It has to end
21st October 2019 · 0 Comments
The continuum of violence and death of Black people at the hands of police continued this month with the shooting death by a white Texas policeman of unarmed Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, 28, in her own home, last Saturday in Fort Worth. Former Police Officer, Aaron Dean, 34, was booked on October 14, 2019, and resigned before he could be fired. He’s footloose and fancy free, out on bond. This murder happened less than two weeks after former cop Amber Guyger was convicted of murdering Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment.
It’s a nationwide, decades long problem that has hit home…again: Justin Sipp, Wendell Allen, the five former officers who shot six unarmed people, two fatally, on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, the Algiers 7 cops who killed four unarmed Black citizens, the five cops involved in the Henry Glover murder…and other murders of New Orleanians, too numerous to mention, hang in the air like a spectre…still. So, the wound that never closed is now hemorrhaging with the death of another innocent, Atatiana Jefferson.
The Xavier graduate was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew when the shooting occurred. A concerned neighbor called the police in the early morning hours because Jefferson’s front door and screen door were open. He requested a wellness check. The family’s attorney, S. Lee Merritt, says the doors were open to let in the fall breeze. Dean shot Jefferson through her bedroom window. Her nephew was in the room. So, in addition to the death of an upstanding citizen, her nephew will be emotionally scarred for life.
Xavier University last week held a memorial for Jefferson, who graduated in 2014 from the university with a bachelor’s degree in biology and released a statement that captured the core of the problem facing Blacks in America. “Recent events demonstrate clearly that there is an urgent need to fix a law enforcement system and philosophy that is broken for some.” The “some” is us. Black people has been brutalized, demonized, lynched and murdered.
Presidential candidates Senator Kamala Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro and entrepreneur Andrew Yang all issued calls for police reform.
Clearly, the Fort Worth Police Department is the most recent poster child for police reform because Jefferson is one of six people killed by Fort Worth cops since June 2019. The police chief, who is white, hurriedly released still photos of a handgun in Jefferson’s house, as if to confirm that the officer had good reason to feel threatened. Except…Texas is an open carry state for one thing, the Second Amendment is another, and the Castle Doctrine, is a third thing. Jefferson legally owned the firearm and had a right to have it in her home for protection.
Interestingly, in several of the other deaths perpetrated by Fort Worth police, the cops claimed the victims had guns. In one case, they killed an unarmed man, who was holding a flashlight. Shades of the Stephon Clark murder comes to mind—he had a cell phone in his hand when Sacramento cops killed the 22-year-old in his grandmother’s backyard on March 18, 2018.
For many in the Black community, Jefferson’s death is one in an endless cycle of Déjà vu, that is part of an ongoing system of domestic terrorism by cops aimed at Black people. Some believe this epidemic of white cops killing Black people is a matter of improper police training, others say it (racial profiling) is baked into the structure of policing training.
Mark Claxton, a former NYPD detective and director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance said as much; pointing to New York’s racist ‘stop and frisk’ policy. He suggested training that includes implicit bias and de-escalation tactics and a halt to the militarized, aggressive, policing approaches currently in place.
But the problem is even deeper than Claxton admits. What we are seeing is racism hiding under a badge. Visit any shooting range and the targets are Black silhouettes of men. Amber Guyger said all she saw was Botham Jean’s silhouette. Did Aaron Dean see only a silhouette? Or did he see Jefferson? Either way, skulking around someone’s house in the dark, saying put your hands up and shooting through a window within one second, can’t possible be the way Dean was trained.
To solve this problem there needs to be a uniform set of policies and plans for real police reform: Cops who kill citizens, without any real threat to the cops’ safety, must bear severe consequences; the same long sentences that run-of-the-mill murderers get…because murder is murder, period. Administrative leave with or without pay, light sentences, forgiveness, and bibles are not deterrents.
Police recruits need to undergo psychological assessments and lie detector tests to determine if they are racist or harbor white superiority and/or white privilege ideals. Police should undergo anti-racism training offered by groups like the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Police recruitment standards must include mandatory higher education degrees. The federal government must reverse the DOJ’s decision not to order any more Consent Decrees or to enforce those which exist. Police departments should investigate and fire any officers who act on racist tendencies.
Congress should pass strong laws limiting the use of lethal force by cops, like the bill California Governor Gavin Newson recently signed into law with Stephon Clark’s brother standing by. Whenever cops kill citizens, there should be an immediate independent investigation. Cops shouldn’t be able to drop a gun at the scene or say they fear for their lives in situations like Jefferson’s. And police departments can’t police themselves. That’s like putting the fox in the hen house to guard the fowl.
These tactical suggestions are a good first step. But the biggest challenge is undoing 400 years of racism, hatred, and American Apartheid. Meeting the challenge will require a major paradigm shift in the hearts and minds of police in general, and Americans, specifically. Is America up to the challenge?
This article originally published in the October 21, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
