Discussing the South Carolina and Miami Gardens Shootings in Class

We return to journalism class. You know, the one with the white teacher with the nervous hands who told her majority black class that race is not an issue and that the “race card” should not be played. The one that said Michael Brown had weapons because he had fists. The one that called a cop with a gun, taser, and protection from the law defenseless.

That class. That teacher.

Yesterday, the teacher very carefully asked about the headlines. Remember, this is a journalism class. The students don’t respond. She repeatedly asked about different events intentionally skirting the South Carolina shooting. The students answered carefully about other things. Here is the thing, typically, this is a boisterous class. They speak their minds and give their viewpoints about the matters at hand.

No more.

Finally, after several minutes of cajoling a Hispanic girl with big puffy hair raised her hand.

“Um, I don’t know if I should bring this up,” let’s pause here — read that again.

This is journalism. This is a class about the news.

“Um, I don’t know if I should bring this up, but there was a shooting.”

The teacher interrupts her, “Yes, in Miami Gardens.”

The student says carefully, “No. North, I think it was North Carolina.”

The teacher says, “Well, let’s look at the facts.” She opened her computer. “Not North, but South Carolina. I had not heard about this shooting. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

The students are dead silent.

After reading a few seconds the teacher said, “this is a tragedy all around.” She is including the officer in there. She has done it before. The students look at her blankly. They can’t relate. She changed the subject quickly to the Miami Gardens’ shooting. “I know many of you think it’s about race, but it really is about mental illness. The man was mentally ill and the officers are not equipped or were not trained to handle that situation. It is truly sad all around because we should have more dedicated units for mental illness cases. But there was no malice in that case.”

Miami Gardens…? No malice…?

Here are some facts in an article by Alice Brennan and Tamara Weston:

The Miami Gardens Police Department has stopped more than half of its population.

After reviewing 99,980 “field contact” reports between 2008 and 2013, Fusion found that over half the population there had been stopped, written up, and often identified as “suspicious.” None of these stops, though, led to arrests.

Miami Gardens police records reveal broad policy of stopping and questioning citizens: 8,489 kids and 1,775 senior citizens caught up in city’s version of “stop and frisk.”

And here are some updates from NPR’s This American Life’s website:

• On Feb.15th, officers shot and killed resident Lavall Hall, 25. His mother told the Miami Herald that she called the police after Hall refused to come into their house and came at her with a broomstick. She says she wanted help getting her son, who was schizophrenic and bipolar, to a hospital. The police chief, Stephen Johnson, told the Herald that his officers tried using Tasers on Hall after he hit one of them with the broom, but they pulled their guns when Hall charged them. The city placed the officers on administrative injury leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

• Feb. 27th, a 10-year-old girl was struck by an unmarked police cruiser. Video report from 7 News in Miami is posted here.

• Also on Feb. 27th, police chief Stephen Johnson was arrested at a motel in a prostitution sting after allegedly trying to arrange a threesome with an undercover officer from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. In media interviews, the new chief, who’d been in his job less than a year, said: “The stress overwhelmed me, and I made a very bad decision.” He talks about his arrest in this video and apologizes. Miami Gardens terminated Johnson’s position.

Now, I might be a little bitter, but with stats like that and a police department that has consistently been documented to behave with malice, I think that the teacher might be overreaching with her “no malice” statement.

The students continued silent as she asked to discuss these two shootings. They do not voice their concerns, opinions, or thoughts regarding the shootings. They know better. She will silence them with the same card she said they should not play: the race card.