Recently deceased playwright/poet/activist Amiri Baraka, when asked to compose a Haiku verse, wrote:
“I can pray all day
and God never comes,
I dial 911, and
the Devil’s here in a minute.”
At a recent meeting held at a church in the black community, concerning the untimely and completely unnecessary death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, one of the ministers put forth his version of a solution: Allow prayers to once again be recited in public schools.
No, I’m not kidding, this is what the man, whom I have to believe is well-meaning, proposed in terms of combating the killing of young black males by white cops. Pray.
The problem is, since cops have already graduated, what good would bringing back prayer in schools do in terms of changing their behavior? Of course the good pastor could have meant that young black males should be praying in school … perhaps praying that some cop doesn’t bust a cap in one of their black asses while they are walking to and from the classroom.
Indeed, if prayer were the answer to black folk’s problems, all of the trials and tribulations faced by our race would have been solved long ago: Every study done on religious practices in America shows conclusively that blacks — as a demographic — are, hands down the most prayerful, churchgoing folks in the country. Yet we still are often demonized, made out to be fearful monsters in this supposedly Christian nation … where our young men are slaughtered wholesale. What kind of Christianity is that?
And it seems that the only praying these killers with badges are engaging in … is to pray they don’t miss.
But don’t get me wrong, my intention is not to denigrate the power of prayer … but we do need to know what to pray for, and whom to pray to. If we want to change the culture of policing in this country (which is the only way to bring about a cessation of young black males being murdered by trigger-happy cops), we need to pray that a conservative is not elected president in 2016.
Reason being, if a Republican wins the White House he or she is likely to do what George W. Bush did almost immediately after he took office in 2001: He ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to suspend probes of police departments around the country, one of which was underway in Cleveland. If Bush had not made such a move, there’s a good chance Tamir Rice would still be alive today, because the cowboy culture of our department would have been changed by now via a consent decree, the hammer by which the DOJ forces recalcitrant police departments to mend their ways.
In no instance has a police department anywhere in America been cleaned up absent pressure from the DOJ. No mayor, City Council, or group of concerned citizens has ever brought about real, systemic change in terms of how their city is policed; that would be akin to someone performing surgery on their own body, it quite simply couldn’t be done.
Nonetheless, there are some people here in Cleveland — people who should know better — that are electing to use this tragedy as an opportunity to take cheap political shots at Mayor Frank Jackson and his Chief of Police Calvin Williams, as if they are somehow responsible for, or negligent in, the death of Tamir Rice.
No, not true. It was a cop that shot the child, a cop that’s going to be protected by his police union and, if the case goes that far, by an arbitrator that will rule in his favor … it’s a foregone conclusion. As has been proven time and time again, arbitrators in police cases only exist to give a patina of fairness and justice to outrageous and oftentimes illegal behaviors by cops. They are a large part of the enabling problem.
The video in the Tamir Rice case clearly demonstrates that well-established police procedures were not followed, and the deviation resulted in an innocent child being killed. And the reason procedures were not followed is abundantly clear: Procedures are tossed aside with impunity by cops in an out-of-control department like Cleveland’s.
Cops decide which rules they want to obey, and backed up by their union, they know they can get away with whatever they want. Just check the record.
But, according to a member of the clergy, maybe that will change, maybe Cleveland cops will begin to follow the rules if we just “pray on it” hard enough. Excuse me, but somehow I think not.
What we need to do is to direct our prayers where they will do some good … towards Washington, DC, where the DOJ just might answer them.
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.