Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dan DeWalt, an artisan and activist interested in democracy and the Constitution. He writes from South Newfane.
[T]he refusals of grand juries to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men is symptomatic of a national malaise as well as being an indirect result of the “war on terror” that we have been living with for over a decade.
Time and again, police chiefs are quoted saying that their officers are within their rights to use deadly force if they fear that their lives are being threatened. District attorneys and grand juries back them up, even in the most egregious instances caught on film, like the beating of Rodney King or the killing of Eric Garner. This point of view establishes two different levels of value on human lives: one for police officers, and another of lesser value for ordinary citizens. Simply being afraid of someone does not give you the right to kill them, with the exception of white men “standing their ground” killing black men in Florida.
No doubt, police officers face dangerous situations on the job and should be able to do their duty effectively. But lots of people have dangerous professions: firefighters, fishermen, miners, loggers and even teachers face the risk of dying every day when they go to work. No one is forced to take up these dangerous occupations. The dangers are well known and the women and men who do this work understand and choose to accept the risks. If we decide that law enforcement lives are worth more, we deny the very equality under the law that they are supposed to defend and enforce.
An even more insidious factor is the rapid and dramatic militarization of our police forces nationwide. In order to garner support for the permanent war on terror (never mind that Obama changed the name, this war goes on) the federal government has been flooding local law enforcement agencies with combat military hardware. Besides the Rambo-style image and the vastly increased firepower provided by this military hardware, embracing police force militarization plays directly into the fear mentality that our political leaders (abetted by the news media) keep espousing (mostly to divert our attention from their own failings, lies and shortcomings or because the “tough on crime” position seems to play so well at the polls). Looking down the barrel of their government issued assault rifle, protected in their body armor, at the helm of an armored personnel carrier, these officers perfectly exemplify the notion of “you’re with us or you’re against us.”
If police fears are a legitimate justification for killing civilians, then we had better examine those fears and understand their root causes.
Hearing some of the responses from law enforcement personnel to these recent tragedies makes it clear that at least a fair number of them see things in just those terms. Eric Garner wasn’t an unarmed man asking the police to “please” not arrest him; he was a thug, a criminal, another creep who didn’t know how to listen to orders from the “peacekeepers” who subsequently attacked and killed him. Michael Brown was not a lumbering teenager with a box of stolen Tiparillos, he was, to Officer Wilson, a frightful hulking “demon” (even though Wilson was about the same height with plenty of body mass himself). Officer Wilson even referred to Brown at one point as “it,” effectively dehumanizing him entirely. As some “thing “ that was frightening and perceived as menacing, “it” could be shot without having to come to terms with reality that a human life was about to be snuffed out.
If police fears are a legitimate justification for killing civilians, then we had better examine those fears and understand their root causes. It’s a dangerous world and there are criminals who will try to kill cops. But statistics show that blacks are killed by police at a much higher rate than are whites. A recent analysis in Mother Jones showed blacks to be four times more likely to be shot by a policeman than whites. In a society that has done an excellent job of re-segregating itself after civil rights legislation and integration 50 years ago, whites still see black, brown and Muslim people as the “other.” What we don’t know, we tend to fear, especially when a climate of fear has been created to justify a national security state that enriches weapons makers, shreds the Constitution and makes a mockery of our rights.
There is a word for fearing someone based on the color of their skin, and that word is racism. As evidenced by the backlash against President Obama, or against the protesters marching from Ferguson to the Missouri capital who were taunted with melons, fried chicken, Confederate flags and gun shots, racism is alive and well in these United States. Even whites who have the best intentions about race still have discomfort and unease when actually dealing with it. Policemen who are being trained to repel attacks with their arsenals and armor are being trained to respond to an enemy attack, not to protect the public they are sworn to serve.
As long as any latent racism remains in the police forces, and as long as we allow policemen to kill whenever they’re afraid, we are sanctioning the murder of black men by the police. Mainstream America automatically trusts the words of law officers over those of their victims. This trust is misplaced as evidenced by facts uncovered in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Cleveland police force and others. It is also counterproductive and only leads to more unrest and distrust. We need to de-militarize our police forces, take off the blinders that allow us to make erroneous assumptions about both black men and the police, and start to understand that every citizen of this nation has equal value. If we’re so invested in fear, let’s not worry about black men; instead, let’s be concerned about the police state’s assault on the Constitution and our rights, and how we can take them back before they disappear for good.
