One evening in October of 1974 Officers Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright were responding to
a burglary call. When they
got to the scene Hymon spotted a 15 year old kid named Edward Garner, an
unarmed and standing by a fence. The
officers ordered the 15-year-old, to halt.
Instead of halting, Edward Garner tried to climb a fence to get away
from the officer, so they shot him in the head and killed him. A federal district court ruled that the
shooting was justified under a Tennessee statute—the law said that once a
police officer voices intent to arrest a suspect, "the officer may use all
the necessary means to affect the arrest."
How would you feel if Edward Garner was your child? Yes, he should have halted when the officers
said halt. But you don’t know what
experiences that young man has had with the police, or what stories he has
heard from family members and friends.
Perhaps he has heard all his life, if the police want to hang a crime on
a black man, they do. Perhaps he was
afraid he would be assumed guilty if he was caught so he made a 15 year old kid
decision to try to run away and the police and the laws of his state all agreed
that it was OK for him to be killed under those circumstances.
Edward’s father appealed the decisions of the Federal Courts and
the appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court.
When the Supreme Court, heard this case they ruled that the Tennessee statute was unconstitutional and
the killing of Edward Garner was unjustified. Edward’s daddy went to court and
got the decision changed. The police had
no right to shot this child in the head because he was trying to run away.
Justice Byron White wrote for
the majority: "It is not better that all felony suspects
die than
that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the
officer and no threat to others, the
harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly
force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight
escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little
slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer
may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead."
So the dad, seeking justice for his son, won justice. Right?
Wrong.
Despite the reversal, the officer who shot a 15 year old boy was
never charged. That father still had a
dead son. The killer was still working
on the police force. Do you think the
community, any community, regardless of color, would think justice and fairness
prevailed in this case?
Now just imagine the high profile cases that happened in just the
past few months.
* * *
On
July 17th the police noticed 43
year old Eric Garner,
who had just stopped a
fight between two other guys. The police
approached Eric had no intention of thanking this big guy for stopping a fight,
they wanted to arrest the peace maker for one of the worse crimes that To earn
a little money people will buy a pack of cigarettes or $7 and then sell the
individual cigarettes to people on the street earning $20 for the cigarettes
that only cost them $7 to buy, and of course these vicious criminals do not pay
any sales tax on this nefarious business.
So naturally the police decided to arrest the big guy who stopped a
fight.
As it turns out, the police have been coming by regularly and
disrupting his lose cigarette business.
Mr. Garner this criminal entrepreneur said, “Every time you see
me you want to mess with me,” then he said, “I’m tired of it. It stops today!”
Now it is all true that Mr. Garner was
committing a crime selling loose cigarettes.
And when the police wanted to arrest Mr. Garner, he should have complied
with their order. You can watch a video
of what happens next and I’m sure my description does not capture every
frame. Mr. Garner pushed a policeman’s
hands away from him, and told the policeman to leave him alone. Another policeman came up behind Mr. Garner
and put him in a choke hold. Mr. Garner
was taken to the ground and the other policemen piled on top of him. What followed was a muffled sentence that Mr.
Garner repeated 14 times: “I can’t
breathe.” When it was clear to the
police that Mr. Garner was limp and had stopped breathing he was taken to the
hospital where he was pronounced dead.
We find out that the choke hold was a
violation of police policy. The medical
examiner rules that Mr. Garner’s death was a homicide. A grand jury meets and they rule that the
police did nothing wrong. The officer
denies using a choke hold and instead calls this a seatbelt take-down maneuver where one arm goes over the front
near the throat and the other near the waist [the places where the seatbelt
touches you].
No one will be arrested. No
one will face charges. The police kill a
guy for selling loose cigarettes and pushing a policeman’s hand away. Does the actions of this overweight guy sound
like it warranted deadly force?
* * *
In October a few years back, the police in a California suburb
were called to a party on a noise complaint.
It was a Halloween costume party.
The police enter the home and go from room to room. At one point they enter a room where there is
a black male named Dwain Lee, an actor who had appeared in a small part on the
movie Lier, Lier, and in a part on the TV show ER. Lee was dressed in a devil costume and he was
holding a toy gun as part of that costume.
When a n Officer Hopper saw the toy gun, he opened fire several times
fatally wounding the young actor. Lee’s
death was ruled justified because the officer thought the toy gun was real and
feared for his life.
* * *
In a more recent incident that happened in Pennsylvania, a rookie
police officer shoots and kills a 12 year old black boy who was playing in a
public park with a toy gun that had that orange cap removed from the tip. The video shows the police officer pulled up,
got out of the car and two seconds after getting out of the car [they timed it] the officer shoots this 12
year old child killing him. The orange
cap that was supposed to be on the tip of all toy guns is there so the police
can see from a distance that a real looking gun is actually a toy.
The police officer was given bad information and some information
was not passed on to the officer. For
example, the officer was told this 12 year old child was 20 years old. The officer was not told that the 911 caller
said he thought it was a toy gun.
In many, many of these cases there may have been reasons that the
police acted with deadly force. We could
argue about the degree of justification that existed in each and every case,
but often there were reasons. It is also
true that often the black male did resist arrest or refused to follow orders
from the police.
In the past year I have seen video of police shooting at a car
filled with black children because the black mother refused to get out of the
car and drove off claiming she was afraid of the officers on the scene. It sounds like she should have been afraid.
I saw a film of a black man pulled over for not wearing his seat belt. The police officer has his gun
drawn on this seat belt violator. I have
had two tickets for no seat belt this year and the police did not pull their
gun out and aim it at me. When the
officer asked for license and registration the man reaches into his car for his
wallet and the officer shoots the man several times.
If these incidents were statistically rare it would be a tragic thing
and something we should work to eliminate ever happening again. But what if these incidents are statistically
common? And what if being black carried
with it an almost statistical certainty that you have been or soon will be
singled out an scrutinized by law enforcement?
What if you knew that when law enforcement detains you that there is a
chance that you will be killed during that encounter? How do you think you would react when you
hear about one incident after another, week after week and year after year?
It is not over sensitivity that is fanning the flames of protest
over the killing of black males by the police.
Did you know that while more white people smoke marijuana than black
people that the arrest of blacks and whites for marijuana related crimes is at
an 8 to 1 ratio? For every 8 blacks
arrested for possession of marijuana only 1 white person is arrested. This is true even when the majority of the
people living in the area are overwhelmingly white.
Among black communities they talk about a crime they call DWB: Driving While Black. You can be law abiding, you can be rich, but
if you are black you are at some degree of risk all the time.
I have a close friend who once worked as principal for a private school in Hollywood. Among the students there he had Demi Moore’s
children, and the child of Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons, and Eddie Murphy’s
children. I remember him telling me
once about a talk he had with Eddie Murphy’s children. These kids were rich, and if they were among
people who knew who their daddy was, they were treated like royalty, but out in
the world, when Eddie Murphy’s children went into a store, they were followed
around by the employees and watched closely to see if they were going to shop
lift or cause some act of violence.
Think about Henry Lewis Gates, a black man who hosts a very popular show
on PBS about tracing your family tree.
It is called, Finding Your Roots with
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This is the same Professor Gates who was
arrested inside his own home because a new neighbor saw a black man inside the
house and assumed no black man would live in such a rich neighborhood. When Sgt.
James Crowley arrived on the scene he made the same assumption, and
demanded proof that Professor Gates was actually the person who lived in his
house. Professor Gates got mad and
cussed the police officer out and ended up going to jail, getting a mug shot
taken of him, all for daring to go home after work. Would you have gotten mad if you were accused
of being a criminal and the only grounds were that you were inside your own
home? Might you have cussed or been rude
to the policeman who obviously thought a black man could not be the actual
resident of such a nice home?
Imagine how you would feel
if you were followed around almost every store you entered, and you were
constantly consistently treated like you were a violent, untrustworthy
creep. Now imagine that this was going
to keep happening to you for the rest of your life.
This past week I heard an 87 year old white woman decrying this violence
over the Ferguson, Missouri mess. This woman
said, “the grand jury met and made a decision, and
the law applies to everyone, black or white.”
This sweet woman could not understand the protest, because she is
ignorant of what black people, especially black males live with on a daily
basis, and lacking that information she also lacks empathy. I understand why she didn’t get it. This woman was not raised in a family where
every male relative in her entire family has been unfairly hassled by the
police at one time or another. If her
favorite uncle, a gentle, sweet, law abiding man had been mistaken for a
criminal and arrested, or beaten, she would have a very different view of
things.
I don’t support the violence anywhere.
I don’t claim that the grand jury got it wrong. All I urge on all Americans is that we place
ourselves in the shoes of black men and imagine how it feels for these things
to happen over and over and over again, and time after time, the police are exonerated,
nothing is done, and your loved ones are dead and nothing is going to be done
about it. Empathy begs us to do
something about the larger problem.
There should not be such statistical disparity between the way white men
and black men are treated. Something
must be done, or we can expect the reaction of black American’s to be fear, resentment,
and rage.
As followers of Jesus we must advocate for fairness, and fight racism. What Would Jesus Do?
No comments:
Post a Comment