All Lives Matter (but some lives matter less then others)
This hasn't been a good week for police/community relations in United States.
On Tuesday, Alton Sterling was shot in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. The details are still hazy, but we know that there was a call alleging that he was waving a run around, two officers were sent to investigate, they tackled him to the ground and shot him. Sterling was (allegedly) reaching for his gun. We are still not sure if he even had a gun at this point, but even if he did, the officers had him on the ground. Its not that he couldn't necessarily shoot people with it (trigger is easy to pull, and even if you don't aim anywhere, a fired bullet can do damage).
The next day, an officer stopped a car with a broke tail light. The driver, a cafeteria worker named Philando Castile, told the cop that he was going to show his Firearm Owner Identification Card, but as he reached for it, the officer shot him four times. If the footage recorded by Castile's girlfriend was anything to go by, the officer realized immediately that he screwed up, but the very fact that he fired a gun in a first place when he had no reason to assume Castile was a threat... Police officers are supposed to be trained not to use a firearm unless they are pretty sure they are in danger. They are not supposed to panic and overreact. Especially when that overreaction has pretty fatal consequences.
The two incidents touched off a wave of protests all over United States. On Thursday, during a protest in Dallas, a sniper shot at city police and transit police officers, killing five officers, and wounding five officers and two civilians. The shooter, a 25-year-old US Army veteran Micah Johnson, was supposedly angered by the aforementioned incidents and wanted to kill white people, preferably white police officers. According to the Associated Press, he's been stockpiling weapons and explosives, so he was probably planning this long before this week. Maybe what happened this week set him off, caused him to abandon whatever he planned... We may never known.
(In a bit of tragic irony, the shooting happened in a city where the local police actually developed strategies to defuse potentially hostile situations - and misconduct/excessive force complaints dropped dramatically)
And, around the same time, during a protest in Portland, a man who was later identified as Michael Strickland pulled a gun on the nearby protestors. He was filming footage for Laughing at Liberals website, and he claimed that he felt threatened by the protestors and just wanted them to back off.
While this incident is still generating headlines in Portland and Oregon in general, it was completely overshadowed by the Dallas shooting in the rest of the country.
On Wednesday evening, when Sterling's death was already in the news but word of Castile's death hasn't quite spread and the Dallas shooting was still a day away, I was covering a community meeting at Chicago West Side's 29th Ward for Austin Weekly News. Earlier that day, the news broke that Alderman Ed Burke (14th) introduced a "Blue Lives Matter" ordinance that would make attacks against cops, firefighters and paramedics hate crimes (not all attacks, mind you - as with all hate crimes, the prosecutors would have to prove that the crime not because of something the victims said or did, but because the victim had some specific characteristic (in this case, being a member of the emergency services)).
Alderman Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former cop himself, told the residents who came to the meeting that he liked the ordinance - it was the name that he had a problem with.
"If [Blue Lives Matter] was meant to be conversant with Black Lives matter, that blue lives matter, too - we know this already," Taliaferro said. "The intention behind Black Lives Matter is honorable, and, to me, the intention behind Blue Lives Matter isn't honorable."
Or, to put it another way, he felt that the "Blue Lives Matter" wasn't about helping first-responders - it was a way to stick it to BLM movement, nothing more.
This is when one of the residents,[a white woman]I've found that, while parts of Austin community area south of North Avenue are majority-black, there are more whites living there then most people would assume, asked "why can't we say 'All Lives Matter?'"
Because, as a reporter, I'm supposed to report the news, not become part of it, I kept quiet. But I was there a civilian, I might have interjected and said something like this.
It's not that all lives don't matter. Obviously, they do. But what the groups within the BLM movement are saying is that we tend to value black lives less then white lives. That they matter less.
Taliaferro didn't quite put it this way, but he touched on the fact that he admires BLM movement because he believes that the issues they raise aren't just about police brutality, but the violence in majority-black neighborhoods in general.
Think about how often shootings are reported in black neighborhoods, not just in Chicago, but in every major American city. Unless something truly horrible happens - like, say, a nine-year-old gets shot because of his father's gang involvement - we don't pay that much attention to it.
Or how, a few months ago, I was listening to Fox Chicago reporting on how a black teen got shot. There was palatable surprise in the anchors' voices when they mentioned that he had no gang ties whatsoever.
Or consider how African-Americans are depicted in mass media. There are complex characters and characters that are positive role models, sure, but when you are looking at characters that live in poor neighborhoods, they are far more likely to be gangsters, criminals or shallow, self-centered, lazy individuals who can never amount to anything.
I've written it many times before, but, once again, it bears repeating. It's easy to dismiss neighborhoods when you think there's nothing there worth protecting. It's easy to dismiss people when you don't think they are worth helping.
I don't live in a place like Austin, but I go there to work. I attend community meetings. I listen to people talk. I listen to them sharing their grievances, their fears. They want a safe place to live. They want places where they can work without having to commute for hours. They want schools that get the funding they deserve. THey want to feel safe in their own block And - and this is important - they don't want people to think their neighborhoods are complete hellholes. Austin has beautiful parks, two libraries, restaurants that have been around for generations and a few newer businesses trying to attract clientele. It has an elementary school where teachers work hard to get kids not just interested in going to college, but to see going to college as an achievable plan, to think about what colleges they'd want to go to.
When the groups under BLM umbrella say that black lives matter, they are saying that black lives shouldn't be so easily dismissed, so easily reduced. That African-Americans are entitled to the basic dignity and respect we should, ideally, extend to all human beings. The same benefit of the doubt. The same belief that all human beings have a potential to change themselves - and their community - for the better. That they are part of our society, and what happens to them affects us all.
Studies have shown that while white youth and black you use illegal drugs in similar rates, the black youth are more likely to be punished for it. That their white counterparts get more chances, greater benefit of a doubt. And if all lives are valued equally and treated equally, it wouldn't be this way.
Having said all that.
Part of the implicit assumption beyond the cries of "All Lives Matter" is that framing it as "Black Lives Matter" would make African-Americans more antagonistic toward the police and/or white people in general. Which is naive. The tensions between African-Americans and the police go back decades. And it isn't just what African-Americans feel. The tension is a two-way street.
On February 27, I was covering a one of the meetings that were part of the Youth Take Chicago forum. Organized by Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin (1st) and several West Side aldermen, police commanders and other officials, it is supposed to provide a forum where black youth and the cops talk to each other and try to see where either side is coming from. And I was fascinated by the obvious disconnect. The cops that spoke talked about trying to reach out, while everybody was hostile to them, which made them want to reach out less.
District 15 officer Will Martinez, who is white, replied that his own attempts to interact with community residents haven't gone smoothly. He talked about how little kids would approach him and try to speak to him, only to have the parents pull them away.
“I am here because I'm out there every day, and I talk to everybody,” said Martinez. “Some people tried, and that's what they were give and they don't try anymore.”
But to the teens and other local residents, the police were an aggressive force that seemed to treat them as suspects no matter what they did. One local high schooler talked about coming back from a football game with friends when a patrol car stopped them, insisting tht they had drugs. When they said they didn't, the police officer searched them and didn't let them go for 15 minutes, even after it was clear that they really didn't have any drugs.
Others told similar stories.
Nathaniel Brown, a 31-year-old career coach, said that, even though he was a college-educated professional who was never involved in gangs, he still faced hostility from the police.
“I had more guns drawn on me from police officers than any other people,” he said. “I would like to be approached as human being.”
Eric T. Washington, CPD's Deputy Chief of Community Policing, acknowledged that many officers held “implicit and explicit biases”.
“We had officers on the job who never had a true experience being around people of color, and we have to work on that,” Washington said.
He wasn't necessarily talking about racism - or, at least, not only about racism. Those biases tend to be more subtle, more insidious. Consider a lot of the stuff that shows up in the comments section of the Second City Cop blog. I've seen plenty of variations of "people in this neighborhood are welfare-mooching, lazy scum who are beyond saving." And I just keep wondering why they keep doing a job they clearly hate - at least in this city.
I'm not saying that all cops are like that. Far from it. Over my four years as a reporter, I've met cops in all parts of the city and in the suburbs. Some were compassionate, dedicated people. I met some real doucheholes. And I met plenty that are somewhere in between. In the end of the day, they are all human, with their strengths and weaknesses, foibles and aspirations.
Since the shooting of Michael Brown, I've seen plenty of people - many (but hardly all) of them members of the groups that fall under BLM umbrella - treat the police as this dangerous force that must be removed. As if somehow merely having a badge makes you a murderous monster. I get why this happens - it's easier to fight against a simple, faceless monolith rather then something as human as you are. Even after we've seen officers risk their lives during the Orlando shooting. Even after what happened in Dallas.
There have also been plenty of calls to remove the police force altogether, to replace it with some form of restorative justice by the peers. Which ignores the fact that we need some organization to investigate crimes, and people who can respond to things like the Orlando shooting. And I will admit my own baises here. As someone who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, I'm always weary of people who say they want to fundamentally change society. To me there's anything that Soviet Union, and People's Republic of China, and Khmer Rouge taught us, it's that actually fundamentally changing human society is much easier said then done - and that even the most idealistic, well-intentioned revolutionaries aren't free of human weaknesses, biases and prejudices.
Obviously, this doesn't mean that cops are above reproach. Otherwise, I wouldn't write most of the preceding paragraphs. As alderman Taliaferro told his constituents a few days ago, supporting police officers doesn't mean you shelter the ones who clearly did something wrong. And I do think CPD, at least, needs to take a long, hard look at its culture, and the way it approaches the communities it serves.
For now, I just hope that the events of the past week would change something
I'm not sure what. But since the Dallas shooting, there have been several protests, in Chicago and elsewhere, and it doesn't feel any different then it did last November.
On Tuesday, Alton Sterling was shot in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. The details are still hazy, but we know that there was a call alleging that he was waving a run around, two officers were sent to investigate, they tackled him to the ground and shot him. Sterling was (allegedly) reaching for his gun. We are still not sure if he even had a gun at this point, but even if he did, the officers had him on the ground. Its not that he couldn't necessarily shoot people with it (trigger is easy to pull, and even if you don't aim anywhere, a fired bullet can do damage).
The next day, an officer stopped a car with a broke tail light. The driver, a cafeteria worker named Philando Castile, told the cop that he was going to show his Firearm Owner Identification Card, but as he reached for it, the officer shot him four times. If the footage recorded by Castile's girlfriend was anything to go by, the officer realized immediately that he screwed up, but the very fact that he fired a gun in a first place when he had no reason to assume Castile was a threat... Police officers are supposed to be trained not to use a firearm unless they are pretty sure they are in danger. They are not supposed to panic and overreact. Especially when that overreaction has pretty fatal consequences.
The two incidents touched off a wave of protests all over United States. On Thursday, during a protest in Dallas, a sniper shot at city police and transit police officers, killing five officers, and wounding five officers and two civilians. The shooter, a 25-year-old US Army veteran Micah Johnson, was supposedly angered by the aforementioned incidents and wanted to kill white people, preferably white police officers. According to the Associated Press, he's been stockpiling weapons and explosives, so he was probably planning this long before this week. Maybe what happened this week set him off, caused him to abandon whatever he planned... We may never known.
(In a bit of tragic irony, the shooting happened in a city where the local police actually developed strategies to defuse potentially hostile situations - and misconduct/excessive force complaints dropped dramatically)
And, around the same time, during a protest in Portland, a man who was later identified as Michael Strickland pulled a gun on the nearby protestors. He was filming footage for Laughing at Liberals website, and he claimed that he felt threatened by the protestors and just wanted them to back off.
While this incident is still generating headlines in Portland and Oregon in general, it was completely overshadowed by the Dallas shooting in the rest of the country.
On Wednesday evening, when Sterling's death was already in the news but word of Castile's death hasn't quite spread and the Dallas shooting was still a day away, I was covering a community meeting at Chicago West Side's 29th Ward for Austin Weekly News. Earlier that day, the news broke that Alderman Ed Burke (14th) introduced a "Blue Lives Matter" ordinance that would make attacks against cops, firefighters and paramedics hate crimes (not all attacks, mind you - as with all hate crimes, the prosecutors would have to prove that the crime not because of something the victims said or did, but because the victim had some specific characteristic (in this case, being a member of the emergency services)).
Alderman Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former cop himself, told the residents who came to the meeting that he liked the ordinance - it was the name that he had a problem with.
"If [Blue Lives Matter] was meant to be conversant with Black Lives matter, that blue lives matter, too - we know this already," Taliaferro said. "The intention behind Black Lives Matter is honorable, and, to me, the intention behind Blue Lives Matter isn't honorable."
Or, to put it another way, he felt that the "Blue Lives Matter" wasn't about helping first-responders - it was a way to stick it to BLM movement, nothing more.
This is when one of the residents,[a white woman]I've found that, while parts of Austin community area south of North Avenue are majority-black, there are more whites living there then most people would assume, asked "why can't we say 'All Lives Matter?'"
Because, as a reporter, I'm supposed to report the news, not become part of it, I kept quiet. But I was there a civilian, I might have interjected and said something like this.
It's not that all lives don't matter. Obviously, they do. But what the groups within the BLM movement are saying is that we tend to value black lives less then white lives. That they matter less.
Taliaferro didn't quite put it this way, but he touched on the fact that he admires BLM movement because he believes that the issues they raise aren't just about police brutality, but the violence in majority-black neighborhoods in general.
Think about how often shootings are reported in black neighborhoods, not just in Chicago, but in every major American city. Unless something truly horrible happens - like, say, a nine-year-old gets shot because of his father's gang involvement - we don't pay that much attention to it.
Or how, a few months ago, I was listening to Fox Chicago reporting on how a black teen got shot. There was palatable surprise in the anchors' voices when they mentioned that he had no gang ties whatsoever.
Or consider how African-Americans are depicted in mass media. There are complex characters and characters that are positive role models, sure, but when you are looking at characters that live in poor neighborhoods, they are far more likely to be gangsters, criminals or shallow, self-centered, lazy individuals who can never amount to anything.
I've written it many times before, but, once again, it bears repeating. It's easy to dismiss neighborhoods when you think there's nothing there worth protecting. It's easy to dismiss people when you don't think they are worth helping.
I don't live in a place like Austin, but I go there to work. I attend community meetings. I listen to people talk. I listen to them sharing their grievances, their fears. They want a safe place to live. They want places where they can work without having to commute for hours. They want schools that get the funding they deserve. THey want to feel safe in their own block And - and this is important - they don't want people to think their neighborhoods are complete hellholes. Austin has beautiful parks, two libraries, restaurants that have been around for generations and a few newer businesses trying to attract clientele. It has an elementary school where teachers work hard to get kids not just interested in going to college, but to see going to college as an achievable plan, to think about what colleges they'd want to go to.
When the groups under BLM umbrella say that black lives matter, they are saying that black lives shouldn't be so easily dismissed, so easily reduced. That African-Americans are entitled to the basic dignity and respect we should, ideally, extend to all human beings. The same benefit of the doubt. The same belief that all human beings have a potential to change themselves - and their community - for the better. That they are part of our society, and what happens to them affects us all.
Studies have shown that while white youth and black you use illegal drugs in similar rates, the black youth are more likely to be punished for it. That their white counterparts get more chances, greater benefit of a doubt. And if all lives are valued equally and treated equally, it wouldn't be this way.
Having said all that.
Part of the implicit assumption beyond the cries of "All Lives Matter" is that framing it as "Black Lives Matter" would make African-Americans more antagonistic toward the police and/or white people in general. Which is naive. The tensions between African-Americans and the police go back decades. And it isn't just what African-Americans feel. The tension is a two-way street.
On February 27, I was covering a one of the meetings that were part of the Youth Take Chicago forum. Organized by Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin (1st) and several West Side aldermen, police commanders and other officials, it is supposed to provide a forum where black youth and the cops talk to each other and try to see where either side is coming from. And I was fascinated by the obvious disconnect. The cops that spoke talked about trying to reach out, while everybody was hostile to them, which made them want to reach out less.
District 15 officer Will Martinez, who is white, replied that his own attempts to interact with community residents haven't gone smoothly. He talked about how little kids would approach him and try to speak to him, only to have the parents pull them away.
“I am here because I'm out there every day, and I talk to everybody,” said Martinez. “Some people tried, and that's what they were give and they don't try anymore.”
But to the teens and other local residents, the police were an aggressive force that seemed to treat them as suspects no matter what they did. One local high schooler talked about coming back from a football game with friends when a patrol car stopped them, insisting tht they had drugs. When they said they didn't, the police officer searched them and didn't let them go for 15 minutes, even after it was clear that they really didn't have any drugs.
Others told similar stories.
Nathaniel Brown, a 31-year-old career coach, said that, even though he was a college-educated professional who was never involved in gangs, he still faced hostility from the police.
“I had more guns drawn on me from police officers than any other people,” he said. “I would like to be approached as human being.”
Eric T. Washington, CPD's Deputy Chief of Community Policing, acknowledged that many officers held “implicit and explicit biases”.
“We had officers on the job who never had a true experience being around people of color, and we have to work on that,” Washington said.
He wasn't necessarily talking about racism - or, at least, not only about racism. Those biases tend to be more subtle, more insidious. Consider a lot of the stuff that shows up in the comments section of the Second City Cop blog. I've seen plenty of variations of "people in this neighborhood are welfare-mooching, lazy scum who are beyond saving." And I just keep wondering why they keep doing a job they clearly hate - at least in this city.
I'm not saying that all cops are like that. Far from it. Over my four years as a reporter, I've met cops in all parts of the city and in the suburbs. Some were compassionate, dedicated people. I met some real doucheholes. And I met plenty that are somewhere in between. In the end of the day, they are all human, with their strengths and weaknesses, foibles and aspirations.
Since the shooting of Michael Brown, I've seen plenty of people - many (but hardly all) of them members of the groups that fall under BLM umbrella - treat the police as this dangerous force that must be removed. As if somehow merely having a badge makes you a murderous monster. I get why this happens - it's easier to fight against a simple, faceless monolith rather then something as human as you are. Even after we've seen officers risk their lives during the Orlando shooting. Even after what happened in Dallas.
There have also been plenty of calls to remove the police force altogether, to replace it with some form of restorative justice by the peers. Which ignores the fact that we need some organization to investigate crimes, and people who can respond to things like the Orlando shooting. And I will admit my own baises here. As someone who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, I'm always weary of people who say they want to fundamentally change society. To me there's anything that Soviet Union, and People's Republic of China, and Khmer Rouge taught us, it's that actually fundamentally changing human society is much easier said then done - and that even the most idealistic, well-intentioned revolutionaries aren't free of human weaknesses, biases and prejudices.
Obviously, this doesn't mean that cops are above reproach. Otherwise, I wouldn't write most of the preceding paragraphs. As alderman Taliaferro told his constituents a few days ago, supporting police officers doesn't mean you shelter the ones who clearly did something wrong. And I do think CPD, at least, needs to take a long, hard look at its culture, and the way it approaches the communities it serves.
For now, I just hope that the events of the past week would change something
I'm not sure what. But since the Dallas shooting, there have been several protests, in Chicago and elsewhere, and it doesn't feel any different then it did last November.