Garfield Heights Police Chief Robert Byrne is doing the right thing by retiring after he made the bonehead mistake of standing up for the cops who engaged in wrongdoing behavior as they arrested Kenta Settles, 28, a black man who has been diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia disorders. On January 23m while he walked on the sidewalk near the CVS pharmacy where he was scheduled to pick up his prescriptions, he was stopped by the local cops, who disrespected him from the beginning of the encounter.
After administering a vicious beating (during which one of the cops repeatedly said to Mr. Settles “quit resisting!” as he pummeled the defenseless man as he lay on the ground not resisting) the police charged Mr. Settles with attacking them, and he sat in jail for over five months after the incident on trumped-up charges. It wasn’t until his family hired attorney Jeremy Tor that the truth began to come out.
In a prepared statement Chief Byrne said, “I don’t mind saying that the events of the past week have played into my decision, however I have been considering retirement before this. Let me be very clear in saying that I stand by my decision to support the officers involved in this incident.” He went on to say, “It’s evident that changes need to be made in police departments across the country, including Garfield Heights, but I do not believe I am the best person to instill this change.”
There you have it, something we knew all along: some senior members of law enforcement are not going to be amenable to any changes.
Byrne is in the vanguard of his profession and his resigning is going to prove to be remarkably similar to many other police chiefs around the country that will make the decision to step down rather than attempt to reform their departments and purge it of rogue cops, which everyone knows by now is all but impossible. A lot of similarly situated top cops are going to have to fall of their swords — if they persist in stupidly trying to defend the indefensible.
At least Chief Bryne is being honest on his way out the door: He acknowledges that he can’t control the men and women that serve under his command, so any reform is beyond his ability (or desire) to initiate or inculcate, and he knows the handwriting is on the wall. Change is coming to police departments across the country and those which continue to resist (and there will be many of them) are eventually going to have to get steamrollered by the citizenry.
Can some of the law enforcement professionals that head police departments turn them around and make them work for the people rather than against them? Sure, anything is possible. But some current cops are presently thinking “… if I can’t kick some ass and bust some heads every few weeks and get away with it, then what use is the badge and gun?”
The goal should be the retraining of current cops that are bright enough to see the handwriting on the wall, and the replacing of those cops that are too dense or recalcitrant to heed the new marching orders: Black Lives Matter really do matter.
