Criminal Cops Caught On Camera:
A New Paradox in America’s Violent History
There is an often repeated truth in the media each time there is a riot in America’s inner city and among people of color:
“VIOLENCE HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING.
Like millions of Americans, I was transfixed by recent televised images of chaos on the streets of Baltimore. But none of it was new.
Watching events unfold in Baltimore during the past few days, I was taken back to 1992 in Southern California. In my early 30's then, I was outside of a courtroom in Simi Valley working for the San Jose Mercury News. At that time, I had been a working photojournalists for 7 years. Along with covering unexpected events that are sometimes dangerous, photojournalists also get accustomed to waiting around for things to happen. I begged my supervisor at the time Director of Photography Brian Moss to let me go there to cover the verdict and since I could stay with my future mother-in-law in Thousand Oaks, they sent me down there, convinced that the trip was fools errand, the police were sure to be found guilty. So there, at the Simi Valley courthouse in late April ‘92, as I waited with other journalists, I listened to the four policemen stood in the courtroom to hear the jury’s decision. Each faced charges of assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. Everyone was found not guilty of assault, and one officer faced a hung jury unable to render a decision. I listened in horror, each word was like a knife had been plunged repeatedly into my back.
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We all realized at that moment that even with modern technology proving a policeman’s guilt, they would not be held responsible for their actions. It was unwritten and yet implied that the policeman was slightly above the same laws that they enforced.
Twenty three years later we are in a moment when everyone carries a phone in their pocket, a handy device capable of both making still pictures or high quality video. Because of that technological leap and in concert with a robust Internet, the thick veil of lies woven from colonial times has been snatched away. In episode after episode in recent months, law enforcement has been left naked for all to see. Still, despite all the video evidence that can now be captured and shared at the blink of an eye, we still cannot be confident that police officers caught in the act terrorizing citizens who have comitted no crime will receive proper legal justice. In just the last 12 months, we’ve seen grossly abusive police officers terrorizing black men and youth in New York, Cleveland, South Carolina, and Ohio. So far, none of those officers have been held legally accountable for killing citizens who had not committed a crime.
And there is one case in particular that I think crystallizes this frustrating paradox, the ubiquity of images and sounds of cops abusing suspects yet also escaping accountability.
CAUGHT ON TAPE: FLORIDA COP SHOOTS GUY FOR NO REASON
In September 2013, raw dashcam video from Palm Beach Florida shows Dontrell Stephens, a 20 year old black kid riding his bike being pulled over and then being shot in the back by Adams Lin, a policeman who was put on paid leave and later exonerated. Lin said he opened fire because he thought Stephens was reaching in his back for a gun.
One problem.
There was no gun.
The entire incident was found to be justifiable and the police was not penalized in any way nor was compensation waiting for Mr. Stephens who had nothing on him but a cell phone.
Today Mr. Stephens is in a wheelchair. He will never walk again.
However Mr. Stephen’s experience is not unique in Palm Beach County. A one year long study by the Palm Beach Post on police shootings found that many unarmed people were shot to death or maimed. To quote the report:
- In roughly one of every four shootings, Palm Beach County deputies fired at unarmed suspects. The Department of Justice has criticized jurisdictions where the percentage of shootings at unarmed suspects was sharply lower.
- Deputies disproportionately shot at young black men, a third of whom were unarmed.
- Non-deadly force options, such as Tasers or batons, were seldom used prior to shooting.
- PBSO rarely found fault with a deputy’s decision to shoot, sometimes basing its decisions on cursory or incomplete investigations.
Obviously Palm Beach has a problem, but it will not come to light through non violent protest and activists appealing to politicians. For fifty years since the Upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, there have been only cosmetic political gains. We even have a President who is black. At the same time, we have never seen this kind of brutality — the same kind of brutality, by the way, that has made this nation what it is — so exposed and so raw. These glimpses do far more than inflame the hearts of young men, it makes them explode.
After more than 40 years of experiencing police abuse, residents in Baltimore exploded this past April over the same issues of police brutality. Once again a black man was laid to rest. Somehow while in police custody Freddie Gray’s spine was severed. The police gave an official explanation that claimed ignorance as to how it happened. For days there were peaceful protests, marches and gatherings, all of which were largely ignored by the media. It appeared that the same tired story was going to emerge from the Baltimore police department, a story that exonerated all the officers involved in Mr. Gray’s death.
But no.
Today, on May 1, Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that charges would be brought against six officers: homicide, manslaughter, and misconduct charges were being brought. Mosby went on to say that the very arrest was indeed illegal, and that the described “switchblade” had been infact a penknife and was legal for Mr. Gray to possess. In Mosby’s words: “no crime had been committed.” But there was a prelude to this stunning announcement. There has been one week of civil unrest in Baltimore that saw property damaged, stores burned and general lawlessness that compelled the mayor of Baltimore to impose a one week curfew. It was a steep price to pay in order to protect the police in the way they had in the past. The rent was too damn high.
IS BALTIMORE BE A TURNING POINT? WILL ALL COPS CAUGHT ON TAPE NOW BE CHARGED?
America was built on riots. The American Constitution was born out of a riot. In 1786–87, Shay’s Rebellion brought America to it’s knees. As a result, George Washington came out of retirement and there was another constitutional convention where the Constitution was born. Hardly a soul in the united States would say this was a terrible event. Many died, property was destroyed and yet, something good came of it.
It’s a new day in America. The police can no longer carry on the brutal practices of the past. Steve Jobs at Apple Computer deserves a posthumous Nobel for his invention of the cameraphone. Today the camera is omnipresent in our lives, with images and video marking the milestones in our lives. That same video is marking the murder and mayhem that is committed by our law enforcement officers behind a blue wall of silence. A wall that has been impenetrable. But now, like the walls of Jericho, are curmbling before our very phones.
It is not true that violence has never solved anything. That mantra is trotted out at convenient times. The inconvenient truth is that the United States has the world’s largest military that is dedicated to breaking things and killing people: politics by other means. Our nation has a love affair with violence. Our constitution was born out of violence. And the decision today to charge six Baltimore policemen in the murder of Freddie Gray is also a decision that was born out of violence.
It is an objective force of nature, harnessed by man in desperate times such as these; while non-violence is the appeal to the societal conscience.
I hope America stays in touch with its own conscience.
