MANSFIELD: Shoot, Don’t Shoot?

Gun

Leave it to WOIO, Channel 19, to not simply cross the line between reporting the news and vaulting completely over it in a thinly veiled attempt to influence the outcome of a probable criminal case. Their scurrilous effort is a legalized form of jury tampering.

By airing a series entitled “Shoot, Don’t Shoot” the station’s Scott Taylor uses staged, junk demonstrations featuring four citizens that have had one whole hour of “police training” and then put in a situation where they are confronted by a potentially dangerous suspect. They have to decide in a “split second” if they are going to pull the trigger on the paintball gun they’ve been armed with. The “simulation” is supposed to approximate the real-life situations and decisions cops are confronted with all the time.

But the real purpose of the “simulations” is to sway potential jurors in cases like the one that might be upcoming regarding the death of Tamir Rice — that is, if Timothy Loehmann, the cop that killed him, is ever indicted. This bogus dog-and-pony show is designed to convince the average citizen that they too would have fired if they were placed in a similar situation.

But the fact is, each situation when a cop confronts an individual and has to fire his weapon is unique and different — no two are exactly alike. Therefore any attempt to recreate an archetypical encounter is inherently flawed; it simply can’t be done, at least not in any accurate and meaningful manner.

The effort is little more than staged theater, designed to attract eyeballs and influence outcomes. The average Joe Blow, sitting in front of his TV watching this series, will nod like a horse eating oats, while saying, “Yeah, I would have shot his ass too.”

The first sign that things were not on the up and up, the first clue I had that the staged scenarios were designed to have a specific outcome, was when I saw that radio personality Bob Frantz was one of the citizens selected to take part in the “simulations.” Now. I’ve never listened to his radio show, but by all accounts he’s far to the right of Attila the Hun, especially on matters racial.

Frantz gives voice to that “angry white male” who fears he is losing “his” country (he knows it’s his because he stole it fair and square from Native Americans). But America is not solely or exclusively the domain of white males, it’s our country too — the blacks, browns, Asians, Native Americans and gays they would deny the rights of full citizenship and protection of the laws of the land if they could.

What else would someone who represents this constituency do but bust a cap in someone’s ass the moment he got the opportunity?

Commentator Taylor intones that “regular citizens step into cop’s shoes” but then shows one of those citizens (a member of Akron’s city council) wearing high heels during the simulation; so much for an accurate recreation. But I have to admit the shoes were kick-ass. Hey, got to look good on TV, right?

Now certainly, cops all across the country are occasionally placed in situations where using deadly force is their only option. And no sane person is arguing in regards to those killings. Police officers have the right to go home safely at the end of their shifts.

But it’s the plethora of killings involving unarmed persons — who turn out to have been far less dangerous than cops later say they were once they’ve had a chance to get their lies together — that is of concern to all thinking Americans.

And the record is very clear that too many people die (and are otherwise brutalized) at the hands of police under suspicious circumstances in this country. But any thinking person had to realize the pushback from the right was coming; there would be those who attempt to explain away every incident, every death at the hands of authorities, simply because that’s what been going on in America for centuries.

But to quote Frederick Douglass, “Power cedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will.”

The genie is out of the bottle on police brutality. Cops are already learning they have to be more circumspect in their behavior because they are going to be held more accountable. Will this change occur overnight? Of course not. But signs of impending change are everywhere.

But of course for every action there is a reaction, and Channel 19’s staged attempt to exculpate cops even before they have to stand trial was highly predictable. Every step of progress in America is always met with attempts to maintain the status quo; to maintain white hegemony in a “pigmentocracy” that we fool ourselves into believing is a “democracy.”

However, as Sam Cooke once sang, “It’s been a long time coming, but a change is gonna come.”

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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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