I've spent two years being very vague about where I live, but I find such obfuscation difficult today. Suddenly, my city is not only thrust into the national spotlight, it is bearing the scrutiny of the world, for reasons it justly deserves. A citizen of this city was pulled over for a broken tail light on his car, and following a series of bad decisions on his part and on the part of the police officer involved, he was shot in the back as he fled, and killed. There are many details I don't know yet, such as what prompted the scuffle between the two that led to the officer firing his taser at the man. I don't even know why the man was out of his car, but a sad, guilty part of my heart suspects that it boiled down to the different way black men are treated during traffic stops compared to the way I, a white woman, am treated in such situations. What I do know is that there is video evidence that contradicts the official reports by the police officer who shot the man, and the second officer on the scene. Unlike many of the tragic, violent, officer-involved deaths of black men that have stirred up racial tensions across the country over the last few years, this video clearly reveals the lies told to the family and to the public. The officer claimed he was in fear for his life, and thus he thought he was justified to shoot the man. He filed a report saying he performed CPR on the man. Yet there was a video showing the man apparently dancing at the end of a taser wire, jumping to get away, and as he ran away from the officer, he was shot eight times in the back. He fell face down, and never moved again. The officer screamed at him, handcuffed him, and walked back to get his dropped taser, only to return and drop it next to the body. He spoke into the radio on his shoulder, and a second officer arrived on scene. It was not until a several minutes after the shooting that the policeman even checked for a pulse on the man for the first time. His lack of concern over a man he had just gunned down is deeply disturbing to view.
The video was a game changer. Early reports are that the witness waited to turn it over for a couple days to see what the official version of the story would be. When the police tried to claim that it was a justified killing, the witness knew he had an obligation to speak up. With only his testimony but without his video, my town might have been torn apart by the same sorts of protests and unrest as in Missouri last year. With this video evidence, swift action was taken. The officer has been fired and arrested for murder. There is a long way to go before this is over. There is dash cam video from the police cruiser that may be released tomorrow. I can only imagine what the next weeks will reveal.
A good friend of mine put this into perspective for me today. I give her credit for this observation. In the last week, in my town and in the neighboring one a stone's throw from my Park, there were three incidents handled very differently. In one, a man was driving erratically, brandishing a long gun, and in traffic, he shot and killed a woman driving to meet her son for lunch. He was arrested and is in custody. In another, a man set a house on fire and ran off into the woods with a sniper rifle. I understand that he is also in custody. In the third, an unarmed man who was behind on child support payments was pulled over for a defective vehicle violation, and he was gunned down as he ran away. Guess which one of the three was black.
I am nearly a quarter of the way through my week and a half without glasses, and my eyes are tired. I have a pair of ten year old prescription sunglasses, and I can see a little bit through them, but it's exhausting and dark. If I get right up on top of things, I can still see, or I can just relax my eyes and let all the details blur into lights, shadows, and colors. It's easier not to focus. But it's lazy, and it does no one any good for me to pretend I don't know what's going on around me. I owe it to myself to get up on top of things, and really look at them with a critical eye. And so I shall.
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