This past week, two events reported
by the local news have managed to shake even this bleary eyed hopeful cynic. As
a result, I find myself wondering how long the current state of realities in an
America I no longer recognize can hold.
Even Ham Sandwiches Can Be Indicted
The first occurred in nearby
Deland. Last week a grand jury returned a decision not to prosecute a police
officer who ran down a suspect fleeing on foot and killed him. Upon seeing the camcorder
video of that event it’s hard to imagine how anyone could have come to a
conclusion that the perpetrator of this
killing should not be charged with a crime. New York State chief judge Sol
Wachtler was once quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities that "a grand jury would 'indict a
ham sandwich” if that was what the prosecutor wanted.
One wonders how much the
prosecutor wanted to pursue a murderous cop. Perhaps more troubling, one
wonders how much the life of a black male victim is worth in this culture that
seems intent upon setting their killers free, particularly when his killer is
white.
The family of the decedent
released the cop’s videocam recording this week. Here is what the public
finally saw this past week.
I’m not sure what disturbs
me most about the Ocala Post’s presentation of this video online. The opening
of a recorded execution of a human being with an ad for a fast food restaurant
turned my stomach. The association of food with death is not one I would want
to make were I a businessman but I guess paid sponsors must get their money’s
worth, even for providing recordings of the killing of human beings to the
public.
The other aspect which
troubled me was the warning on the screen before the actual video began: “May be disturbing to some.” Some? I don’t think I want to spend much time around anyone who was NOT
disturbed by what followed in that video. And yet, I suspect that given the
circumstances of this event, its perpetrator and its victim, the number who
would not only not be disturbed but who would loudly defend the perpetrator of
this atrocity could well be significant.
Execution in a Vegetable Garden
The video features an
African-American suspect who fled a police traffic stop and was pursued by two
police vehicles. The man was driving on a suspended license but who knows what
else might have prompted him to flee. Perhaps a well-founded fear of what happened next.
With two cars hot in
pursuit, the man turned down a side street, left his car and began to flee on
foot. The officer in the car in which the video cam was installed pursued the
man, leaving the paved road, driving onto private property, crashing through a
fence and ultimately running down the fleeing suspect who had tripped and
fallen. The last scene before the vehicle smashes into the man is the face of a
black man full of the horror of his impending death.
The next thing one hears is
the sound of the car smashing into the man's body and coming to rest on top of
him. He ultimately died of suffocation in the mud of a vegetable garden. The
lawyer hired by the family who helped insure the release of the camcorder video
called the killing “an execution in a vegetable garden."
The officer has been fired
from his job on the Deland Police Department. But he will not be held
criminally liable for what is clearly a homicide. The Volusia County Grand Jury
saw to that by voting not to indict the officer. Yet another black man has
been killed and his killer has gotten away with murder. Literally.
Would the Designated Adult Please Identify Themselves
Now?
The second event occurred
much closer to home, on the UCF campus where I teach three days a week. On the
six o’clock news, this video of an encounter between university police and a
young woman, presumably a student, was broadcast:
The exchange between these
two actors is disturbing. As I watched, the phrase I continually find myself
saying these days came to mind: Would the
designated adult please identify themselves now.
Of course, that never
happened.
The young woman is clearly
argumentative and would try the patience of a saint. She is asked repeatedly to
roll the window down so that the citation for improper equipment can be handed
in for signing. She does roll the window down half-way which clearly provided
enough room for the officer to hand in the clipboard with the citation and for
her to hand back the signed citation.
But the officer continues to
demand she roll it all the way down and the young woman continues to ask why
that is necessary. He says it is for his safety but there is nothing to suggest
that his safety is in jeopardy with a half-rolled down window citation
exchange. My guess is that he wanted to look inside the car for any evidence of
drugs. The university cops are a bit obsessive about that.
The officer then loses
patience and begins to demand the woman get out of the car completely. When he
sticks his hands inside the window to open the door (clearly his safety was not
in too much jeopardy or he would not have done that) she makes the mistake of
rolling the window up and nearly pinching his fingers in the process. He begins
to shout that she either roll the window down or he would break it. When she
says she’s recording the event on her camera, he takes his baton and smashes
her window, opens her door, throws the woman to the pavement and arrests her.
The time counter on the
bottom of the video records that this entire incident took place in 3:41 time.
Neither Imprudence nor Impatience Create an Imperative
In all fairness, the
impudence of this uncooperative young woman was astounding. Her demeanor was extremely
trying at the very least. While she was within her rights to question the stop
(it is a common law right to resist an unlawful stop and without knowing why
she’d been stopped, she had no way of knowing why the stop had been made) she
is obligated by the motor vehicle code to sign citations when stopped by police
officers.
Moreover, as I have often
counseled my clients and my students, if you are stopped by a police officer,
if you insist upon giving up your right to silence, begin whatever you say with
Sir or Ma’am depending upon the gender identification of the officer. As a
friend said, she could have prevented the whole thing by being more
cooperative.
Prudence suggests that she
exercised poor judgment in this incident at the very least. But a failure in prudence is
not a crime. And neither impudence nor impatience justifies an abuse of
authority and the exercise of excessive force by a police officer, much less $250 worth of
damages to an automobile.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibilities
Society entrusts law
enforcement with the authority to detain people, to exercise force when
necessary and to carry weapons to assist them in their job duties in the last
resort. These are major entrustments. And with them come major
responsibilities. In this, the campus officer was a miserable failure.
There was nothing in this
situation that suggested that the officer’s life was in danger. Thus, the use
of force was not justified from the beginning. As noted above, this entire
incident occurred in just over three and a half minutes. What was the rush? The
young woman was clearly not going anywhere. A few minutes sitting in a car whose
engine was turned off absorbing the hot Florida sun would no doubt have soon prompted a desire to complete the ticket transaction and move on. Moreover, the
citation could easily have been executed through the half open window. Indeed,
it happens all the time. And questioning an officer about a detention is hardly
the stuff of resisting and opposing. It’s everyday life.
If the woman made any
mistake legally it was attempting to roll the window up on the officer’s
fingers. Not only was it rude but she could have injured the officer. But,
again, this came after the officer refused to execute the citation through the
space in the half-opened window when he had the opportunity to do so with
absolutely no danger to his person. His refusal to simply execute the citation
suggests he was not simply interested in a routine traffic stop. And his
demands that the woman roll the window all the way down to do so ultimately
served to escalate the confrontation.
Is it unfair to ask police
to deal with uncooperative motorists? Hardly. Is it unreasonable to insist that
they exercise patience in these exchanges? Hardly. The demand for instant
gratification may be tolerable in small children. But we expect more of adults,
particularly those we authorize to carry weapons in our names. That is especially
true of those adults who would deign to assume a parent/child role with their
fellow citizens.
A Troubling Context
These events arise in a a troubling context. They come in the wake of a seriously flawed trial in which the killer of unarmed black teenager Trayvon
Martin ultimately got away with murder. That was a gift from a nearly all-white jury
which refused to hold his killer responsible for the ultimate results of his
use of a gun allegedly in the name of Neighborhood Watch.
They come at the end of a week in which a new Miss America of Indian ancestry became the instant target of a slew of racist and xenophobic tweets within seconds of her crowning. Accused of everything from being a foreigner (she was born in New York, the state which sent her to the pageant) to being a terrorist, the vitriol which exploded throughout the Twitosphere revealed a mean-spirited racism which ought to make all Americans more than a little uncomfortable.
They come at the end of a week in which a new Miss America of Indian ancestry became the instant target of a slew of racist and xenophobic tweets within seconds of her crowning. Accused of everything from being a foreigner (she was born in New York, the state which sent her to the pageant) to being a terrorist, the vitriol which exploded throughout the Twitosphere revealed a mean-spirited racism which ought to make all Americans more than a little uncomfortable.
They also occur within two
years of a similar event on our campus involving a former colleague, J.L. Vest.
In her stop she was humiliated by this same campus police force on the major highway in front
of the university, detained for two hours while enduring racial epithets and
charges of being a drug addict and bodily searched twice as students and fellow
faculty passed by in their car. All of this was triggered by a supposed
“routine traffic stop” for a taillight and escalated when her half used heart
medicine in a medicine vial was found in her car. Little wonder people stopped
by this police force are reluctant to roll down their windows or get out of
their cars.
At the grievance hearing the
university was required to convene, the university denied any wrong doing and
said its officer had simply failed to exercise common courtesy. Dr. Vest has
since left the university, the state and academia entirely. It is our loss.
Finally, these events occur
in the context of a concerted effort in Republican led legislatures across the
country to disenfranchise working poor voters, many of them people of color.
Having recognized the bankruptcy of their policies, Republicans know they
cannot win elections by simply offering their ideas to the voters for approval.
So now they seek to stack the deck in the elections shutting the working poor
and people of color out of the process. The sadism of this strategy is
astounding: the working poor and people of color are targeted by policies and
practices serving the interests of the largely white middle and upper classes
and then prevented from participating in the elections in which their
grievances could be redressed.
¡Impunidad! - When Does Krakatoa Finally Erupt?
This pattern is hardly
unfamiliar to me. All across Latin America I have seen the word “Impunidad!”
(impunity) spray painted on walls and structures, a feeble protest against
atrocities committed by government agents during the day and paramilitaries
during the night, often involving the same persons. The genocidal atrocities in
places like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala are horrific. But the refusal
of the state to take any responsibility for those atrocities (often because the judges fear reprisals
themselves with good reason) leads to the spray painted outcries against
impunity – the commission of abuses against human beings by those who know they
will walk away with no consequences.
The pattern of atrocities
committed with impunity I observed in a Latin America in which the poor have
been routinely excluded from the governing and judicial processes was unjust
and intolerable. But I was a visitor in those countries with no right to pass
judgments while there. I do expect more from my own country where I am a
citizen. And I do expect the Constitution to actually be followed.
Two questions linger in my
mind as I consider all these events. The first is where the line will finally
be drawn by the working poor and people of color in our society who refuse to accept any more
injustice with impunity. I ride the city bus to work each day, partly to avoid
having to deal with university police, and I sense there is a low level of class and racial tension among its riders of color daily. When will the unforeseen straw
that breaks the camel’s back appear prompting an angry pushback against injustice with impunity across our
nation?
When does our Krakatoa finally erupt?
This status quo is not
sustainable. As Yeats would say, its center cannot hold. I fear the depth and
breadth of that eruption should the coercive force that currently holds it in
check waver even for a second. The tidal wave of blind rage pent up for so
many years and untold tears may be quite devastating.
Indeed, America may not be
able to recover from it.
In the meantime, another
question comes to mind as I remember why I was so angry for most of the five years
I worked in juvenile defense law first as public defender and later as private
attorney. When those sworn to protect us become liabilities to our safety and
well being, to whom can we turn for protection?
Who protects us from the protectors?
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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar
(inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Lecturer: Religion
and Cultural Studies, Humanities, Philosophy of Law
Osceola Regional Campus
University of Central
Florida, Orlando
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production
in sound bytes.
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