Deadly Consequences of Being Black?

If New York's police force includes so many deadly marksmen, couldn't uncharged suspects merely be stopped without being killed? For pointing out an indisputable fact, that Americans-of-color very often have a different life experience from the white majority, Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is criticized as a racist. But among most of the same detractors, the most recent case of a black policeman being felled by 'friendly fire' represents not an aspect of a larger deplorable and consistent trend, but an utterly non-racial anomaly.

For well over a century, from the days of Boss Tweed, most New York firefighters and police officers have not only been white, but a special class of whites; they are direct descendants of immigrant Irish beneficiaries of patronage-set-asides. Since 1940, in New York State at least 20 hapless African American police officers have been slain by their white counterparts. Not one white officer has been slain by a black officer. Innocent African American 'civilians' here have been shot by white police at an exponentially greater rate.

"Looked at statistically it's just messed up!" comments activist city council candidate Monique Washington. "Viewed strictly in terms of probability, many of those 20 officers ought to have been white, some even shot by blacks! When is that going to happen though, to rationalize the unrelenting numbers of blacks, mostly unarmed, shot by the police? And just like the 'doll test', in which black children identify white dolls as 'good' and 'pretty' and black dolls as 'bad' and 'ugly' some whites contend that black officers shooting blacks, like Sean Bell, is an indication of our greater threat and criminality. That is a more comforting notion, as opposed to acknowledging the extent and depth of racism and societal induced self-loathing that persist in America!"

According to police figures the number of blacks among the roughly 700 officers who make up New York City's police department's top tier -- in the ranks of captain and higher -- has remained unchanged from 2002 through 2007 at a paltry 28. In the lower ranks the record is even more shameful.

As for the police department's practice of stopping and sometimes frisking people on the streets, blacks account for more than half of those stopped. Moreover figures show that police officers during the latest administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg stopped more people -- 145,098 -- during the first three months of 2008 than during any other quarter in the six years the department has reported such data.

"Typically," stresses Ms. Washington, many whites take such statistics in stride. "They are not the ones being stopped. Their sons, brothers and fathers aren't being locked up, beaten or killed. They perceive the city as safer and so a little black 'collateral damage' is ok."

Washington's lament brings to mind a host of tragedies, nationwide and local both. "Most blacks remember like it was yesterday watching the Rodney King beating on TV," says architect Ron Mack. "Remember," he says, "how the police and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani engineered a tearful bedside meeting between Desmond Robinson, the wounded undercover transit police officer, and his white partner who had shot him? Remember Mayor Giuliani's hospital visit to Abner Louima?

Remember Amadou Diallo of the fifty shots?

Not much seems different reading about a white Westchester officer shooting an off-duty black officer at point-blank range. Officer Frank Oliveri allegedly then took the dead officer's badge so that it could be "discovered" later in his car, a multi-million dollar lawsuit filed by Mount Vernon Officer Christopher Ridley's family charged in April.

Bolstered by the two officers who accompanied him and the arrested thief pursued by rookie newlywed officer Omar Edwards

when he was shot, 4 year veteran Andrew Dunton asserted he'd identified himself as a policeman though he was out of uniform. "Sure, right!" says a tearing Washington, "And my kids will swear to you that I'm the real Michelle Obama, if you ask them. Bottom line: Bill Perkins, Barack Obama, any black man, no matter who he is, has a far greater chance of being shot by the police than either Bloomberg or the worse white criminal has!"

Comments

[EBRatner]

This Michael Henry Adams article is timely and urgent in its importance. It provides context, historical and statistical, providing the reader with the basis for a reasoned reaction to a current event. And there should be reaction. A system that does not made a suitable reaction to such an event, is not awake to its responsibilities.

This should be a season for assessment and change, change to right our past wrongs. Was there ever a season in which we have announced our will to change so clearly, without being tempted to resort to massive demonstration ?

[Peter007]

Besides a problem of race it is also a problem of the use of deadly force by police. The police are allowed to use deadly force whenever they feel that their life is in danger. What this rule does is basically give the police a blank check when it comes time to use their gun. A policeman is always protected by the law when he uses his gun. All he has to say, is that he felt his life was in danger. Case closed. NO other citizen is given this right. We have one set of rules for the police and another set for citizens.
This will only end when the unconditional support of police by the public ends and the police are held to the same rules that citizens are.
Until then, cops have the right to shot and kill anyone without the risk of any consequences.

[Poboy]

...and yet, they are supposed to be "public servants."

Public servants to White people and an occupation army to Black people.

In other words, the police are serving the existing order, white supremacy.

And the sooner Black people realize this the better off we will all be.

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

As I've suggested along with the two people I interviewed, the start of reform might occur when a victim is someone white, shot by a black policeman or even a prominent white person who's tanned or otherwise mistakenly thought to be black and hence dangerous, and so shot. Thinking that such dire circumstances or even rioting are required to foster change, derived from the example of history might be unfortunate but still seem inevitable.

[gageeandbaba]

wait no it's reverse reverse REVERSE racism to even point it out. this isn't news so stop.

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

to just what are you referring?