Law, order and justice
19th June 2017 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Long before she could speak, my niece Macy had been terrified of the police.
It’s not like she had witnessed a brutal act committed by the cops or felt the pain of a loved one who had a very bad encounter with a law enforcement officer. In a way that defies reason and logic, she just knew what she knew. And what she knew was that she should avoid any contact with police whatsoever.
Maybe it was something in her ancestral DNA or just her instincts but whatever it was, you never had to worry about “Sweet Thing,” as I affectionately called her, hanging out with the cops, even though one of her aunties used to be married to a cop and several of her uncles had friends and fraternity brothers who wore the blue uniform associated with the New Orleans Police Department.
When she was an infant, she could be having a perfectly normal day until a police car drove by or a cop walked by and she would just immediately start crying and screaming at the top of her lungs. As one of her youngest uncles, I used to tell strangers that I didn’t know her even when I was holding her or pushing her stroller. While I got a few perplexed looks, I mostly got a lot of chuckles and winks.
Macy is all grown up now, planning her wedding and working for a major airline.
Beyond reacting to the seemingly endless list of Black and Brown people gunned down by law enforcement officers, I don’t hear her talk too much these days about Officer Unfriendly.
Still, she crossed my mind last week after a colleague passed an article on to me about a young Black woman in Princeton, La. who was recently stopped by police for no apparent reason.
She said she was stopped for driving below the speed limit, which sometimes meant that motorists were either tired or under the influence of alcohol. When the officer saw that she was neither, he told her that he wanted to make sure she was OK.
Her reaction was very telling.
“And as he said that, I just broke down and cried,” Ayanna Reid Cruver said in a video posted to Facebook. “I just broke down crying.”
“I told him, ‘I was so scared,’” Cruver continued. “I knew he felt awful that I was that scared… I never thought in that situation I would feel fearful, but I legitimately felt horrified.”
In the video, which has been viewed at least 3.3 million times, Cruver said the cop begged her not to cry and gave her a hug but she was still so shaken that she had to exit the interstate highway and pull over to compose herself.
While the video apparently resonates with people of color who have dealt with the fear, frustration and anger of being stopped by a cop or know someone who has had to deal with unconstitutional policing on one level or another, there was reportedly at least one person who saw the video and naively told Cruver that she had no reason to fear any harm from the police as long as she stayed within the confines of the law.
She undoubtedly knows better, as does anyone who has walked more than a mile in “Black” shoes or turned on the evening news.
Breaking the law or even intending to do someone harm are hardly prerequisites for being gunned down like an animal by officers sworn to protect and serve civilians.
Don’t believe me?
Just ask African immigrant Amadou Diallo, who was killed by NYPD officers for daring to reach for his wallet when they approached him in the vestibule of his New York City apartment. Ask Adolph Grimes III, who was gunned down by NOPD officers while sitting in his car outside his grandmother’s home in New Orleans while waiting for a friend. Ask Steven Hawkins, who was killed by an off-duty cop for defending himself against carjackers in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Ask Sean Bell, who thought he had the right to enjoy a night out the evening before his wedding in New York City. Ask Philando Castile, who was killed while reaching for his wallet. His killer was found innocent, last week.
When you’re Black, you’re reminded in some way every day that your presence and existence are not desired. You’re reminded that you and everyone who looks like you are untouchables, the wretched of the earth.
The very color of your skin makes you guilty and dangerous, an enemy of the state and of all that is good and pure.
When you’re Black, you can’t do what other folks can do without the fear of being profiled, targeted and/or eliminated. You can’t go around Shopping While Black, Jogging While Black, Driving While Black, Playing While Black, Breathing While Black or Simply Being Black.
On N.W.A.’s recently released CD that marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the ground-breaking Straight Outta Compton, there is a song titled “Good Cop, Bad Cop” that essentially challenges all of the nation’s good cops to take a stand against their corrupt and abusive comrades, the ones who have no qualms about using Black, Brown and poor people for target practice, harassing and degrading innocent people, turning their heads when they see another cop breaking the law or framing someone for murder.
On the June 9 airing of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” NWA rapper, actor and producer Ice Cube talked about the need for law-abiding, upstanding cops to stand up for the community instead of enabling their crooked “brothers” to carry on business as usual.
Wouldn’t that be great?
It’s funny how in cities like New Orleans, New York and Los Angeles, elected officials and police leaders talk about the Black community’s refusal to share information with law enforcement agencies, the endemic Black-on-Black violence and the so-called “culture of violence.” But you never hear them talk about all of the things elected officials and law enforcement agencies do to criminalize, marginalize, intimidate and exterminate Black people.
You never hear them talk about the culture of violence, abuse and corruption in law enforcement agencies and how law enforcement agencies are used by the 1 percent to protect the lives and property of the wealthiest and most powerful among us. You never hear about how seldom police actually admit it when one of their own actually made a mistake that cost someone his or her life, how their attitudes, policies and actions cause distrust, fear, hatred, resentment and rage among residents in communities of color.
You never hear it.
It’s never the police department’s fault.
It’s always “those people,” the ones that “live like animals” and lash out at one another.
Perhaps someone with a little bit of integrity and common sense might begin requiring elected officials and police administrators to take a few sociology classes to better understand why Black people turn on one another so often rather than to one another like we used to do before we were hoodwinked into thinking integration was a good thing.
Black people see elected officials, law enforcement agencies, business leaders, the criminal justice system and just about everyone else trample on their constitutional rights and abuse them, and the only logical answer appears to be that it happens because we are Black. So we learn to hate ourselves and lash out when we see ourselves reflected in the faces of our brothers and sisters.
It is not rocket science, y’all.
We know that police who are hired to maintain law and order often practice unconstitutional policing and racial injustice in communities.
We know this to be true despite the many predominantly white grand juries and district attorneys that refuse to indict cops for killing Black, Brown and poor people and despite a “Just-Us System” that still operates under the 19th-century ruling that said Black people have no rights that whites or cops — who are white supremacy’s first line of defense — are bound by law to respect.
There may come a day when cops aren’t caught off guard by an innocent Black woman who is terrified of law enforcement officers, but it won’t be anytime soon.
Despite who is running the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice, our job is to continue to fight the good fight, speak truth to power and love ourselves and one another, which our Beloved Ancestors taught us long ago is the most revolutionary thing we can do.
Happy Juneteenth!
This article originally published in the June 19, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
