The predictability of the execution of two uniformed members of the New York Police Department in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday afternoon (allegedly in retaliation for the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice) doesn’t make the crime any less heinous or more acceptable. We can only pray the country isn’t headed down the dangerous and unproductive path of a cycle of repression by police and retribution by militants that was so familiar to those of us who lived through the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Make no mistake, this was a cowardly act carried out against two officers — Patrolmen Weijan Liu and Rafel Ramos, both of who were in fact minorities — by a madman who had previously shot and wounded his girlfriend in Baltimore earlier in the day. His motive wasn’t justice seeking … he was acting on sick directions from his own twisted and tortured mind.
Indeed, he in no way helped the cause of justice; instead, he disrespected the memories of all of the young black men who’ve died too young at the hands of white police officers by claiming to do his foul deed in their names. These two officers didn’t deserve to die no more than Eric Garner did.
His violence was indiscriminate, and the problem with indiscriminate violence is just that: It’s indiscriminate.
Targeting police officers for revenge — as payback for grievances real or imagined — is wrong on so many levels, and ultimately solves nothing. If the goal of such violence is to act as deterrence … an attempt to prevent future deaths of young black males at the hands of white cops … it quite simply will not and cannot work. Racist and rouge cops will only answer such street violence (disguised as street justice) with ever-increasing levels of officially sanctioned violence. It’s a battle in which no one wins, but citizen/protestors will be the biggest losers.
The legitimate anger over so many young black males dying too soon and too frequently has to be channeled into devising effective accountability mechanisms that once and for all reign in trigger-happy cops and ultimately change how America is policed. And that’s a huge task since it will mean — if it’s to be accomplished — that our entire criminal justice system has to be overhauled.
When a cop rushes to pull the trigger, strangle a citizen, or in any other way act out with deadly inappropriateness, he’s only the blunt instrument of a flawed and rotting system of justice … a system of arcane and outmoded laws, overly friendly prosecutors, self-serving politicians, weak-kneed judges, bought and sold arbitrators, and compliant grand juries … that, taken together, serve as enablers — that tell brutal young white cowboys with badges and guns that, no matter what you do, no matter how outrageous your actions — we got your back.
The fear of course is that others, so twisted by racism and hatred, so beaten down they can’t envision a way to rise up without violence, will be encouraged to commit similar heinous acts against other cops. We simply cannot allow a movement for justice to be hijacked by madmen … if we do we’ll most certainly lose because the public sentiment — the current momentum — that has been moving in the direction of positive change will turn back a negative direction. A backlash.
Everyone who has been lobbying for change for the last few months has to rise up in one voice and condemn the dastardly killing of two public servants … if for no other reason than without police officers no one in the country would be safe in their person or property, and anarchy would rule the land.
Every society, if it’s to function, must have police officers; when they’re in the wrong they must be subjected to fair justice, and if found guilty punished … but under no circumstances can killing a cop be condoned. Never.
[Photo: Sarah Valek]
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.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: We Have to Speak Out Loudly for Life”
Cicero
With Race Baiter Obama egging on Race Baiter Sharpton to “press on,” and with criminals marching through the streets of New York screaming, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now,” while Bolshevik Bill DeBlasio permits them to block the public thoroughfares, just what the hell do you expect?
And why do you keep using Michael Brown as an example? He was a criminal who tried to grab a cop’s gun and a short time thereafter charged the cop car in an obvious attempt to commit mayhem or worse. So said seven African American witnesses. The cop was totally justified to shoot him. This deranged felon had nothing to do with race.
Does support of civil rights mean we all have to support robbers and allow police officers like Darren Wilson to be killed? You seem to think so.