Some things happen so coincidentally it almost appears as if there’s a hidden, all-knowing, all-powerful, hand at play in the universe, guiding incidents and shaping events. It goes by many names among the peoples of the Earth: Karma, Fate and Juju among them.
However, rarely have I seen it — whatever it is — manifested so profoundly and repeatedly in such a relatively short period of time — not like with these three incidents that almost piled on top of each other.
First, a national “Black Lives Matter” conference was just finishing up at Cleveland State when an incident occurred that perfectly punctuated the reason the conference was being held in the first place. As attendees of the conference spilled out of the building where the conference was being held onto Euclid Avenue, a police incident was taking place right in front of them.
An RTA cop — a member of a force that’s not known to be at all warm and fuzzy — was in the process of taking a juvenile off of a bus for public intoxication, and the rumor (unsubstantiated as far as I can discern) quickly spread that the youth’s head had been slammed into the pavement by the cop. Quite naturally, the fast-growing crowd got upset.
As the cops attempted to transport the youth from the site in a emergency medical vehicle the crowd allegedly blocked the driver’s path, which caused another more senior, officer to use pepper spray to force the crowd to disperse.
As with many similar spontaneous incidents, specifically who was at fault becomes cloudy; but it does highlight the need for strong leadership among the Black Lives Matter movement. If they are to be as effective as they hope to be, they need to take a page from the playbook developed mainly by Bayard Rustin for the Civil Rights marchers of the 60s. Discipline is what carries the day, not unfocused outrage.
Nonetheless, attendees of the conference will have something to tell their grandkids: About the time they convened in Cleveland and got pepper sprayed.
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The second incident has yet to fully play out, but trust me, it will. Not long after Donald Trump surged to the head of the Republican field by making incendiary remarks about Mexicans coming across our southern border (calling then drug dealers, rapists and murderers), a tragic series of incidents occurred in Lake County, seemingly just in time for the Republican debate to be held in Cleveland next week.
An undocumented Mexican national killed one woman, attempted to rape a 14-year-old girl, and then wounded another woman who was walking in a park with her two 12-year-old kids. Of course Trump is going to make a ton of political hay out of the tragedy.
While he — and the others in the large field of wannabes — will most likely attempt to blame Democrats for being soft on immigration, it’s actually the party they all want to lead that is at fault for blocking commonsense legislation that would limit the number of potential criminals coming into our country, while at the same time making legal immigration more fair.
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The third incident (or series of staged events) has to do with the bullshit series entitled “Shoot or Don’t Shoot” being aired by WOIO, Channel 19, in a scurrilous attempt to sway public opinion. The station set up scenarios with the aid of a suburban police force that was suppose to be a “simulation” of the life or death situations cops are faced with on the streets.
But just as the series (which was clearly designed to exculpate questionable police conduct) got underway, Ray Tensing, a cop at a university in Cincinnati shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man after a routine traffic stop. The incident was so egregious that the Hamilton County prosecutor, the far-to-the-right Joe Deters, said the killing so outraged him that he will personally prosecute the cop who pulled the trigger for seemingly no reason. Even “Super Cop” retired Cleveland officer Jim Simone went on record publicly stating that he felt the killing was totally unjustified.
Of course the folks at WOIO will never acknowledge the egg all reporter Scott Taylor’s face, but the timing of the release of the video of the tragic killing could not have been better, in terms of exposing the dog-and-pony show the station was staging.
Maybe DuBose didn’t die at the hands of trigger-happy cop in vain after all.
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.