Where is the Anger When Cops Become Executioners? (2/15/99)
Where is the Anger When Cops Become Executioners?
Where is the national outrage?
No, I'm not joining those public moralists who bitterly complain about Americans' lack of outrage concerning President Clinton's low crimes and misbehavior.
Rather, I'm referring to the American people's apparent lack of outrage for what seems to be a growing number of summary executions of African-American and Latino youth by overzealous police forces. With barely a whisper of media coverage, the pace of police misconduct has accelerated in recent years, leaving scores of minority youth dead or maimed in its wake.
By contrast, widespread media portrayals of black and brown youth as inherently inclined toward crime most likely has fueled cops' abusive attitudes and greased the public's acceptance of police excesses.
A horrific example of this excess occurred two weeks ago in New York City when four plainclothes police unleashed a barrage of 41 bullets at a black man named Amadou Diallo, killing him instantly. Two of the cops emptied their 16-clip pistols into the vestibule of the Bronx building where an unarmed Diallo stood fumbling with the keys to his apartment.
The cops' attorney argues that the action was a justified effort to subdue a "suspicious acting" rape suspect.
Diallo, a 22-year-old African immigrant, was hit by 19 bullets. All of the cops were white and working "undercover" in a predominantly black neighborhood.
Such an extreme example of police overkill should have outraged the city's fair citizens and, indeed, the entire nation. But so far, white New Yorkers have been conspicuously absent from demonstrations protesting the cops' outrageous actions.
Nor have there been many speeches from white policymakers decrying the constitutional violations inherent in police acting as executioners. We'll probably be spared the eloquence of cliche-master Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) pontificating about the "rule of law" as it pertains to trigger-happy cops. Increasingly, police are breaking that rule.
Last December in Riverside, Calif., for example, four police officers were summoned to the aid of a 19-year-old black motorist named Tyisha Miller, who apparently had passed out while locked in an idling car. Miller had a gun beside her and, according to the police, she reached for it when they broke the window to gain entry. The four cops then fired 27 bullets into the car. Twelve bullets hit Miller, killing her instantly.
Police officials initially claimed that Miller fired her gun first but later retracted the story. Witnesses at the scene insist that police aggression precipitated the shooting and that the stunned teenager never threatened the four cops. But even if the cops' story were true, how could it have justified such massive overkill?
African-American leaders in Riverside say they are dismayed by the lack of local white support for their efforts to hold police accountable. They have been joined by several national civil rights groups in calling for a federal investigation of Miller's killing.
The bullet-riddled executions of Diallo and Miller--where a total of 68 bullets were fired--are just two extreme chapters in a tragic narrative. It's an old story of stereotypes rooted in a history of racial bias.
It's a story with many Chicago chapters, as well.
The latest chapter was illustrated Feb. 3 by a sparsely attended demonstration at City Hall protesting the police killing of 21-year-old Brennan King in the Cabrini-Green housing complex. King was shot several times, including four bullets in the back, allegedly for threatening a police officer with a box cutter.
There are dozens of similar stories of lives being stolen by police violence, but none of them seems compelling enough--perhaps because blacks and Latinos are the usual targets--to attract the sustained interest of the country's political leadership.
Despite the urgency of the protests and the anger of those protesting, most white Americans remain unwilling to acknowledge the clear evidence of law- enforcement misconduct. Or, as is more likely, they are willing to accept such misconduct as the price of protection from crime.
Accordingly, international groups have forthrightly denounced police abuse in the United States. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, two of the world's leading human rights groups, issued reports last year harshly condemning U.S. police practices as racist and abusive. Reformis urgent, both groups concluded.
It's not a new prescription. Police brutality sparked a series of urban riots in the 1960s when more than 300 cities went up in smoke (a part of "the '60s" story that we often forget). The acrid smell of burning buildings and declining markets forced Americans to pay attention to the complaints of black fellow citizens. The Kerner Commission, formed to study the causes of the riots, concluded that brutal policing was a big part of the problem.
The aphorism about learning from history or being doomed to repeat it somehow comes to mind.
Copyright 1999 Chicago Tribune
Contact: TsunamicJustice@hotmail.com
by Salim Muwakkil, The Chicago Tribune Monday, February 15, 1999
