Narratives, Police, Michael Brown, Eric Garner

It's hard to contest the testimony of many African-American men who claim to be repeatedly profiled by the police because of the color of their skin...I tend to believe these accounts.  The problem with proving this is that, in the justice system, things are done on a case-by-case basis and each specific case can be depicted by law enforcement in some way to exonerate officers even when they do profile blacks.  Another contention is that police are more brutal and use more deadly force in their interactions with black suspects...once again when investigations follow the result is often a flood of mitigating evidence letting the officers off the hook (hence recent grand jury refusals to prosecute police).  But the police are there to protect people and have to go into areas when called to respond to crimes and complaints.  In such cases, the officer may be white and the suspect may be black,...that isn't profiling, the cop is just doing his or her job.  In the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson this past August, that is what happened when a response to a call about a convenience store robbery and the suspect's subsequent stroll down the center of a street led to a police-suspect confrontation that culminated in the suspect being shot down dead.  Many witnesses were there, and depending on which version you might choose to fit your own narrative about the police, Michael Brown was shot either while attacking or rushing the policeman or he had his hands up and was moving away when killed.  I have a couple of questions, though, for those subscribing to the two diametrically-opposed narratives about this tragic incident...

For those, like Al Sharpton, who have made this crime-response case a matter of race and Michael Brown some kind of civil rights hero, quick to insert this case into their narrative that blacks can't get a fair shake in the justice system,  I would like to ask why do this when the situation does not indicate profiling, but rather an officer doing his duty to protect the public from crime and criminals.  As for those who seem to think that the police are grand, unimpeachable  heroes themselves and subscribe to the narrative that they, like combat soldiers in occupied lands, are under continual attack and have to respond in self-defense, my response to this narrative is that yes, if the police see themselves like that, I can see how they would respond with larger than necessary force.  But they are NOT soldiers in enemy land.  This is America, and at last report, we're not a police state or occupied territory. I ask myself why is it so many times, with all of the arms training that the police are supposed to possess, that I keeping seeing reports of policemen gunning down suspects to death when they should have been perfectly capable of incapacitating them by shooting them in less vital areas?  There is another case recently of a boy playing with a harmless cap gun shot to death like this...

Lending more credence to the profiling narrative is the case of Eric Garner, a black man who was approached by a group of police in Staten Island, New York while standing unarmed in front of a shop on the sidewalk.  Accused of selling tax-free cigarettes, not exactly a felony, when he asked the police to leave him alone they jumped him, pulled him down to the ground by his neck and sat on his chest...he died soon thereafter of a heart attack.  This case tends to support another negative narrative about the police, which is that they tend to be more confrontational and treat civilians with more brutality when in groups than when alone.  That old video of the Rodney King beatings comes to mind. It seems that aggression begets more aggression.

We all have our own experiences dealing with the police.  For the most part, they have done well by me, although I believe I was treated unfairly in a couple of cases...one a speed trap situation and the other a setup by several police to ensnare drivers who didn't subscribe to their strict (and to me, extreme) interpretation of a recently-enacted state law about moving over a lane to accommodate roadside emergency vehicles.  But I realize, quite unlike a large segment of the population, that it pays to be polite and cooperative with them, even in situations where I feel persecuted.  There seems, in my opinion, to be a serious gulf between civilians and police, both in how civilians expect the police to act toward them and in how the police expect civilians to act toward them.  Both sides need a crash course in decorum, politeness, and restraint...on a mass scale.

I have seen few issues like this in which opinions are so polarized and impassioned.  Not being black myself, I am not free to agree or disagree with the claim of police profiling from personal experience.  But my personal concerns about the police are real, too.  Although I do appreciate their valor and the important role they play in protecting us, especially from criminals, at the same time I tend to be very wary of them, even when I'm around them in Starbucks (where they gather for the free coffee) and I need to oh-so slowly reach down into my pocket for something like a pen or cellphone...