“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
There were so many celebratory topics about which I wanted to write. I wanted to write about my friend Michelle Smith’s wedding, but Sgt. James Brown died while in police custody. I wanted to write about the Placas sisters’ vacation in Greece, but Natasha McKenna died while in police custody. I wanted to write about the birth of my niece and nephew, but Sandra Bland died while in police custody. Due to those unfortunate incidents, I felt compelled to write about the deadly relationship between the Black community and the police.
America’s police system is broken and in need of an immediate overhaul. While our nation has attempted to shed many of its archaic racial practices and views, there is very little evidence that police departments have evolved at the same pace. When visual proof of violent police misconduct against Black people comes to light, too many Americans prefer to write it off as the inhumane acts of a few bad apples rather than the inevitable behavior resulting from a racially intolerant police culture. This racially intolerant police culture has created what amounts to a police state in many impoverished Black neighborhoods in America.
It seems that each week there is another police officer starring in a social media production in which he or she is violating the rights of a Black person. How many more beatings or deaths have to occur before serious measures are taken to put an end to these fatal police antics? How patient does the Black community have to be as mountains of obituaries and questionable prison sentences rise? Federal guidelines must be implemented for hiring, psychological evaluations and community policing before the frustration becomes an uncontrollable rage that does not yield solutions just destruction of property.
The Black community has always had a healthy distrust and fear of the police, but even those feelings have grown exponentially over the past few years. This distrust and fear are justified from the decades of abusive policing that Blacks have had to endure. The Scottsboro Boys debacle should have never reincarnated itself as The Central Park Five 60 years later. Tamir Rice’s family will be mourning at his grave instead of cheering at his commencement in five years. Walter Scott’s children will have to live with the fact that a minor traffic violation took their father away from them forever.
After watching “Eyes on the Prize,” I have always wondered how the police leaders and their police officers were able to escape criminal charges or loss of employment. Police leaders such as Sheriff Jim Clark and Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor authorized the use of attack dogs, clubs and fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators, many of whom were children. Clark and Connor were never held accountable for any of their actions. Neither Clark nor Connor ever repudiated their abusive police tactics. To a certain degree, the spirits of Jim Clark and Bull Connor permeate the police departments of America and they are not the law enforcement examples we should revere.
