A couple of years ago when my wife and I were visiting my parents in the tiny southeastern Minnesota town where I grew up ( population roughly 1,000 ) my dad told me a disturbing story that I couldn’t get off of my mind for quite some time. The recent events in Ferguson and St. Louis have brought it back vividly, and I think it’s one more piece of evidence, albeit anecdotal, to suggest that contemporary police culture is way, way out of hand.
Across the street from my folks lived a life long resident of my hometown, a guy I’ll call Joe, who lived with his mother in her small, one story house. Joe had a long history of psychiatric problems and everyone in town knew he was a troubled guy, but we also knew that he wasn’t dangerous. He was actually quite likable and grew the most fantastic garden in town in his backyard, and every time we visited my parents I always went across the street and talked to him. I knew him from my youth and he seemed to appreciate my coming over to visit and see his garden.
But things got a little weird when Joe suddenly found Jesus and took to knocking on doors in the neighborhood to evangelize, especially when he went to the house right next door to my parents place, which had recently been bought by an out of town cop who worked for a local police department some 40 miles away. Some kind of argument ensued when Joe was over there and it turned into a bit of a dust-up, which ended with Joe leaving as he shouted and waved his arms.
My dad went out to see what was going on and spoke to the cop, who I’ll call Bob. Bob was apparently quite agitated and told my Dad, ” if he ever comes over here again he’ll be looking down the barrel of a gun. ”
I was shocked, and frankly pretty pissed off. As a semi-retired social worker and someone who’d known Joe for decades, I couldn’t believe that a small town cop, or any cop for that matter, would talk that way about an obviously troubled guy with mental health problems.
I don’t think we’re talking about a few bad apples here when it comes to police violence, I think we’re talking about an internal culture that sees force, and deadly force, as the answer to every problem they encounter.
It’s time for cameras on every cop and independent reviews of all police involved shootings in every state in the country. Police need to be accountable to the communities they serve, not the other way around.
Steve, completely agree about the cameras.
Agree about the culture and that has to change. Rank and file has to understand that if they’re just going to blow people like Kajime Powell away, we don’t need nearly as many of them. Any U.S. citizen with a cell phone and a gun can do what they did. We can use cameras to catch traffic violations of all kinds.
My Twitter timeline is suddenly filled with energetic get-out-the-vote action in African-American neighborhoods. #Ferguson could end up really helping Dems in November.
when you have a hammer…..everything is a nail.
I question that even if Michael Brown was making a grab for the officer’s gun thru the open car window, why did the officer not have other less lethal items to use in his defense; i.e. taser, pepper spray; rolling up the window to trap the head/arm of Brown or frankly breaking the arm reaching into the car window?
For the past three days a deputy (or deputies) have been watching a house down a ways from me. As in one car, one deputy. We even saw him knock at the door holding papers, no gun in hand. He looks big, competent and official and seems quite equal to his task without 10 colleagues in body armor, semi-automatic weapons, and an armored-vehicle. Somehow we have to get back to proportionate response. And I think we have to legalize drugs – Homeland Security may have fueled the escalation in weaponry but all this started with the so-called War on Drugs.