Cody
Williams
A Fair
Fight?
Black Men and Police Brutality
How many stupid
white men
does
it take to screw in a light bulb?
Let’s just say five. And a horse.
If you believe them, it took five white New Orleans police officers, an FBI agent, and a horse, to pummel, subdue, beat into bloody submission, handcuff and arrest one 64-year-old allegedly “stumbling drunk” gray-haired black man.
That sounds like a fair fight if you ask me.
Even feeble and aged black men are a fearsome lot.
The manhood code of conduct manual used to train me clearly stated anything other than one on one is not a fair fight. Repeatedly it has been shown that just one virile male black is more than a formidable match for white men who carry the authority of a badge. But, what do white guys know about being men, or fighting fair? Especially those with badges. They have always preferred lynch mobs and hooded gangs when confronting us.
Ubiquitous recording presents a challenge for them. It removes the cover of darkness.
Many people will be quick to dismiss this latest incidence of videotaped police brutality as an isolated event that took place in the corrupt and scandal plagued Crescent City police force. A third of whom deserted the city and fled at the one point in time those who pay their salaries needed them the most; after the devastation that followed hurricane Katrina. And a number of the city’s ‘bravest’ who stayed behind chose to join in robbing and looting rather than to defend and protect.
White officers say they stopped the retired Mr. Robert Davis because he was publicly drunk on Bourbon Street. Image that, someone drunk on probably the most intoxicated street in America, a place where whiskey shots are sold out of open windows. A place that put the phrase, “show us your tits,” in the English lexicon. Davis says he has not consumed alcohol in over twenty-five years. His crime was most likely being black in a city as of yet open only to white tourists and business owners.
The grudge match played out between white law enforcement officers and black men in America is not confined to the Gulf Coast. From the infamous Rodney King videotaped beat down, to the murder of Johnny Gammach, to the 41 bullets Rudy Giuliani’s cops pumped into the unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo, white police officers have let their fear of black men take control in times of heightened tension. They have demonstrated how ill-equipped they are in assuring public safety for all of the citizens they are sworn to protect. From one American coast to another Black men are regularly victimized by white cops who are too afraid to confront us like professionals.
Recently Amnesty International sited race and police brutally as a “growing concern” in America.
The agency’s report entitled Race, Rights and Police Brutality in the USA states, “Police brutality has become the focus of acute national attention during the past year due to several high profile cases, including the fatal shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, in New York City in February 1999. Four white officers from an elite crime squad looking for a rape suspect fired 41 shots at Diallo, striking him 19 times as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building. (1) The shooting highlighted… concern about police unjustly targeting black people and other minorities as potential criminals.”
For years we've all watched as young white police officers sit during an abuse, murder or rape trial, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, when faced with the possibility of being placed behind bars and caged in the very quarters with the men they have brutally victimized. We listen as their babbling defense attorneys prattle on about how the victim’s actions caused the beating, murder or, yes, sexual assault they received. In May 1999 an officer pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of Abner Louima by ramming a broken broomstick handle into his rectum in a police station bathroom. A federal jury convicted a second officer of torturing Louima by holding him down during the attack. (There were credible rumors of black male jitney gab drivers too embarrassed to report being sexually assaulted by New York City’s finest long before the public got wind of a white out of control Brooklyn officer raping the Haitian immigrant with the handle of a bathroom plunger. That guy didn’t just come up with the idea to insert something into a handcuffed man’s ass that night and on his own.)
It is very true that there are many good police officers of all races who protect our communities and come to the aide of millions everyday. But too, in many cases we put guns and night sticks in the hands of young boys whose contempt, fear and hatred of all black men render them no more capable of making quick and justifiable law enforcement decisions when in a confrontation with one of us than Aunt Polly’s house cat. Many of those boys should not be put on a street in a uniform, much less be given a loaded standard issue Colt 45.
The six officers who beat up that retired elementary school teacher should be removed from the force and serve time. Life behind bars with a disproportionate black to white inmate population may teach them what a fair man‑to‑man fight should look like.
Municipal departments should implement racial diversity and sensitivity training with the same commitment they now deploy sexual harassment training. Police departments should stop hiring white men just because they are white men, and apply standards that weed out the stupid, cowardice, immature and prejudice. These departments should step up diversity recruiting and promotion efforts. Stop the rhetoric opposing minority promotions as affirmative action programs and lowering standards, because we all clearly see that community-policing standards across the country already have a lot of room for improvement.
We actually have no idea of the complete number of black men murdered and brutalized by police in America in spite of efforts of many to collate such data.
Again, Amnesty writes in its report:
“Civil rights organizations and police experts have long expressed concern at the lack of accurate, comprehensive national data on police use of force, including shootings and other deaths or injuries in custody. Even within states, such data is generally not available as local police departments keep their own records (if at all) and there are few statewide reporting systems. Amnesty International believes that such data is essential for the authorities to be able to review practice, take remedial action where there are patterns of concern, and to hold the police publicly accountable.
The Police Accountability Act, which was incorporated into the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, attempted to remedy this by requiring the Attorney General to acquire national data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers for research and statistical purposes and to publish an annual summary. However, Congress, while passing the legislation, has consistently failed to fund this measure. Furthermore, the legislation does not require local police agencies to keep their own records on the use of force or to submit data to the Justice Department, so any data collection system at present must depend upon the voluntary cooperation of police agencies.”
It’s time for Congress to show us their tits.
It’s time for us, as a concerned people, to press lawmakers to fund the collection of data to track nationally incidences like the one that happened recently in New Orleans. It’s time for us to show whites in America that we treasure the lives of black men just as much as Fox News does missing white women.
© www.codywilliams.com 2005
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