 citizens are highly diverse, and well educated. Average household income is $85,000[v] and
homes average $421,000.[vi] Yet, even
in this type of community, some people of color tell me how much they fear the
police because of the way they’ve been treated in the past. This shouldn’t be, but the fear is real; California,
police officers killed someone, on average, about once every three days in the
last decade.[vii]
To
be fair, when a police officer leaves for work, her or his family doesn’t know
if they will return alive. Too many
officers live in fear of being shot and too many are shot. They fear the proliferation of guns in our
society.
Too
many of us who lived during the time of Martin Luther King and afterwards,
believed that much of the animus towards minorities had subsided. It’s possible, however, that feelings have
smoldered for decades and are just now coming out again.
Police force recruitment practices need a good scrubbing. An effective affirmative action program would
result in a police force that represents the community it serves. If 20% of the community is Asian, 20% of the
police force should be Asian. If 40% of
the population is white, then whites should represent no more than 40% of the
police force. Right?
Police departments like to hire veterans. They are well trained, understand discipline,
and want to serve their communities.
They give vets extra points in the hiring process. The process comes with some risks.
Only six percent of the population has
served in the military, but 20% of police are veterans. The transition from warrior to guardian is
hard enough, but when you consider that nearly 12% of veterans suffer from
PTSD, it raises a red flag.[viii] Most police forces don’t spend enough time
and effort on psychological evaluations prior to and after hiring.
Because so many warriors are now police,
the training and general ambiance of police departments has changed over the
last fifteen years. You can see it in
the SWAT teams that arrive in armored vehicles, wearing battle uniforms and carrying
weapons of war. They quickly revert to
warrior status, a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to situations. We must find new ways to train our police,
whom we expect to protect us, to be our guardians, and not warriors who use
deadly force as the first option.
Police
departments must come to grips with this truth: they cannot investigate
themselves and convince the population that they are transparent. Non-partisan civilian boards that represent
the makeup of their community must oversee police, in every jurisdiction. Only then, will there be some semblance of
fairness.
[i]The
Washington Post, April 2, 2018, 10:50 a.m.
[iii]Sacrament
Bee – Forum Section – April 9, 2018
[iv]Ray
Sanchez – CNN- March 30, 2018
[v]City
of Elk Grove CA web site – demographics - 2018
[vi]Zillow
Home Value Index – February, 2018 – Zillow.com
[viii]Simone
Weichselbaum and Beth Schwartzaplet - The Marshal Project – March 30, 2017
