In my hometown, small admittedly, the police
were our friends when we were growing up. I remember referring to a police
officer as a “cop” on one occasion. I don’t think I ever came so close to
having my mouth washed out with lye-soap as that afternoon. “Cop” wasn’t
considered polite. It didn’t show deserved respect. As a kid, the police were
the ones who directed traffic, who drove around town making sure everyone was
safe, that there was a minimum of mischief on Halloween night, or that the four
saloons in town were well behaved. They even walked a beat in the downtown
business district. I went to the police station to learn about fingerprinting
to qualify for my Boy Scout merit badge. After a few visits, I knew all of the
officers and they all knew me. That may explain why my mother really did know
what trouble I had gotten into, long before I got home. They protected us and
they served with distinction. I still try not to call police officers “cops.”
The thought of lye-soap still haunts me. What’s changed?
We say “we can’t let it happen again,” and then
it does. George Floyd’s death isn’t unusual in America. It isn’t unusual for a
person of color to be killed by the police even if they are unarmed and non-violent.
We see it with our own eyes, broadcast over and over on television. George
Floyd was not the first killed for no reason, filmed for all to see. In broad
daylight, on a busy street in Minneapolis, in front of dozens of people, a man handcuffed
behind his back was thrown to the ground and a police officer knelt on the side
of his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, until he was dead. Three
other officers aided and abetted the killing.
Too many of us White folks don’t understand
what it is like to be Black in America. We are two countries. In 2018, the
police killed 992 people in the US. In 2019, they killed 1004.[i] Many of
those shooting were justified, absolutely! More White people die at the hands
of police than any other race, but that is not the point. If you look at police
killings per million people, Blacks are three times more likely to be killed
than White people are.[ii]
Ninety-nine percent and more of police officers joined the ranks and do their
jobs because they want to protect and serve the greater good and the people of
their jurisdictions. So what happened?
The police officer who killed George Floyd had
18 charges against him for past bad behaviors. While he was killing George
Floyd, three other officers watched and said or did nothing to stop him. All
three were fired quickly, which is unheard of in police culture. The murdering
officer has been charged with 2rd degree murder and 2nd
degree manslaughter. The other three officers were charged with felony aiding
and abetting a 2nd-degree murder.
Jon Meacham, the distinguished historian, said
this week that “In this convulsive moment, let’s not say: ‘This isn’t who we
are,’”[iii]
because this IS who we are, but we just don’t want to admit it. Our nation has
a long history of racism. Too many of us, perhaps, thought that we had ended it
in the ’60s. How could it continue after Dr. King’s “I had a dream” speech? How
could racism continue after so much effort spent on affirmative action
programs? Well, it continued, and it continues to continue. Marcellus told us, “There
is something rotten in the state of Denmark.”[iv] When
we face the data, the facts, see the results of our collective actions, we
can’t but conclude that there is something rotten in our society. George Floyd
was eulogized in Minneapolis with a call for action to get society ‘s knee of
the necks of Black people – poor schools, lack of good housing, lack of good
jobs, redlining of real estate in our cities and towns, higher arrests and
convictions compared to Whites for the same crimes, and an end to police
brutality. What?
The well-publicized killing of George Floyd,
eight minutes and forty-six seconds of deliberate brutality, gone viral on the
internet, was a breaking point for so many that people across the continents
took to the streets every day and every night. Hundreds of thousands marched in
New Zealand, in Germany and other European cities. The protest took place in over 400
cities and towns across America to support the idea that Black Lives Matter. Unfortunately,
too often the demonstrators’ messages were drowned out by a few well-organized anarchists
and looters hell-bent on destruction.
The police needed to be strong and timely in
their response to the mobs. Cities announced curfews to help squelch the
destruction. The irony, of course, is that the demonstrations protesting police
brutality were met, in many cities, with brutal tactics by various law
enforcement units. We all saw a couple of police officers drive their vehicles
into protestors, we saw people with wounds from rubber bullets, we saw children
pepper-sprayed while standing with their parents. We saw families sitting on
the porch of their home shot with paint bombs. We saw police push a man to the
ground for no reason and then not only leave him bleeding, but also discourage
other officers from helping him. We saw police officers in NYC flash the white
supremacy sign at Black people who were demonstrating. We saw smoke bombs used
to clear the streets so the President could have a photo op in front of a
church. Some will ask how we got this way; others will say we have always been
this way. Is this who we really are? I’ve never thought so, I don’t want to
think so, but I carry a fair amount of privilege, and the facts are not on my
side of the argument.
Let’s not be Pollyanna about this. The
demonstrations include massive destruction throughout the nation, especially in
large urban areas. There is a huge difference between peaceful demonstrating to
make a point and destruction of personal property. An old African proverb tells
us “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its
warmth.” Have we reached the point where one people feels the animus of the
village to the point of needing to burn it, to overthrow it, to establish
something anew? Hopefully not, but it will take a lot of change to bring us to
the point where everyone feels the warm embrace of the others.
Police brutality, visible again on videos gone
viral, ignited the protests but the real issues go deeper, so we must fix both
realities. We have called for reform for hundreds of years. Each time a major
disruption occurs, we call for change, and then we don’t. Could George Floyd’s
murder be the catalyst that moves us to do better this time? Where to start?
Dr. Bob Smith was a graduate of my high school,
in the class of 1898. Later in life, he and a friend started an organization
called Alcoholics Anonymous using the now-famous twelve-step program to create change.
The first step and perhaps the hardest is to admit that you have a problem.
Those in the streets in the last two weeks know there is a problem across the
land. The hard part may be getting the rest of us to admit our complicity. We
have to come to grips with reality and admit that we, as a nation can do
better. Dr. Smith learned in his teens that we must “face the world and make it
better”[v] and we
must do it every day. Some ideas are more valid than others are, but we need to
get the discussion started, we need to try to fix the wrongs, to make us one
country, to make everyone feel the warmth of the village without burning it. We
thought we had made progress, but evidently not so much. It’s taking too long.
The belief that the US armed forces are under
the control of the civilian society is sacrosanct in our country. But if you
raise the notion that the police or sheriff departments should be under the direct
control of civilian authorities, or overseen by civilian review boards, the
long blue line fights it tooth and nail. If we want to change how we police the
nation, we need to change who controls it.
Men and women join police forces because they
want to protect and serve their communities. Being a police officer is a noble
calling that generally requires advanced education and months of arduous
training. My personal experience (I get the occasional speeding ticket) is that
they are all polite, efficient, and willing to give a guy a break. I admit, however,
that I cringe when I see them pull up in military personnel carriers, dressed
for the battlefield with weapons of war. I suspect, however, that if I were a
sworn officer I would think that I was headed into a war zone from time to time
and needed all of the armor. But still…
The people who train our police officers must be
well trained themselves. Over the last decade or so many departments gave
hiring preferences to military veterans. The unintended consequence to that
good effort could be and likely is, that we now have many officers on the
street trained to be soldiers, trained to kill, not to police. We saw evidence
on the streets in the last week. Too many tactics resembled war tactics. Too
many attitudes resembled people trained to kill. Soldiers pretty much use their
guns as a first resort rather than a last resort. We must demilitarize the
local police forces. We must train the police to be police, not military. We have a
national guard for that.
Many police officers who shoot and kill
civilians aren’t arrested, charged, tried, or found guilty. A contributing
factor is a concept of “qualified immunity.” Essentially that means that an
officer cannot be found guilty of a crime without a prior and similar case found
to be unconstitutional. We need to end qualified immunity.
When a police officer is threatened by someone,
they must have the tools to subdue the offender, without question. They also
need to be instructed, trained and supervised in a way that uses lethal force
as a last resort. This is difficult to do when you consider that they have to
make nanosecond decisions in the face of danger. But, the gun needs to be the
tool of last resort. It works in other countries, albeit where it is less
likely that the perpetrator is well-armed. But still …
Police brutality, like what we have seen these
last couple of weeks, is the tip of the iceberg. People of color need to have
what so many of us take for granted: good health care, good schools with the
latest equipment, the ability to buy homes or rent apartments without jumping
through more hoops than other people. A drive around most larger towns will present
stark evidence of the disparity in America. We see neighborhood parks that lack
equipment and have unmowed lawns, schools that are deteriorating; the lack of quality
food sources, the lack of good nutrition, good healthcare, and good jobs. White
people need to admit, step one, that we have privileges that others lack.
Let’s take the first step and accept the idea
that we need systemic change in the nation. Then we can move on to real
solutions. We can wake up each morning and try some little gesture that will
make the world better, and we can encourage our governmental leaders to take
action to change how we govern and how we police each other.
Let us also give thanks for the 99.99+percentage
of police officers who get it right.
As a nation, as a culture, as a society, let us
change who we are and become what we have always wanted to be.
[i] Washington Post June 1, 2020
[ii] Vox April 30, 2020
[iii] Jon Meacham Axios June 3, 2020
[iv] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1 Scene IV
[v] St. Johnsbury Academy Alma Mater, verse 3
