With the recent decisions of no indictment involving the police officers responsible for the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and John Crawford to name a few, America could not be anymore divided in how we analyze these events through our own filters. Current poll data articulates that 65% of minorities believe there is a racial construct within our police and legal system which disproportionately affects minorities while reporting the opposite belief by White Americans at roughly the same percentage.
However, I would challenge future pollsters to parse out additional data on party affiliation when polling White Americans because it is my the over polling of conservative white Americans may create a skewed and unfair depiction of White America. Before we can develop solutions and move forward, we must first define the problem and acknowledge the symptoms in order to design and implement interventions to reduce risks. However, this process proves to be even more difficult due to our inability to discuss racial issues in a country whose prosperity and place in this world was made possible as a result of racial injustice.
It’s been almost three years since the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and the relevance of his death could not be more apparent today. I remember one of my white friends asking me “Why Trayvon Martin…what so special about him”? I didn’t take offense to the question because I knew it was coming from a place of “I really don’t understand, and I want to know what you think”. Translation: What is the significance of his death, and why is it so important to you?
I reflect on Trayvon’s death because it foreshadowed a future that struck fear into many black families across the nation. George Zimmerman, a man with no police authority and no legal right to follow or detain anyone, established a legal precedent lowering the bar of jurisprudence in the killing of a minority. Despite illegally following Trayvon with a firearm, Travyon was denied the right to fear for and defend his life as any other reasonable person would do.
In past case law, the reasonable person test is the standard applied when looking at the actions of a suspect or victim in self defense cases which asks the question “what would a reasonable person do under the same set of circumstances”. However, this standard was was not applied to Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman. In review of the facts, it would be reasonable to conclude that any person being followed by a stranger at night, first by vehicle then on foot, on their way home would fear for his/her life, and they should retain the right to defend his/her life as provided by law. I can only imagine the fear Trayvon felt wondering if he maybe leading a murder, rapists, or pedophile to his family’s home. Also, this case changed the trajectory of how police departments and prosecutors would respond to future cases demanding legal action as a result of public outcry. Without public protest, there would not have been a trial for a non-law enforcement/private citizen who killed another American citizen, and the bar is becoming even lower for seeking indictments in the rise of police involved homicides of unarmed minority American citizens.
The Trayvon Martin case came with a scary realization for many minority families. If a regular citizen with no police authority can gun down an unarmed person, what will this mean for minority interactions with the police? The Trayvon Martin case also set a new legal standard for the victim by establishing the good black person versus the criminal black person. Basically, if you are a criminal, have a criminal record, history of drug abuse or drugs in your systems essentially the police or anyone with presumed credibility can come to your home, neighborhood, work or retail store and shoot you dead with no questions asked.
The killer only has to articulate they feared for their life or that the dead victim threatened them. For some reason, the killers in these situations are not drug tested or histories released unlike the victim who can no longer speak or defend themselves. It appears one can murder without fear of having a trial and can be cleared by their local police department who may choose not to preserve any evidence on the slim chance there maybe a trial.
The media attention of the Trayvon Martin case and his treatment as a victim publicly exposed the persistent racial divisions between black and white America. If you can honestly substitute a white woman, a white man, or yourself as a place holder for “what appeared to be a big black man” describing Trayvon, proceed to add back in George Zimmerman following you in his car, then following you on foot with a gun, and still arrive at the same conclusion, then race is not a factor in how you analyze events.
Supporters of Officer Darren Wilson view Mike Brown as the antithesis of Trayvon Martin, and they argue Brown was a violent criminal seen on camera being threatening toward another minority then attacked a police officer inside of his patrol car. Let’s say for the sake of argument this version of events is true. The question we should be asking is whether Darren Wilson used deadly force on an unarmed fleeing suspect once his safety was no longer being threatened. After Brown fled from the police car, what actions could Darren Wilson have taken to apprehend the suspect and minimize the loss of life as well as the potential loss of life of bystanders from shooting a hail of bullets?
Police officers do not have the authority to shoot fleeing suspects who are not in the act of harming another person despite what prosecutors lead the grand jury to believe. There is a fleeing felon law provision which exist only for the Bureau of Prisons in apprehending escaped convicts. Police officers with proper training would have call for back-up, set-up a perimeter, called in the K-9 units to track the suspect, put out a city wide alert with description of the fleeing subject, and followed in his police vehicle to keep a visual of the suspect.
In this case, Officer Wilson was unaware of Mike Browns’ involvement at the convenient store, and his involvement resulted from Brown walking in the street. Police officers possess the ability to obtain warrants for a crime based on a suspects physical description and clothing without having a name. Officers are trained not to go on a lone pursuit after a suspect because it increases the risks of your safety being compromised. There were many tools and options at Darren Wilson’s disposal as police officer other than exiting his vehicle and immediately begin shooting at a fleeing suspect. What if one of the stray bullets killed an innocent bystander?
An officer who can not do a risk assessment under pressure and cycle through the options at their disposal should not be a police officer. Retreating, surveying the scene, and calling for additional back-up are all options available to officers who want to minimize risks to their own life and the loss of life for others. Officers jumping out of their vehicles without arriving at a safe distance to assess the scene with guns blazing fail to take measures to minimize risks to themselves and others. In my opinion, Darren Wilson was not operating in effort to apprehend a suspect because he had already chosen to use deadly force before exiting his vehicle. Officers are not trained to wound when they pull their service weapon because they are trained to kill, and this tells me that Officer Wilson had already decided he was going to kill Mike Brown when he fired the first shot.
This case has become about what Mike Brown did to cause his death instead of whether Darren Wilson followed police procedure, whether the evidence corroborated his account after exiting his vehicle, and whether his actions were consistent with the discharge of his duties under the law and departmental policy. Instead, the prosecutors’ office focused largely on Darren Wilson’s account and eye witness testimony while leaving out pesky items such as forensic evidence and police protocol.
Did Wilson call out his stop of Brown and his friend to dispatch? Did Wilson have any communication with dispatch prior to Brown’s death? Where is the radio traffic and 911 recordings for the time of the incident? Where is Darren Wilson’s text messages and call logs following Brown’s death? Where were the shell casings found? Did he reload his weapon?
In other cases such as with John Crawford and Eric Garner where there is video evidence disputing initial reports by the police, officers in these cases still escaped a grand jury indictment. George Zimmerman’s exoneration from murder has set the standard so low that it will be virtually impossible to prosecute a law enforcement officer with a history of abuse of authority and use of force who kills an unarmed citizen.
The prevailing arguments give the impression that the police should not be questioned because they are charged with protecting us or officer safety is an automatic defense that does not need to be corroborated by evidence and police protocol. Many Americans who do not see the institutional racism and constructs disproportionately affecting minorities either are unaware, want to ignore, or want to rewrite the American history documenting the utilization of police and the criminal justice system by the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) to harm black Americans.
According to documents on PBS,
The Klan grew quickly and became a terrorist organization. It attracted former Civil War generals such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famed cavalry commander whose soldiers murdered captured black troops at Fort Pillow. The Klan spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs as well as common criminals. The Klan systematically murdered black politicians and political leaders. It beat, whipped, and murdered thousands, and intimidated tens of thousands of others from voting. Read More
In the past, society was able to develop interventions because there was the acknowledgment of racial bias operating within our criminal justice system. What makes current times even more scary is the argument that we are in a post-racial society while dismissing the existence of racists and racial bias within police department and our legal systems across the country. Failure to implement measures, safeguards, and consequences within these systems will result in more loss of freedom and life that will disproportionately affect minorities. With the advent of for-profit prisons who are suing States for failure to maintain full capacity of their prisons, the current racially biased system is further incentivized to maintaining the status quo and resist change.
There is no doubt that progress has been made because black Americans no longer fear death for stating one’s opinion. However, progress is not an event rather than a continuum in which we must stay the course. We must always strive to be diligent in our assessment, reassessment, collection of data as well as establishment of benchmarks to prevent making the same mistakes of our tainted past. Even if you believe there is no racial construct within our police and criminal justice systems, you should still be advocating for the institution of measures to prevent it.
The poor collection of data on use of force, abuse of authority, citizen complaints, and mapping of high risk areas using GIS technology should be a priority in order to implement effective interventions that protect both citizens and officers. Body cameras are a great intervention tool to help protect both the officer and citizens in their interactions with the police, but it will also be ineffective if body cameras are not being used in the departments with the highest rates of incidents and complaints.
You obviously watched a different Zimmerman trial than I did, or maybe you just aren’t interested in facts.
“I reflect on Trayvon’s death because it foreshadowed a future that struck fear into many black families across the nation. George Zimmerman, a man with no police authority and no legal right to follow or detain anyone,”..No reason to read further, since the author is another ignorant race pimp. Let me correct his absurd nonsense. First, one does not need “police authority”, to defend himself against a thug, also it is not illegal to follow someone in public, nor is there any evidence Zimmerman tried to detain anyone. Move along!
You are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts. Clearly you haven’t done your homework by reading the documentation–or decided to ignore the facts within it.
Contrary to your assertions, forensic evidence identified Brown’s tissue and blood INSIDE the officer’s car which validates both his testimony and the testimony of witnesses that Brown assaulted the police officer through the open window. This is consistent with forensic evidence in the hand wound of gunshot residue which indicates the hand and gun were in very close distance.
Contrary to your assertions that there was no evidence of the distances involved outside of the police car, evidence of blood drops at a distance further away from the site of the fatal shot indicate that Brown stopped and then advanced back toward the officer. This validates the testimony of several witnesses and the officer that Brown was rushing back toward the officer when the fatal shot was fired.
Since all of this is in the documents that were released, it is clear that your article is driven by your own agenda rather than by facts. It is sad that the media gives space to writing that is driven by lies and mis characterizations of events because this is the time of rhetoric that led to violence, rioting and looting of a black community and even now is ripping the fabric of our society asunder.
Have you no shame.
This issue is so disgusting that I cannot fathom why so many people continue to exploit it (except that I know that the media purposely fuels these issues because it gives them good stories to air). Racism and discrimination are the two most abused, misused, and overused terms in the English language. The majority of those protesting are on welfare, uneducated, gang members, addicts, drunks, unemployed ghetto people who are using “revenge” as an excuse to commit more crimes without being arrested for the crimes that they commit. These protesters are embarrassing the entire country and anyone who protests these very rare police shootings (in comparison to child deaths from abuse or neglect that occur at a rate of 2+ per day!) by looting, destroying property, stealing, and vandalizing against their own innocent community members are nothing but mentally ill. Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were career criminal gang members who committed crimes against innocent victims on a daily basis and who 100% would have gone on to commit more crimes against innocent victims. Those young men stole and dealt drugs for a living. Their expensive sneakers, jewelry, hats, jackets, and gold teeth were paid for by stealing from hard working innocent Americans and not from money that they earned working (haha, those criminals don’t work and they never will). Michael Brown specifically was a danger to society (even more so than a serious pedophile) and to everyone in it. The people complaining about police are criminals, pure and simple. These ghetto people (criminals) want police to have absolutely no authority or right to protect themselves, to protect innocent citizens, OR to arrest them for any reason whatsoever. I am so happy for police using cameras now because 99% of the time it is the criminals who are simply using any lie or excuse that they can in order to get away with their crimes. In fact I am educated in the legal field and I know that police prefer cameras simply because they are so sick and tired of the false police brutality and racism claims, and so am I. I am soooo sick of seeing the disgusting protesters bothering other innocent people and costing US TAXPAYERS (we work for our money and do not steal it from others while dealing drugs) money for resources to keep them and their mental illness under control. Blocking traffic and screaming in the ears of citizens who are simply trying to get to their JOBS or get home to their kids and families is nothing short of repulsive and illegal. I wish that all of them would be put in jail and forced to work instead of having nothing better to do with their time than to cry about something that is legal and right to normal mentally healthy people. Maybe all of the protesters should be drug tested if they are receiving any type of assistance because if they have time to bother other people by laying in the streets chanting pathetically ridiculous lies than they should be WORKING or at least seeking employment, or maybe even getting an education! They have the same opportunities as white people (minorities are actually given even more opportunities than white people and I can prove that), yet they CHOOSE to live a life of crime in the ghetto. I will never ever vote for a black president again because he assisted in placing a huge black ghetto cloud over our entire country. I have black friends who are embarrassed and ashamed of their own race and they should be.
not sure how I stumbled upon this article other than that google led me here while trying to get further (ubiased) information regarding Rumanin Brisbon and Eric Garner (I believe the death both of these men was the result of a broken system and that the lack of punishment for the police officers involved is an absolute travesty). That being said, I hold a J.D. and am licensed to practice low in both IL and MO; your lack of understanding as to the application of case law and statutory law in this country is unsurprising but takes away any credibility that the information in this article may hold. Please, explain to me as to how you came to your definition of ‘reasonable’ as it applies to the law you have cited above. Did you take the time to parse through legal precedent as far as the law you have cited is concerned (as required by our legal system – I am fairly sure you are unfamiliar with either WestLaw or LexisNexus), or are you simply applying your own subjective definition? Similarly, to make any relation to Trayvon Martin is a stretch at best and, as an individual who is clearly educated, you should be embarassed to even remotely imply the assumption that his death led to the acceptance in the white community of the deaths of Mike Brown, Rumain Brisbon, and/or Eric Garner. Please don’t lump an entire community into one category because of the beliefs of some. You’d be a hypocrite and becoming exactly what you vilify in the article mentioned above to imply such a thing.
Further, George Zimmerman was a minority himself (it doesn’t appear as though you realize that in the words pubilished in this article).
Further, whether or not Mike Brown should or should not have been shot, it turns out he did, in fact, steal from a conveniece store and he therefore initiated the series of events that led to his death (this is all on video). I am 100% of the belief that pepper spray or a taser would have sufficed in order to neutralize the situation. I also believe Daren Wilson, without declaring that he should have been convicted, at least met the criteria for indictment and a judicial inquiry into the events that took place. Still, can we please not pretend as though this Mr. Brown was an individual who was not responsible for inciting the series of events that led to his death? Darren Wilson = excessive force; Mike Brown = no use of excessive force if crime not committed in the first place. Darren Wilson worked for 4 years as an officer without firing his weapon at an individual, and Mike Brown, by all credible accounts, was NOT fleeing, nor were his hands in the air in a “dont-shoot” position. Darren Wilson had less than 15 seconds to make a determination as to whether or not he believed his own life was in danger after being physically attacked by Mike Borwn. Did you take the time to review ANY of the evidence released regarding the grand jury process. It is blatantly obvious that you did not. The members of the Ferguson community did themselves a massive injustice with the amount of conflicting tetimnony they gave and more than 10 individuals admitted that they had lied about the information they had regarding this case more than 2 months after their initial testimony in front of the grand jury and the police. You give a group of 12 people enough conflicting information, especially when the most damning information is later revealed to have been lied about, then what in the hell do you expect from a group of just 12 unbiased individuals? It would be different if this man had been killed on camera in the way Eric Garner was, the lack of indictment in that case is absolutely inexcusable. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
FINALLY, Karen Thompson, you are an idiot and I am embarassed by you.