For police reform to work, here in Cleveland and across America, we have to enter into a new era of transparency. While it’s completely understandable — and acceptable — that complicated investigations (especially in cases where a life was lost) can take time, there’s a growing suspicion that all too often law enforcement authorities are indeed hiding something from the public, or at the very least being manipulative.
An old criminal adage is to “put time between you and the crime,” which means to use every tactic in the book to delay adjudication and possible punishment — especially when the guilt of the person being charged is a foregone conclusion. In heinous crimes defense lawyers stall as long as possible to allow public outrage die down, and in some cases they are hoping that perhaps a key witness might die, or have a change of heart regarding their testimony.
As the Tamir Rice investigation drags on, some are beginning to wonder what’s taking so long? After all, there is a clear videotape of what transpired and ballistics evidence is in — as if there was ever any doubt regarding the weapon used in the killing and whom it belonged to. The Kennedy assassination investigation didn’t take this long. At the very least the public should be entitled to some kind of an update from investigators in high profile cases.
All of the above calls into question law enforcement tactics, such as in the recent case of Theodore J. Johnson, who opened fire on police officers and was killed by return fire. The incident was captured on police body cameras but the city’s law department is calling it an ongoing criminal investigation, and therefore exempt from public records requests.
The question then arises, what are they attempting to hide?
Since this is the first instance where body cameras (from more than one officer) captured a police shooting on video, it’s critical to establish just what the rules are going to be. Will every instance be an “ongoing criminal investigation” and therefore hidden from public scrutiny until law enforcement — in conjunction with politicians — can put the best “spin” on the incident?
In this case there seems to be very little to investigate: A an armed convicted felon was menacing his domestic partner and landlord with a gun, she went to the police station to complain, cops responded to the home, confronted Johnson who opened fire, and was killed. Really not all that complicated, but the “experts” will tell a gullible public otherwise.
But what could complicate matters is how police responded. Why did the cops rush into a house where they knew a man was armed? Why wasn’t it treated as a standoff situation and the SWAT team called in to attempt to negotiate a peaceful end, rather than escalate the level of confrontation so that death was almost an inescapable outcome?
Fortunately body armor prevented any of the cops from being injured, but why did they seemingly put themselves in harm’s way to begin with? Isn’t there polices and procedures for situations like the foregoing … protocols that decrease the chance of gunfire, rather than increase it?
Maybe that’s what the body cameras captured: Cops playing cowboys. A bunch of off-the-chain Rambos rushing headlong into danger, just for the thrill of it … just because it gives them a hard-on.
Of course the body cameras could show something entirely different. But until someone other than law enforcement views the videos, we’ll never know, will we? And if this sounds like distrust of the police by the public, then so be it … the public didn’t create the distrust, cops did that all on their own.
[Photo: KOMUnews]
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.