The good news is that the Ferguson protest movement helped to foster a national conversation on race, police and violence against unarmed civilians. The bad news is that, apparently, some police are not listening to this conversation or learning anything from it.
How else are we to understand the police killings of Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 2 and of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 4? Not quite eight months after the Ferguson police killing of Michael Brown Jr. sparked national outrage at police killings of unarmed black men, two unarmed black men were killed two days apart in two cities separated by 1,000 miles using precisely the outright, unjustified use of force that has come under national scrutiny.
If the cops are listening and learning, they are not acting like it.
The Harris and Scott cases would be sufficient to spark national outrage and protests had Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson cruised past the jaywalking Mike Brown on August 9.
Harris was shot in an apparent blunder by an unpaid volunteer deputy sheriff – whose presence on the scene of a dangerous sting operation invites a separate set of questions (and civil suits). Reserve Deputy Robert Bates has been charged with manslaughter for shooting Harris in the back when he allegedly thought he was going for his Taser. The truly criminal police behavior begins after this incredibly foolish accident by an untrained volunteer who should have been at home watching cop shows on TV. The other, presumably trained cops continue to handle Harris – who is screaming that he has been shot – as if he has not been shot. When Harris screams that he is losing his breath, a cop says, “[Expletive] your breath.”
This police response to a dying civilian who has just been shot while in police custody is truly breathtaking, in light of the July 17 police killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island. Garner was choked to death while saying, “I can’t breathe.” Harris had his skull pinned to the concrete by a cop’s knee while screaming that he was losing his breath after being shot in the back when he was already down. What have these police learned? Nothing, it seems.
The killing of Scott is a textbook example of the worst things that are said about the police. From the evidence of a bystander’s video, Police Officer Michael Slager shot Scott in the back while he was running away and then planted incriminating evidence by his corpse to support the lie he then phoned into police headquarters. We hope that Slager, who has been charged with first-degree murder, if he is found guilty, spends the rest of his life in confinement wishing he had paid more attention to the national conversation on race and police tactics.
What is clear – in April 2015, even more than August 2014 – is that we have a deeply rooted national problem on our hands here. The remedies must be systemic and national. Action is needed by Congress, not state Legislatures, to mandate better selection of police recruits, more extensive psychological evaluation and training, and more thorough systems of police accountability. City governments will benefit along with their communities, as a better trained, evaluated and supervised police force will cost cities much less in civil lawsuits filed by victims of police violence.
For starters, it is clear from the Harris and Scott cases that video evidence of police behavior can be critical. The public should continue to videotape police during sensitive encounters and come forth, bravely, as witnesses. Police dashboard and body cameras should be mandatory, with this video evidence made available to the public within case-by-case personal privacy limitations. The national conversation on race and policing needs to be replaced by national mandates if we are going to change police behavior.
