Letter from Back East

An East Coast professor who specializes in police studies was kind enough to write in response to the introductory edition of Drunk & Disorderly that I send folks new to the newsletter.

One of the articles in it, “First…Kill All the Black Men,” talks about the struggle some police officers over the years have had in bringing black males of almost any age to justice without killing them first. Among the (some would say assassinated) men and boys mentioned there are Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner of New York City, and twelve-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland.

The professor said there are many reasons to question police killings of Black men, but that I should look at Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer Jonathan Capehart’s article, “‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot’ Was Built on a Lie,” before I use the Michael Brown shooting as an example.

My own education was mostly out West, and I’ve been told schools out here ain’t quite as smart as the Ivys and such. So whenever I get some advice from anyone anywhere near the Ivys, I tend to take note.

And after reading the Capehart piece, and the U.S. Department of Justice Report it was based on, which came out seven months after the Brown shooting (three months after I’d written about it), I see that the professor has a point. You’ll see it too if you click on the links in that last sentence.

The second link is to an official government report, and government reports can be persuasive, if sometimes built backwards, starting with a conclusion that then looks for facts to support that conclusion.

Still, I’m inclined to believe this one.

But then comes along another white cop to kill another unarmed black man last March, Daniel Prude of Rochester, New York. We know Daniel was unarmed because police body cam footage shows him lying naked and handcuffed in the street under lightly falling snow, in obvious mental distress. His distress turns physical after the cops slip a white mesh hood over his head, pin him to the frozen asphalt and lean into his head till he stops talking, stops moving, stops…everything. And another grand jury says yes there’s harm, but no foul. I’m not sure I saw the cops in that video show any obvious bias toward a black man; I’m not sure I saw them treat him, as a man.

I like to keep an open mind. But every time I hear a grand jury like this one yesterday, or read a government report, that says it’s okay to stick a bag over a black guy’s head and keep it there till he stops breathing, my mind moves just a little further from government reports.