More Reflections on Police

In the case of the St. Paul killing, the officer radioed that he was stopping a car because the driver looked like a suspect in a robbery. The suspect evidently was black and had a wide nose. That the officer could see the driver was black is probable but that he could see a wide nose (at what distance?) is far less probable. If the suspect had been white, how many white drivers would the officer have pulled over? Racial profiling is not a good thing and we must admit that it exists. I have seen local police pull over blacks and browns regularly in our community.

The officer pulled his gun and pointed it into the car. Police need to stop pulling their guns and pointing them at people. When you point a loaded and armed gun at someone, you intend to shoot them. Police need to keep their guns holstered until they actually intend to shoot someone. I once walked into a gas station in Mammoth Lakes only to find a policeman pointing his gun at a young hispanic man who was standing by the counter. I was perhaps three feet behind the officer. Think of how many different ways this scenario could have gone wrong.

The whole concept of the criminal justice system seems to have gone out the window. When a violent crime is committed, there is no concern about taking the criminal prisoner and putting him/her up for trial. Killing the criminal is the only option considered. How many cases do you remember when the police took one of these people into custody? How many, when they simply killed the person? In Dallas, they didn’t bother to wait him out; they rigged a robotic bomb and blew him up. So much for bringing people to “justice.”

And finally, when an officer does mortal harm to someone who was unarmed and innocent or who had just committed some petty offense, the officer ought to pass through a criminal justice system like any other person. But this is not the way things happen. The police community immediately comes to the defense of the officer and the court system is disposed to favor his/her version of the facts. In all the officer-involved deaths of black men, over the last few years, NO officer has ever been found guilty or been punished. Doesn’t that sound a bit extraordinary? One of the biggest things that the police community could do in order to establish a better relationship with the communities they serve would be to actually acknowledge that officers do occasionally commit criminal acts and that they should be tried and punished for this.

The great majority of police officers are good people who obey the law and serve their communities. Are they willing to say that the great majority of black people in their communities are also law obeying good people? Can there be some respect?