Hands Up
Why I Won't Be Marching
Common Ground
The common theme among most of these shootings, including Eric
Garner, busted for selling “loosies” outside of a bodega, is
blacks responding aggressively to police. I need you to write
this down someplace: they’re police. If you act aggressively
toward them, they will hurt you. We behave as if we don’t know
that. It is our civic duty to cooperate with law enforcement.
The place to fight our battle is not on the street, but in
court.
Why Officer Daniel Pantaleo jumped on Garner is anybody’s guess: the
man was clearly agitated. Why not try and de-escalate, get him
to calm down? Were the cops late for lunch or something? What
was the time limit that forced police aggression over something
so trivial?
Yes, Pantaleo put Garner in a headlock but, so
far as my uninformed eyes could tell, it wasn’t that headlock,
the infamous Sleeper Hold banned by the NYPD. I’ve seen that
move, this wasn’t it. That may have been the reason the grand
jury failed to indict. Garner was overweight and in poor health
and had been a nuisance to local shop owners who had repeatedly
complained about him.
Garner’s case is, likely, the most perplexing of all, killing a
man over the equivalent of a parking ticket. The aggression was
incredibly disproportionate and you can’t sell me on the idea of
the officers being frightened for their safety: Garner was
making no aggressive moves. The cops could have waited him out,
everybody back to their corner for a few breaths. Instead, they
just jumped him. Why? It was *incredibly* bad policing. I
didn’t see a single officer on tape calling for the others to
back off; they all joined in, they all deserve to get fired.
As with Ferguson, we have no way of knowing why the NYC grand
jury declined to indict, especially given the frankness of the
medical examiner’s report which indicated the choke hold as
directly contributing to Garner’s death. Had those been robbers
and not cops, every one of them would have been charged with
Garner’s death because any death occurring during the commission
of a crime would have been charged to all involved. Those men
could not possibly have feared for their lives. All of the cops,
not just Officer Pantaleo, should have been charged with
manslaughter, and let a jury decide instead of a prosecutor.
So, should I march for Garner? Again, we are not taking any
responsibility for any part of this. The guy was breaking the
law. The guy had been warned more than once before; the New York
cops had given Garner a way out—something Wilson failed to do.
Eric Garner had to know the cops were likely just trying to
hassle him to get him to stop; had he just gone along with the
arrest, he’d likely have been given a Desk Appearance Ticket
and sent home. But that’s not what we do, we fight it out with
the cops, when our fight really is not the cops but with the
*system.* The place to fight the system is in court. Garner was
knowingly breaking the law and resisting arrest, and I’m not
marching for him.
62 Cleveland Police vehicles chased Timothy Russell, 43, and
passenger Malissa Williams, 30. through city streets for 23
minutes before 13 officers pumped 137 rounds into their vehicle,
executing them like Bonnie and Clyde. Timothy Russell was shot
23 times and Malissa Williams was shot 24 times. Do I march for
them, perhaps? Why were they running from what was, reportedly,
a routine traffic stop? Who does that? I need an answer to that
question before I march.
Do I think every last cop involved in
that mess deserves to be fired? Absolutely. A cop, standing on
the hood of the car, firing and executing the couple inside is
a murderer. This man could not possibly, under any objective
circumstance, have been in fear for his life. There were no
gunshots, none, coming from the car; the cops could have just
dragged them out and cuffed them. The man is a murderer who,
thankfully, has been indicted. But, before I march for Russell
and Williams, I‘ll need a plausible explanation of what the heck
they were thinking in
the first place. Russell had a criminal record including
convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery. Williams
had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction
(Huffington Post). Did that earn them 137 rounds? Of course not,
but don't ask me to march for a lie.
The Other Side of The Box: "F--k The Police."
What does that say about us? What are we teaching our kids? clevescene.com
De-escalate
Black people don't want to say this out loud but, in most of these
cases, the victim was breaking the law and resisting arrest.
Most of these folks would be alive today had they cooperated
with the police and fought their battle later. No black people
want to say this out loud, but, there is a severe parenting
crisis going on in Black America. I don’t see anybody marching
about that.
We don't vote, we don't raise our kids properly, we make excuses
for bad behavior and we defend the indefensible. Then, when
tragedy occurs, we become outraged.
Making the cops—all cops—our enemy is, frankly, cowardice.
There’s always been bad cops. There’s always been incompetent
cops. But the vast, overwhelming majority of good cops will only
grow jaded and defensive when their integrity is impugned and
their work made harder by the anti-intellectual histrionics
demonizing them every night on the news.
We’re making this racial, making it about black lives, but the
consistent pattern I am seeing is black people fighting a
legitimate fight, but fighting it with the wrong party. The
abusive cop is a symptom of a greater problem; let’s fight the problem,
not the symptom.
This rallying of America is heartening, but it is a dishonest
conversation. We need to come clean about our own failures as a
community, and then the march makes sense. Even better, Don't
march, vote. Don’t burn down your own neighborhood, small
business owners who have nothing to do with this, vote. But we
didn’t. Nor did we properly train or supervise our children. And
now there's a riot. There we are, red faced and screaming—all
the Opera only reinforcing black stereotypes.
I want to see us taking responsibility for us. I want to see
some rationality. We’re all guilty. I am every bit as aggrieved and
upset as everyone else, but don’t recruit me for propaganda.
Christopher J. Priest
8 December 2014
editor@praisenet.org
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