Stop Killing Us
I attended Walter Scott’s funeral
by PREACH JACOBS
Sometimes I need to explain to my non-black friends why African-Americans are afraid of the police. “If there were a instruction guide for how not to get harassed or killed by the cops, we would all follow it,” I tell them. We just never know how an encounter with the authorities might go.
So Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, the killing-by-cop of Eric Garner in New York City — these tragedies hit close to home for me and countless other black folks. But I live in Columbia, South Carolina. At least Missouri and New York felt far away.
But then a white policeman shot Walter Scott in the back in Charleston, South Carolina — a mere two hours away from me.
On Saturday, April 11, I got up at eight in the morning and drove to Charleston for the 11:00 funeral.
Reportedly, the Scott family didn’t want Al Sharpton at the service. They were hoping to keep the service as private as possible.
It didn’t work. The sanctuary looked like it could hold maybe a few hundred people. The crowd outside had to number more than a thousand.
I parked some distance from the church and began walking. A beautiful, middle-age black woman walked beside me and we struck up a conversation.
She told me that she was going to the funeral to support her daughter, who couldn’t make it. She said her daughter was Walter Scott’s fiancé. I knew then that the day was going to be an emotional one.
When I decided to run for city council in my hometown of Columbia, I immediately looked for a community program that brings the public and law enforcement together.
I found the Columbia Police Department’s citizen’s police academy — 10 weeks of instruction by local cops about their jobs in our town. Everything from SWAT officers explaining their tactics to internal affairs describing how they handle complaints.
The third week of class was about the use of force. Our instructor laid out the steps and conditions for an officer pulling out his taser … or his gun.
That’s when a fellow student — a middle-age white man with a thick Southern drawl — spoke up jokingly. “I don’t see why you can’t shoot them in the back when they run away … or hit them with your car.”
I was stunned.
And more-so when the instructor and other attendees didn’t correct the man. Several thoughts ran through my head.
When the guy says “they” run away, who is he talking about? Does he mean just criminals. Or blacks? If he meant blacks, why in the Hell did he feel it was okay to say such a thing while I was sitting in the room?
To be clear, the instructor didn’t condone the comment. But I wish someone — anyone — had spoken up, said something like, “This is not how we do things here.”
As for me, I felt as if I were betraying my race, my humanity, by not interjecting. I’m not sure if I was in shock or just intent on discovering what the other people in the room really thought.
A few weeks later, what that student idly mentioned actually happened in Charleston. When I heard about the shooting, the classroom comment was the first thing that came to my mind.
This incident replayed in my head as I waited with the crowd of people to enter the sanctuary.
It was a dreary, rainy, solemn day. Someone handed out programs from a box. They ran out quickly. I was lucky to get one. There were news crews in attendance and they all wanted to see my program. “Do you have a program? May I take a picture of it for my story?”
I obliged about a dozen times. When people asked if I was there as press, I responded no. I told them I was there to pay my respects.
Because I could. And I should.
I entered the church alongside a friendly reporter from People magazine. We stood in the press box. Rev. George D. Hamilton began his sermon. Before long, I had tears streaming down my face.
He said that the shooting was an act of “overt racism” and that the officer was a “disgrace to the North Charleston Police Department.”
He commended Feidin Santana, the man who filmed the shooting, a “lamb in the bush” who documented every terrible detail of Scott’s killing so that “no man can question the guilt of this murderer.”
He reiterated the sentiments of Congressman James Clyburn, reminding the community to keep their cell phones charged so they can film everything if cops pull them over.
The fact that a man of the cloth had to explain this strategy was depressing beyond words.
A couple of weeks ago, Chris Rock — yes, the comedian — made headlines for taking selfies and posting them every time he got pulled over by the cops.
Rock’s social experiment sparked a national conversation. A fellow black actor offered a solution — a dumb one. Drive a Prius. As if driving a not-so-expensive car would just magically solve the problem.
First of all, would we ever tell a wealthy white person to do such a thing? Secondly, is it our fault when we get profiled? Look, I drive a Toyota Highlander. When those blue lights flash behind my car, I’m scared shitless.
One time, I was at a business with my laptop, watching a game. I went to my car to look for my charger so my Macbook wouldn’t die. Somehow the charger had gotten lodged between the front seat and the drink console.
While I was trying to find and extract it, I saw a cop driving down the street in my direction. I was so afraid that I stopped looking for the charger, closed the door and went back inside. I was worried that I might get harassed for looking in my own car for my possession.
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that I didn’t think twice about my own paranoid impulse — or that I’m completely numb to it now.
