Remember Cartman from South Park, the overbearing little dude that liked to dress up as a cop, ride around on his tricycle and pull people over? Once he got someone to stop he’d whack them on the shins with his billyclub, demanding that the adult “Respect My Authority!”
South Park (as most good humor is) was prescient; way ahead of its time in having an accurate take on many aspects of American culture. And it certainly shined a glaring (albeit humorous) spotlight on overly aggressive cops. Cartman was an archetype, a cartoon depiction of the types of bullies in blue that we far too often allow to possess a badge, gun, and the legal ability to roam the streets of our country … sometimes murdering at will.
But perhaps a defining incident — that will eventually cause a shift in public perception of police brutality and therefore change policing in this country — just played out in North Charleston, SC, where a white cop, Michael T. Slager, 33, shot Walter L. Scott, 50, a black Coast Guard veteran and father of four, in the back eight times as the victim was running away. Slager had initially stopped Scott for a broken taillight, and he was executed because he didn’t obey the cop’s order to stop; in other words, Scott failed to “respect a cop’s authority.”
However, in an unprecedented move by police officials, Slager was immediately arrested on a murder charge after a video of the shooting surfaced showing the cop placing his Taser near Scott’s body so that he could claim self-defense.
A bystander filmed the entire gruesome incident from almost the beginning to end, and all North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey could say during a news conference was that Slager “had made a bad decision.”
“Bad decision?” Is this joker really serious? A “bad decision” is buying a house next to a sewage disposal facility thinking that the prevailing winds will always be blowing the smell away from — instead of towards — you; a “bad decision” is going with the $14.95 meat loaf at a local hash house when for a dollar more you could have had the sirloin steak. Those are “bad decisions” … five bullets (out of eight shots) into the back of a man who was running away … that’s not a “bad decision” … that’s murder.
Of course police apologists will quickly rise to the defense of Slager: “He was in fear for his life” — from a man who was running away? Yeah. Right.
The only way unnecessary killings by police will cease is for officials who run the criminal justice system to let cops know when they make a “bad decision” that harms someone who was posing no threat to them they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Until that happens more citizens, particularly those of color, will die at the hands of cops, some of whom then go out a get a tattoo to mark the shooting or killing.
There’s a nascent movement gaining steam to recruit more females to serve on police departments. Their increased estrogen levels is one very good reason this idea makes sense. Of course the “good ‘ol boys in blue” are just as opposed to serving with women as some of them are in regards to serving with blacks.
But this totally outrageous killing in South Carolina just might give us the opportunity to make real changes in term of policing in America — and we need to seize upon it.
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.