As an African American man who has lived in Harlem my entire life, I have read in newspapers, watched on television, talked with friends, and even debated with people about the countless unjustified killings of men of color by the New York Police Department. It has happened so much that I have probably become numb to it, knowing that on any day, in any part of New York City, that could easily be me.
In a scene eerily remiscent to the killing of the fictional character Radio Raheem in the Spike Lee joint Do the Right Thing, Eric Garner was mercilessly put into a chokehold that extinguished his life by a New York City cop on Staten Island Thursday. As is far too often the case, Garner was unarmed and he did not physically assault the officer. Still, being a man of color, the NYPD officer deemed it right to use deadly force to bring him down, and he was successful.
I remember too vividly the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, who was slaughtered by NYPD officers in a hail of 41 bullets. He was unarmed, and was simply pulling out his wallet in the vestibule of his apartment building to identify himself. At that time, I too, lived in a building that had a similar entrance and thought to myself ‘this could’ve been me.’
I remember Ernest Sayon, an all-but forgotten Staten Island man who was killed by a severe head injury after being in the custody of NYPD officers, and think that it could have been me. See, the law is the law on the book, but unfortunately, in New York City and far too many urban cities throughout America, police officers take the law, and lives, into their own hands, and in the case of African Americans, too many of those lives are lost.
Who could forget Sean Bell? He went out with friends for his bachelor party on the night before his wedding. After NYPD officers falsely suspected him and his friends of carrying firearms, they fired upon his vehicle 50 times, killing Bell in the early morning of what was supposed to be his wedding day. I’ve seen many friends at their nuptials, and have attended numerous bachelor parties. This could have been me or one of my friends.
There are many other names, from Malcolm Ferguson to Nicholas Heyward Jr., from Patrick Moses Dorismond to Reynaldo Cuevas, from Timothy Stansbury to Ramarley Graham to countless others. And as much as I would like to think that we have seen the end, the killing of men of color is embedded into the very nature of the New York Police Department. So I, along with far too many other men of color, walk the streets of New York City knowing that our next encounter with NYPD could end in the last breath of our life.
–derrel jazz johnson
