Black lives
don’t matter. That seems to be the message that the grand jury verdict in
Ferguson, Missouri gives.
Officer
Darren Wilson was not indicted for the killing of unarmed black teenager
Michael Brown. Legal and police
experts concur that Prosecutor Robert McCulloch could have decided on his own
authority to prosecute Officer Wilson. But he decided to punt it to a grand
jury. Had the races of aggressor and victim been transposed and a black police
officer had killed a white teenager, I think he would be awaiting trial. This
is borne out by an incident in July 2014 in the same county. The same
prosecutor Robert McCulloch pressed felonious assault charges on black police
officer Dawon Gore for striking a white light-rail passenger with a baton after
an argument. He was jailed on a $3500 cash-only bond.
Sadder yet is the composition of the grand
jury. St. Louis County has a population of 21,000 and is 67% African-American
and 29% white. The grand jury was made up of nine whites and three blacks of
supposedly randomly picked citizens. All they needed to decide was whether
there was probable cause to indict Officer Wilson and send the case to trial.
Nine votes were needed to indict him.
Like it or not there is a hierarchy of color in our country. Highest on
this list is a white child. And going downwards come brown people and lowest
are young black males. The country was convulsed with grief with the
Connecticut school shootings in which the victims were largely white children.
But no one really talks about the daily victims of gun violence in Chicago; the
majority is impoverished black children.
Michael Brown had stolen a bunch of
cigarellos from a store in Ferguson and when challenged by Officer Wilson was,
according to Officer Wilson’s testimony, aggressive and full of expletives. Wilson
testified that he tried to move Brown’s arm and felt that he was like “a
five-year old holding onto Hulk Hogan”. Wilson shot Michael Brown twice while he
was pushing into the police car with his body. Brown then started to run and Wilson
gave chase. When Brown turned around Officer Wilson fatally shot him in the
head, well aware that he was not armed. Why would a police officer escalate a
theft to shooting an unarmed person? Whatever happened to disabling a felon by
shooting at an extremity rather than the trunk? Are cigarellos cocaine?
Unfortunately this situation is a very
tangled web. Every 28 hours a black person is killed in the United States
either by a police officer or a vigilante. As a doctor, I understand this
frequency to qualify for what we define as an epidemic. This is not a new
statistic. Young black males have been on our endangered species list for
decades. But being on the bottom of that hierarchy, racked with poverty,
addiction and crime, society seems to be smug that young black felons are
self-selecting out.
Police and legal experts also report a
symbiotic relationship between police and prosecutors. Prosecutors protect
police witnesses in court and the police influence the prosecutor’s decisions. It
is true that situations such as the Wilson-Brown incident happen very fast and hindsight
is always 20/20. But we have not enshrined accountability in police culture,
and thus granted them impunity. The parents of Michael Brown want the Michael
Brown Law passed in which police officers would wear body cameras. There is a
move toward this in some police departments already.
It is also an entire mindset that we must
change: from individuals and families recognizing that all of us are created
equal, to communities and the nation being color-blind in their protection.
Racism is rife in the Greater Toledo area as well. In a previous office
location in Perrysburg, one of my middle aged African-American patients decided
to bide his waiting time and enjoy the sunny day by sitting in a chair next to
his car and working on his phone. Suddenly the police showed up, wondering
whose new Chrysler he was sitting next to. “It’s my car” he said. Unable to
charge him with anything, the police left. I remember I was more outraged than
he was.
Ferguson businesses have been burned to the
ground, and protests are picking up all across the nation and internationally. Prosecutor McCulloch has deeply undermined our
justice system and brought segregation in our country into sharp focus. Officer
Wilson should have been charged and gone through an open public trial. It would
have been wise and visionary to let justice take its course and to have learned
from the Rodney King and Trayvon Martin cases. And suddenly the entire nation
is being given a crash course on civil rights.
