Issues surrounding police brutality have certainly captured the Zeitgeist, at least for the nonce in Cleveland, and proposed changes in regards to how our police department operates are being floated by a number of well meaning civil rights, legal and faith-based organizations. We certainly don’t lack for suggestions as to how to improve relations between the citizenry and the police, but coming up with ideas for improvement to that relationship is the easier part of the task at hand.
Implementation of the suggestions is the crucial aspect, and the only way to insure that whatever changes are forced upon the recalcitrant department are embraced by rank and file officers and eventually inculcated into the fabric of Cleveland policing is for the public to keep its collective eye on the ball … and to keep the heat on City Hall and the Department of Justice.
Maintaining the high level of interest in civic/police matters that we’re currently experiencing will not be an easy task, given that ours is not an activist community akin to, say, Oakland, where the requisite revolutionary spirit to get the jackboot of police oppression off the neck of the collective black community was first made manifest in America — in the form of the Black Panther Party — and is still very much alive and well today.
Whereas community meetings in Oakland are dominated by highly educated, exceptionally disciplined and level-headed representatives of collective black thought, our meetings here in Cleveland are all too often hijacked by people with personal axes to grind such as one cluck who predictably laments the fact over and over again that “they took away our elected school board!” or another who, after losing her home for failure to pay her mortgage, screams about how “the banks steal people’s houses!”
And then there is always one or two who fault our collective failure of not following the teachings of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the root cause of all of our problems with the police. In other words, we should just “pray” over it. Yeah, right.
Such nonsense would not be tolerated in Oakland. Out there such assorted misfits might be able to get their silliness off in one meeting, but they would damn sure be roundly shouted down and probably ejected if they attempted to interject their foolish in a second.
Nor would activists in Oakland sit still and listen to the likes of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Steve Loomis, who is currently going around to black churches with a dog and pony show. He shows anyone who’ll look and listen two guns that appear very similar — one real, and the other a fake. Then he questions how could the cop who gunned down Tamir Rice have known the difference since the guns are identical? But what no one mentions is that the toy Tamir has on his person was down in his waistband when he was killed. So, if Tim Loehmann never saw the toy gun before he opened fire, how could he have known if the gun was real or not? Duh.
Now Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed — with all good intentions — is hosting an event at an Eastside church where Loomis is invited to explain away police misconduct, and while some in attendance might get their jollies by screaming at this bald-faced liar, no one will ask pertinent questions … such as why he’s never condemned abhorrent police conduct, even when there is clear-cut and overwhelming evidence?
Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, was in town recently and spoke at the Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library, and a substantial part of her message was that ordinary, everyday citizens have to get involved and stay involved, and she admitted that prior to her son’s death she wasn’t involved enough.
Registering to vote — the only way one can serve on a jury — is something she’s big on, and if you compare the number of registered voters in Cleveland’s black community to that of Oakland’s, the difference would be startling. We get the kind of governance we deserve.
That’s why I really don’t have much sympathy for the black folks in Ferguson, MO. They comprise 70-plus percent of the eligible voters, but since they didn’t exercise their franchise as virtually all of the elected officials were white. How did that happen? Sloth. Black sloth. Had the citizenry in Ferguson taken their civic responsibilities more seriously Michael Brown might still be alive today. Can I get an “Amen!”
My fear is Clevelanders will be rocked back to sleep before people like Angela Woodson can organize and train the young protestors she’s been advising into an effective and potent political force that can take the reins of leadership from the ossified old guard and make sustained demands for change. There has to be some method whereby we remain vigilant and continue our press for change, and, as brutal as it might sound, one of the surest ways for that to happen is if cops foolishly continue with their brutal tactics.
Right now the cops are on better behavior, but the bad ones are only waiting until this call for police responsibility blows over and they can go right back to business as usual. They’re betting that before too long the public will have shot its collective wad, and resume watching their favorite game show. And they may be right — unless.
Unless more incidents of police brutality occur; until more bodies of blacks and poor whites are stacked up in the morgue awaiting grieving mothers; until more handcuffed suspects are viciously and brutally beaten; until more mentally ill individuals are treated like criminals instead of people deserving help and respect.
If cops continue their outrageous conduct that will only keep our attention focused on the problem … which will only keep the once sleeping giant of public opprobrium awake, and from going back to sleep.
Lynching didn’t stop in America until the body count got too high, until too many blacks had died and ignoring the problem was no longer an option. In Cleveland too many have already died and too many more brutalized for us to ever again ignore the problem or lose our focus … we have to insure they did not die or suffer in vain. Let’s hope the bad cops don’t continue to act out, but when they do brutalize they only create more martyrs for the cause, causing us to redouble our efforts to insure that real and lasting change occurs and is woven into the fabric of Cleveland life.
We have to create a society where the shooting another Tamir Rice is no more acceptable today than the lynching of another Emmett Till was over 60 years ago.
[Photo: Denis Bocquet]
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: A Call for Continued Vigilance”
Hank Wait
Good luck motivating black people Mansfield. It’s not just black people who are not involved. it’s the entire nation asleep at the wheel. We shouldn’t be living in a oligarchical plutocracy but we are because no one is paying close enough attention and even if they are they aren’t motivated to get off their butts and act. Forgive my pessimism but it gets reinforced all to often.