Our country, our beatdown
Rapper Ali and lessons of the TASER
By Bill Beene
Of the St. Louis American
Just a week ago – before local rapper Ali was repeatedly TASE’d by Hazelwood cops – I was saying how much I like the new Chevy Truck commercial.
It shows everyday and historic, tragic and triumphant images of American life – black and white – over an Americana musical backdrop.
Images of black folks include the late Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., post-Katrina New Orleans and a black fireman on the job.
The song is John Mellencamp’s newly released “Our Country.” The tagline is “Our Country, Our Truck.”
Of course, most of us feel America is anything but “our country.” And these commercial images, edited to sell expensive, gas-guzzling vehicles, are hardly representative renderings of the often nefarious relationship between blacks and whites in America.
Still, many blacks are as quasi-patriotic as their white counterparts, and some take the same pride in driving their great American Chevy truck.
But forget the advertising. The fact is, it doesn’t matter what kind of car, truck, SUV, motorcycle or Hummer black folks drive in America. Neither our ride, nor our status, class, culture, education, religion or politics will free us from the charge of Driving While Black (DWB) or simply Living While Black in America.
Of course, no truck commercial is going to show images of what can actually happen when a brother from the block is stopped on a routine DWB suspicion, as was rapper Ali Jones of the popular St. Lunatics on Saturday. (By the way, he was driving a Chevy, albeit a Corvette.)
Jones said his wife counted 56 TASER marks on his body after the cops were through with him. He also said he didn’t do anything to warrant the abuse.
The Hazelwood Police Department has justified the actions of the officers on the scene, saying the 34-year-old rapper kicked the arresting officer – essentially acting like a lunatic.
As a black, North St. Louis resident, I know how common it is for some police officers to justify their actions. Other folks who have driven through Hazelwood while black have their own stories to tell.
Florissant resident April Troupe said she was unjustly pulled over by a Hazelwood police officer who said he did so because she had her bright lights on.
When she demonstrated that her bright lights were not on, Troupe said the officer snapped at her, asking her where she was coming from. When she told him Steak n Shake, the officer asked where she had been prior to that. Apparently he thought he deserved to see her entire dance card for the evening after pulling her over for no reason.
“I heard they were racist,” Troupe said of Hazelwood cops, “and by these tactics I don’t think they want blacks out here.”
Last year, when Ali and other members of the St. Lunatics announced they were opening a restaurant in Hazelwood, rumors flew on the street that the police department wasn’t happy about that. Ali said the arresting officer expressed that exact sentiment during Saturday’s incident.
When some blacks learned that the Lunatics were to open a restaurant in Hazelwood, many said they wouldn’t visit it because of the reputation of the local police department.
The state attorney general has some facts to back up their suspicion.
According to Attorney General Jeremiah “Jay” Nixon’s 2005 annual report on racial profiling in traffic stops, Hazelwood Police stopped 7,259 white motorists and 4,145 African Americans. Blacks were stopped nearly half as often as white drivers, though African Americans make up just 16.69 percent of the population, compared to a white population of 78.6 percent.
Of the 7,259 stops involving white drivers, 331 cars and/or motorists were searched. An alarming total of 381 black motorists and/or vehicles were searched, even though there were substantially fewer black drivers stopped, in sheer numbers.
According to Nixon’s disparity rate, a value of one (1) represents no disparity. Values greater than one (1) indicate over-representation of an ethnic group of people. Hazelwood Police Department doubles that with a 2.13 disparity index.
The report didn’t include comparative use of a TASER on white and black suspects, but many blacks agree that the TASER is the latest in a long line of instruments of brutality, dating back to the lash and the lynch rope. To many of us, it’s just a new, acceptable form police brutality and excessive use of force in “our country.”
TASER International, Inc. hails its flagship product as the “weapon of the future.” If so, for black folks, the future might look painfully like the past.
