MANSFIELD: Symbolic Castration

A local TV station recently aired a 22-minute interview with Steve Loomis, the one-time president of Cleveland’s Police Patrolmen’s Association, the man who will soon resume leadership of that organization after a two-year absence due to losing an election to Jeff Follmer.  And it seems as if the hiatus has done Loomis a world of good … he’s seemingly a much more accomplished spinmeister this time around, something the rank and file cops must feel they need as the Department of Justice bears down on Cleveland’s Division of Police.

Let us not forget this is the same Steve Loomis that got into a drunken off-duty altercation at The Jake, and when a black female police sergeant attempted to intervene, he called her a “black bitch.” Yeah, that guy … the one who got suspended over the incident.

Evidently, this time around (if his rhetoric is to be believed) he’s reformed; he’s no longer a bomb thrower  … he’s a changed man. But it brings to mind of how, when the rabid racism of the pre-Civil Rights era was called out in the streets, and crushed in the courtroom by law, it didn’t really die, it simply morphed into a more clever — but just as sinister — iteration.

To hear Loomis tell it in the interview, cops are simply working their butts off out in the mean streets of Cleveland, trying to do the right thing, but getting no respect from the citizenry. Was that a halo forming over his head as he spoke?

Ask him about any incident of what is perceived as outrageous cop behavior and he has a very logical explanation for it … he even said as much, stating that he could — given the opportunity and 20 minutes — convince anyone that black is white, up is down, and wrong is right. In other words, he can always explain away anything a cop does, no matter how egregious the act of violence.

He then proceeded to do so by explaining away why the two cops involved in the killing of Tamir Rice were absolutely right to break every rule in the book and ignore proper procedure. In his version, they simply had to act in their outrageous manner in order to protect the lives of all of the little children in the recreation center where they believed this armed and dangerous maniac was headed. In his version of the events, the officers should be rewarded medals of commendation, but what are they getting instead? Scrutiny. The problem is, it wasn’t a maniac, it turned out to be a 12-year-old child with a toy gun.

Tom Beres, who usually doesn’t play softball, failed to ask Loomis about the Edward Henderson case, where four officers were caught on a police helicopter camera kicking the shit out of a mentally-ill black man as he lay handcuffed, face-down on the ground, back on Jan. 1, 2011. I’d like to see Loomis explain that case away, and then tell us why none of the cops have ever faced justice. Could it be that blue wall of silence that always protects police misconduct?

The problem in a nutshell is this: While the black community will readily agree there are some bad actors among us who bring harm down on themselves, we don’t condone or protect their behavior; but Loomis will never admit there are also some bad actors on the police force … he always protects every officer in every case.

According to Loomis (and every other apologist for police brutality) all anyone has to do is simply obey the orders given by cops and nothing bad will ever happen to them. Bullshit. And virtually every black American male knows that it’s bullshit. That’s why the current protests are so sustained.

It’s because virtually every black man in America has at least one — or in most cases — multiple, stories that we can tell about a negative encounter with a white cop; at least those of us who survived to tell the tale.

When Loomis says black males should simply obey any command of a white cop, what he really is saying is, “you’d better always allow us rape you, castrate you … take away your manhood right here on the curb … or we’ll blow your ass away.”

This symbolic castration of black males goes back 400+ years in this country, but Loomis would have us ignore this ugly history that creates this sense of entitlement in the minds of white cops, who feel they have the right to do anything they want to a black man. And, so far, they are proving to be right; they routinely get away with murder.

That’s why this struggle for change has to continue, and voices like Loomis’ laughed at … or totally ignored, especially when they’re talking about how to get away with legalized murder.

[Photo: Jason Perlman (Flickr)]

 

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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