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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.

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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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