Death by Cop: More Complicated Than It Appears

PARKS’ PLACE-It’s ironic and unsettling: lately the eves of monumental Civil Rights anniversaries have been accompanied by deaths at the hands of police officers. 

Three days after the 49th ann  iversary of the Voting Rights Act, Michael Brown was shot and killed by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri. 

Now, on the heels of March 7, 1965, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, a homeless man, known as "Africa" in the community, was shot and killed by an officer near the Union Rescue Mission in Skid Row. 

I see a lot of similarities between Africa’s situation and Brown’s: both were unarmed and both were said to be reaching for the officer’s gun when they were shot. 

I’m also seeing some kind of character assassination taking place in the media for both of them--kind of justifying their deaths. Media outlets were pawing for Brown’s juvenile court record and convenient store robbery video that may or may not have been him on tape. Digging into Africa’s past, media found he was a convicted bank robber and an identity thief. These men were no angels, but the focus should stay on the circumstances in which they died and not their checkered pasts, no matter how salacious they are. 

Skid Row in LA and Ferguson, Missouri are both products of chronic issues like income inequality, poverty, and now in Ferguson’s case, tangible proof of "implicit and explicit racial bias" by the police force there. 

Not surprisingly, some people are feeling weary and fear that just like Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, and George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, that the officer involved in the Skid Row shooting won’t be reprimanded and that the investigation will be tilted in the department’s favor. I have faith that the LAPD will seriously investigate this incident and reexamine the relationship they have with the community. 

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Concerning use of force, as I’ve said before, I believe officers are supposed to make an independent judgment for each active use of force and it’s crucial to have a plan in place. They say ‘if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.’ What makes people cooperative is them seeing officers have a plan, someone in control, and following protocol-not getting an invitation to a wild street fight where anything goes. 

Concerning racial bias and racism of police officers, as I’ve said before, unfortunately, there is racism in nearly every profession, vocation, field, and industry, not just law enforcement. I’m not saying it’s right or excusing it, but it’s a pervasive issue that we are all dealing with- clearly not that well. 

However, it’s important to note that police are getting paid to stereotype actions. If they didn’t stereotype on a daily basis, they would start with a blank slate everyday-their experience drives them to look at patterns. 

Now the report that Attorney General Eric Holder released yesterday that detailed the Ferguson Police Department’s systematic discrimination of African-Americans in the town, there’s no excuse for that. If true, clearly officers were abusing their power and going out of their way to intimidate and punitively demean people simply based on the color of their skin.

 

(Bernard Parks is Los Angeles Councilman for the 8^th Council District. He is also  former Los Angeles Police Chief. He can be reached at [email protected] ) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 21

Pub: Mar 10, 2015