Riots and More

A few decades ago, I was on a ship that made a port call to Haifa. There were a number of guided tours available; one was to Masada. I signed up for that tour, for reasons that should be obvious to regular readers of this blog.

On the way there, the bus, a standard Israeli intercity bus, stopped at a checkpoint. A soldier in uniform came onto the bus, spoke to the guide briefly, and we were sent on our way.

Meanwhile, across the road, a bus going the other way was also stopped at the checkpoint. Its passengers appeared to be Arabs. Everyone had disembarked, with all of their belongings. The soldiers were in the process of searching everyone and everything when our bus, in essence, coasted through the checkpoint. Men, women, children, shopping bags full of food, everything was being searched.

One of the sailors on the tour bus remarked: “Them people ain’t going to put up with that shit forever.”

I tell that story as a parable for the deteriorating relations between the African-American community and the police.

Now, another story:

I went to law school in a Midwestern city. I was a member of a handful of was once called a “retreads”, the term had been updated to “second career students”. It was sort of nice, because the law professors didn’t fuck with us in the same way that they did with the fresh meat from college.

Anyway, one of the other retreads was a Black woman. She had had her own business, done very well, and had sold it. From time to time, she would drive to visit family in a Southern city. I once asked her how long it took her to drive there. She said sixteen or so hours. I expressed some surprise, as it was maybe twelve hours away. She told me she allowed time for being stopped each way, twice, by cops who were suspicious because she was Black and driving a late-model Beemer (or some other German luxury car). She regarded that with about as much aplomb as I would a drive during orange-barrel season.

This shit has been going on for a very long time.

It is within the living memory of some people that there was a time when cops called their nightsticks “nigger-knockers”. It is within the living memory of some people that there was a time when if a cop shot a Black man, there was no investigation-- all he had to do was reload his revolver. It was a little longer ago that the police would show up at lynchings in order to ensure that the murder was done in an orderly fashion.

It is beyond reasonable dispute that the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program disproportionately targeted Black and Latino men. White parents don’t normally give their children “the talk” about how not to get their asses kicked or killed by the police. White scientists normally don’t end up discussing all of the times that they were hassled by the cops. When police departments are hit with consent decrees, it is almost always because of how the cops have treated minorities.

This shit has been going on for a very long time and the pressure has been building. It is not helped by the Clueless Corps of Conservatives blathering about "all lives matter", and their subtext of "there'd be no problem if all of you people would know your place." It's not helped by police militarization and the spreading police attitude that Americans, especially minorities, are the enemy.

It's getting ugly. And it's going to get worse. When you have a pot on simmer, it doesn't take much more heat to get it boiling.

But there are some glimmers of hope, for the proliferation of video recording has started to bring some of the brutal acts to light and to justice. The Rodney King case was the harbinger of that, for even though the cops that tuned up Mr. King escaped justice, the world saw what happened. Without video, the killer of Mr. Walter Scott would have gotten away with planting evidence to cover up the murder. The killer of Mr. Laquan McDonald would have gotten away with it, because his buddies lied to cover it all up (and only now, are facing some consequences for that.) In a story that has not seen much national exposure, an ex-St. Louis cops is being tried for murder from a 2011 shooting where said cop allegedly planted evidence to cover up the killing. And without video the killer of Mr. Crutcher would have gotten an attaboy instead of a manslaughter beef.

No wonder the cops want to make it illegal to video them. They want to go back to the days when they could tune up or kill people and only their testilying would be given weight.

Riots are often the protest of the powerless. You can condemn the riots, but to paraphrase Dr. King, doing so without acknowledging and condemning the underlying reality is moral bankruptcy. People are protesting and rioting because they know that the system is biased. They know that the Charlotte cops are desperately trying to frame Mr. Keith Scott in a way to show that their shooting of Mr. Scott was justified. Like the murder of Mr. McDonald by a Chicago cop, they fear that the delay and obfuscation by the city is a coverup.

It is clear that the ranks of the police contain a number of men who believe that the shooting of any Black man is justifiable. This is something that the cops, themselves, have to clean up.

You don't have to look hard to find cops and their friends bemoaning that they have lost the trust of the community. They need to take a hard look in the mirror instead of blaming video cameras and smartphones. Cops need to act as lawmen who are public servants, not as extrajudicial enforcers and occupiers. Saying, in essence, "we'll take our boot off your neck if you stop squirming" is no longer going to cut it.

But that's not going to happen any time soon.

Things are going to get worse.