Driving home from Marquette MI, a 130 miler, in barely any traffic, my mind was wandering when I noticed too late a state patrol car on the other side of the highway. Oh, dear I thought, and immediately slowed down. In the rearview mirror I watched as the twirling red bubble-light atop the blue patrol car turned around to follow me. My heart sank. I stopped the car and rolled down the window.
Reprinted from the May 2015 Post Script of Church & Life.
“How are you?” the patrolman asked. “I’m fine,” I managed, “I apologize. I didn’t realize how fast I was going.” The patrol man was young and extremely polite. “Where are you headed?” I told him my friend and I were headed back to Ontonagon. Then I got the bad news. “Were you day-dreaming? You were going 73 miles an hour.” I knew I was speeding but thought I was in the 60s. For a moment I wondered if saying yes to a day-dreaming charge would be helpful, and decided probably not. I also nixed the idea of putting on a “Pitiful Pearl” act because I couldn’t do it well. Fortunately, my driver’s license, insurance papers and registration were all in good order. As I handed them over I thought about asking, isn’t it legal to drive over 55 to the same speech as one’s age? —but that just might expose the fact that our speedometer registers 2 mph short. I apologized again and hoped he would let me off with a warning; that was not the case. He went back to his car and wrote out a ticket. Deep down, I had a sense of what this was all about—I need to slow down!
My encounter with a mild-mannered police officer has me thinking about several current police events—the murder of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, and the large number of police brutalities suffered in black communities around the country. When I think about the emotional pit in my stomach when I see a patrol car follow me, I can’t help but wonder what a young black man feels like when he sees a policeman or several of them coming toward him. Terror! Absolute terror! If they feel panic, believe their lives are in danger—they may be correct!
In almost every recent brutal situation, the apparent crimes preceding the events have been incredibly minor. Police initially responded to: a young man stealing Swisher cigars, a man selling individual cigarettes on the street, a man not having a particular sticker on the back of a car, a 12- year- old playing with an air gun—problems which do not warrant killings! In such cases there is likelihood the police who did such shootings will not be charged, and if charged, will be exonerated. Can this be justice?
I have a very good friend who is a retired policewoman, and is now a Lutheran lay minister. When I asked her about police brutality, she said, “There is a lot of difference between response and initiation. When a law officer is acting in response, he/she has to act extremely quickly. The officer’s life is at stake, and there is a chance for error. But when it is a matter of initiation, it is quite different.” A law officer when initiating must be able to act responsibly, drawing on both training and experience. There is no excuse for what happened to Freddy Grey. At least in Freddie’s case, the prosecutors have charged the officer with murder and the medical examiner has ruled homicide.
The only way police brutality will stop is if law officers are held responsible for their actions. Brutality on police forces can no longer be tolerated. This is not being soft on crime or criminals. Letting policemen get away with inhumane treatment or murder is being soft on crime. Videos are a necessary help in many cases when all we would know otherwise is the officer’s story. In addition to equipment, officers need better training. There must be improved screening for bullying and racism when hiring people and finally, we need to get rid of the “bad apples.”
There are some very hard lessons to learn from the brutal events that have unfolded the last six months across the nation. Many of us learned that police have legal rights to shoot unarmed people, if they can make a case that their lives were in danger, something often difficult to disprove. The officers in Ferguson, MO and in New York City were found to act within their legal limits. In Ferguson, Michael Brown was shot at least 6 times. The policeman claimed the young man was coming at him and shot Michael repeatedly. The friend with him said, “It may have been legal, but it was wrong. He didn’t need to kill him.” In New York, the policeman who ignored Eric Garner’s protests that he couldn’t breathe was also not indicted; Eric died from the police chokehold many of us watched on video.
Increasingly we are witnessing acts which go too far “legally,” whether police killings of several young black men, or wealthy corporations not paying taxes. It may be legal, but does that make it right? How did so many wrongful practices become legal?
My traffic violation also helped me think about the constant struggle between individually perceived “rights” and the common good. I should not have been driving that fast, but the roads were clear. Didn’t I have a right to speed on a clear rural highway? But there is the common good to think about. We need speed limits and we need police to enforce them. I can envision the policeman as an angel with this message: it is time to slow down. As I continued my drive at 60 mph home, it actually felt okay. Maybe I should send the patrol officer a thank you note.
ji
My encounter with a mild-mannered police officer has me thinking about several current police events—the murder of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, and the large number of police brutalities suffered in black communities around the country. When I think about the emotional pit in my stomach when I see a patrol car follow me, I can’t help but wonder what a young black man feels like when he sees a policeman or several of them coming toward him. Terror! Absolute terror! If they feel panic, believe their lives are in danger—they may be correct!
In almost every recent brutal situation, the apparent crimes preceding the events have been incredibly minor. Police initially responded to: a young man stealing Swisher cigars, a man selling individual cigarettes on the street, a man not having a particular sticker on the back of a car, a 12- year- old playing with an air gun—problems which do not warrant killings! In such cases there is likelihood the police who did such shootings will not be charged, and if charged, will be exonerated. Can this be justice?
I have a very good friend who is a retired policewoman, and is now a Lutheran lay minister. When I asked her about police brutality, she said, “There is a lot of difference between response and initiation. When a law officer is acting in response, he/she has to act extremely quickly. The officer’s life is at stake, and there is a chance for error. But when it is a matter of initiation, it is quite different.” A law officer when initiating must be able to act responsibly, drawing on both training and experience. There is no excuse for what happened to Freddy Grey. At least in Freddie’s case, the prosecutors have charged the officer with murder and the medical examiner has ruled homicide.
The only way police brutality will stop is if law officers are held responsible for their actions. Brutality on police forces can no longer be tolerated. This is not being soft on crime or criminals. Letting policemen get away with inhumane treatment or murder is being soft on crime. Videos are a necessary help in many cases when all we would know otherwise is the officer’s story. In addition to equipment, officers need better training. There must be improved screening for bullying and racism when hiring people and finally, we need to get rid of the “bad apples.”
There are some very hard lessons to learn from the brutal events that have unfolded the last six months across the nation. Many of us learned that police have legal rights to shoot unarmed people, if they can make a case that their lives were in danger, something often difficult to disprove. The officers in Ferguson, MO and in New York City were found to act within their legal limits. In Ferguson, Michael Brown was shot at least 6 times. The policeman claimed the young man was coming at him and shot Michael repeatedly. The friend with him said, “It may have been legal, but it was wrong. He didn’t need to kill him.” In New York, the policeman who ignored Eric Garner’s protests that he couldn’t breathe was also not indicted; Eric died from the police chokehold many of us watched on video.
Increasingly we are witnessing acts which go too far “legally,” whether police killings of several young black men, or wealthy corporations not paying taxes. It may be legal, but does that make it right? How did so many wrongful practices become legal?
My traffic violation also helped me think about the constant struggle between individually perceived “rights” and the common good. I should not have been driving that fast, but the roads were clear. Didn’t I have a right to speed on a clear rural highway? But there is the common good to think about. We need speed limits and we need police to enforce them. I can envision the policeman as an angel with this message: it is time to slow down. As I continued my drive at 60 mph home, it actually felt okay. Maybe I should send the patrol officer a thank you note.
ji
RSS Feed