Black Tantrum in Baltimore

Excuse me, but did Martin Luther King, Jr. just get assassinated again?

It would appear so.

“We’re making history here in Baltimore, Maryland,” said Ephelyn Smith, who told NPR she took two buses and got lost to get to Freddie Gray’s funeral.

Freddie Gray?

He had a string of arrests dating back to 2007, most of them for selling drugs. In one of his last accomplishments, Gray “looked police in the eye,” according to one of 2,500 mourners at his funeral.

It makes no difference to protesters if Gray may have contributed to his own death by running from police. Martin Luther King, Jr. could also look police in the eye, but he didn’t turn tail and run. He also didn’t deal drugs.

Today’s black noisemakers (they are not leaders) act as if cooperating with the cops is for white people.

It isn’t. The way things are going, how much longer will anybody be expected to obey police?

Last week, while Gray’s death was taking over the news, a 30-year-old white felon named Francis Jared Pusok walked away with an easy $650,000 settlement from San Bernardino County after he was roughed up during an arrest, captured by an NBC helicopter news crew.

Pusok led sheriff’s deputies on a three-hour pursuit through Southern California’s High Desert first by vehicle, then on foot and finally by stealing a horse and injuring the animal. When he finally gave up, he fell to the ground, assumed the position and placed his hands behind his back. The deputies were not impressed and got a few licks and kicks in.

On behalf of the horse, I don’t blame them, particularly since Pusok’s priors included animal cruelty. (His 10-year record of felony and misdemeanor convictions also includes grand theft auto, resisting arrest and attempted robbery. He was under investigation for burglary at the time of his latest arrest.)

In a groveling explanation of why San Bernardino County quickly reached a deal, a spokesman tried to put a positive spin on things.

“The sole purpose of this settlement is to avoid the cost of litigation,” said a county spokesman. “Even if a case never made it to trial, both sides would probably spend millions of dollars getting it to trial, so $650,000 is probably quite a bit of savings… .”

No, it isn’t.

A public agency’s willingness to quickly cave in on lawsuits only invites more lawsuits, especially from attorneys specializing in police brutality. It would not surprise me if in some areas of the U.S. the police-brutality bar offers free lessons in selected neighborhoods on how to score a police pension – without ever wearing a uniform.

Had the county gone to trial, there’s no guarantee a jury would have felt sorry for a guy like Pusok. If some of the deputies involved have histories that county officials don’t want to share in court, a quick settlement won’t give them an incentive to change or find another line of work.

What complicates the issue of police brutality are the attempts to create sympathetic victims where there may be none. Punish a bad cop, but don’t reward a suspect’s criminal behavior.

Years ago I covered a police-brutality case against two officers in Adelanto, Calif., a community not far from where Pusok had his lucrative encounter. Shortly before these cops were to start their prison sentences, one of them agreed to an interview.

“If I had known I was going to go to jail for this guy, I would have given him a real reason to be hurt,” former Adelanto Police Cpl. Thomas Chandler told me.

The guy that he and his partner, Kenneth Gailey, admitted to beating was Joseph Valdes. A drug abuser, Valdes had been brought to the police station on suspicion of abusing his 6 1/2- week old daughter. She had 21 fractures and a torn hymen.

“I started off playing the good cop,” said Chandler. “I bought him something to eat. It was relaxed. I told him, ‘We know what happened. We need to know if we’ve got the right guy. Do we have the right guy?’ Valdes said we did.”

The father’s story was that there had been an accident, that he had jumped on the bed, and the baby bounced off. Chandler asked Valdes how that led to certain specific injuries. The cop tried to show him pictures of the girl taken at the hospital, and Valdes refused to look at them.

Chandler grabbed him and pulled him out of the chair. “You look at them! … Go on! I ain’t no 6-week-old baby. Come on! Give me a reason to kick your face.”

The more Chandler talked to him, the madder he got. After Valdes complained that the cops had no business throwing him in jail, he added dismissively of his daughter, “She’ll heal. She’ll be all right.”

Chandler said his partner, Gailey, could usually calm him down. But it didn’t work out this time because Gailey went off on Valdes, too.

A portion of their interrogation was caught on a microphone in the interview room. Valdes could be heard screaming and Chandler warning, “They say confession’s good for the soul. Maybe God forgives, but I don’t. Now here we go… .”

As a result, charges were dismissed against Valdes since the officers could not be credible witnesses. (Valdes would later suffer brain damage following a car crash in Arizona.)

Chandler and Gailey also pleaded guilty in a second, unrelated beating involving a long-time petty criminal and drug abuser named Henry Easley, who spat on a third police officer. (That officer felt no need to exact revenge and was prepared to testify against Chandler and Gailey.) The incident was captured on closed circuit television and witnessed by a police dispatcher, who reported it. Easley was given a $200,000 settlement. (Easley would later die when he rolled his new ATV while riding in the desert; a half-empty bottle of vodka was found on him.)

Since all parties in the Chandler case were white, race was not an issue. What aggravates the recent, highly-publicized cases of police brutality (alleged and real) is the lack of context. The stories are quickly reduced to: White officer + black suspect = bad cop.

Many news stories recycle virtually the same first sentence, “A white police officer killed an unarmed black man …” as if race was the motivating factor and as if an unarmed man (of any race) is harmless.

Each of the cases from the past year is different and should be treated differently. If they have anything in common it’s that – with the exception of the Cleveland boy playing with a toy gun – the suspect struggled with the police.

Most of these cases have something else in common: an attempt to mitigate the bad behavior of the suspect and his supporters/protesters. In some cases, the mitigating factors go back to the 18th and 19th centuries. There is no similar effort to mitigate or understand what police deal with in the here-and-now, and how the job can warp them.

We want the police to handle the human garbage that we don’t want to deal with (and would never publicly call human garbage but might think so in the privacy of our minds).

In Baltimore, they’re cleaning up from the Freddie Gray riot. Naturally there are complaints that the police should have done more to stop the violence. What exactly were police supposed to do? I think I know what a cop like Thomas Chandler would have done.

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to think that you are free, but to still be confined to a box, living in a box of stereotypes, other people’s opinion, sweeping generalizations and racial profiling,” Rev. Jamaal Bryant said at Gray’s funeral.

We all stereotype one another. What kind of box have we placed police? Is it realistic to expect them to reduce criminal violence in predominantly black neighborhoods when it appears that a majority of the citizens in those neighborhoods don’t appreciate their efforts?

Even in Baltimore, a black-majority city with a black mayor, black police commissioner and a black-majority city council, there is a lack of cooperation with police.

Last month Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called for new ideas in how to fight black-on-black crime. The city had 211 homicides last year, and 90 percent of the victims were black and 90 percent of the known suspects were also black.

Perusing the Baltimore Sun’s website, I didn’t see a rush of new ideas. Maybe it’s time to stop complaining about black-on-black crime and simply file it under “cultural differences.”

A few other ideas:

What should the police do? Arm yourselves with body cameras. Study the police-brutality bar playbook, and adjust your behavior accordingly. Don’t give your opponents ammunition they can use in court. Remember, many criminals eventually meet a predictable end.

What should cities do? Don’t be so quick to settle a claim of police brutality. Consider the long-term costs of inviting more lawsuits.

What should families do? Stop expecting the police and schools to raise your kids. They can’t. Stop expecting the police and schools to love your children as much as you do. They don’t.

What should politicians do for the next violent protest when blacks take to the street? Call the Fruit of Islam, the Nation of Islam’s security force, and ask them to confront protesters, face-to-face.

According to the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, The Daily Call, problems in inner-city neighborhoods, don’t require more police, “but more action, more unity, more economic opportunity, sacrifice and creativity from inside Black America.”

Let’s see how Nation of Islam’s security force, armed with nothing but bow-ties, handles a black trantrum.

Police can guard the businesses. At least the owners will probably be grateful.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

Related:

Doing the Wrong Thing

5 Comments

  • I can’t think of any jobs with the possible exception of boxer or soldier where in the course of the work day committing acts of assault and homicide are so blithely tolerated and excused as with our Police, our so called Peace Officers. The case you cite of Valdes may be the first time I’ve heard of a cop who actually was convicted of an assault. I’m shocked the system worked. Why is it so hard to have an actual Law Enforcement Professional doing the job their hired for rather than some ham fisted thug who has anger control issues? There should be zero tolerance for the kind of police brutality we are witness to so frequently and have accepted as the only alternative to chaos. What makes me anxious is not a job that warps individuals but the warped individuals that want and get the jobs and the warped system that tolerates and protects them. Thanks for the forum to vent. I always look forward to your columns.

  • Tom:

    Thanks for the comment.

    Chandler’s beating of Valdes didn’t make the national news because race wasn’t involved. The media give a distorted view when they report, as an absolute, incontrovertible fact, that something has happened strictly because of race.

    As Matt points out in his comment, there are other professions that kill innocent people, but they don’t receive the scrutiny that police do. Look at the number of people who die from medical errors.

    The nature of police work has changed, just as crime has changed. The paramilitary tactics employed by some urban departments, beginning more than two decades ago, was in response to heavily-armed, violent street gangs. I was surprised to see those tactics had spread to smaller police departments like Ferguson, Mo. Was it simply because excess military equipment was offered to them? Or are the cops afraid of the people they are supposed to protect and serve?

    I once interviewed a police recruiter from Anchorage, Alaska who was in Southern California trying to recruit officers. I asked him if he was seeing a difference in the kind of people who wanted to be cops. He pointed to one notable difference. A standard question on the application was, “Have you ever been in a fight?”

    The point of the question was to see if the applicant had ever taken or thrown a punch. In police work cops will inevitably encounter some people who are not going to cooperate. Has the applicant shown he can handle physical confrontation without immediately reaching for a gun?

    The recruiter said it used to be that most male applicants answered “yes” because at some point in their school days they got into a brawl with someone. (He didn’t say it, but I suspect that’s also the kind of person more likely attracted to police work.) He said in recent years more male applicants were answering “no” to the fight question. The recruiter wasn’t sure why. Was it because schools had adopted zero-tolerance policies on fighting? Or because fist-fighting had fallen out of fashion? Or was a different type of person now being attracted to police work?

    Mr. Chandler here, for all of his inability to control his rage, did not reach for his gun and shoot Valdes or Easley. To the officer’s detriment, though, his behavior was sustained and calculating. Like the prosecutor told me, the officers in these two cases did not fear for their lives.

    What it all means is that these highly-publicized, officer-involved brutality cases have to be judged individually. I don’t see the media doing that. And, personally, I think many of us have more to fear from the medical profession.

  • What do boxers and soldiers and cops have in common? The use of physical force is an inherent reality of the job. Like cops, boxers and soldiers are rarely, but not never, charged for violence when conducted in what would be considered part of their official duties. Why? When one engages in an action that is part of a job description it can be extremely challenging to parse justified from legal but negligent from illegal… even when we can point at an anecdote and have it be obvious that things went tragically wrong.

    Physicians, engineers, boat captains, bus drivers, etc are also rarely charged for actions, even negligent ones, that result in the death or injury of people when those actions were taken within the scope of their jobs. A key difference in the above compared with police oversight is that there are no laymen demanding the right to investigate surgical malpractice.

    That is not to say that there should be no oversight or repercussions for bad behavior. Demand your city include language in contracts favorable to oversight. Proven negligence should result in no longer being allowed to do a job, especially where the stakes are high such as in policing. Accept the value of civil suits; such suits push policy reform. Often those policies are reasonable changes that reflect the changing values of our communities. And, yes, obviously criminal behavior like that described by Pamela above should be prosecuted, even if there is a practice of not prosecuting such retributive actions when civilians engage in it. Cops should be held to a higher standard.

    Finally, who should be a cop? I joke that decades of TV and movies have essentially set the accepted bar for police officers at Batman without the psychological issues… and they only get to investigate serial murders, but it’s an uncomfortable joke. So again, who should be a cop? Regardless of the many essential intellectual, social, communicative, emotional, and political aspects of policing, the reality is that the critical aspect of a police officer’s job is to be the person who deals with the scary thing outside. If society wishes to (thinks it can?) change the nature of those who willingly deal with the scary thing outside, by all means, those proponents should step into the arena, feel the dust and sweat and yes sometimes blood on their faces, and quit talking about those who did step up as a bunch of ham fisted thugs.

  • Nelson wrote:

    I’m glad someone wants to be a cop – even with imperfect motivation – because it’s a nasty, messy business that I’d never go near. Rarely is it dangerous – mostly just revolting, degrading, and exasperating, dealing daily with the dregs in the truest sense. Being a LEO is a risk factor for suicide and car-crash death, but not for intentional homicide; it’s no more dangerous than being a taxi driver, according to BLS. In other words, these people are not heroes, except in the sense that garbage collectors are: they do the jobs the rest of us won’t or can’t.

    If you think the ghetto policing is bad, look into the prison-industrial complex – it’s a nightmare. Corrections officers are subject to even less oversight than cops, and they’re looked down by other LEO’s for a reason. The revolving door of zero-tolerance policies combined with catch-and-release sentencing keeps refreshing the streets with angry young men who are trying to get even and have nothing to lose.

    The politicians are disgusting, the way they pander to the basest emotions of the proles – but that’s what politicians do. It’s only glaringly obvious to me because I’m white, but it’s still heinous in the extreme to portray recidivists as the underdogs, when all they have to do to escape arrest is to stop breaking the law.

  • Pamela wrote:

    Nelson:

    You’re right that police work isn’t as dangerous as some jobs that receive none of the glory of law enforcement. Working in a convenience store, for example. Or, as you point out, taxi driver — especially in a city where you’re required to pick up fares you think might be dangerous (thanks to politicians who don’t have to live with their own politics).

    But at least if you’re on a garbage truck or in a taxi, you don’t have the public and media critiquing your performance constantly. The Baltimore Sun recently did a special report on how police in that city don’t realize how sick and injured many suspects are. Is it realistic to expect cops to perform accurate medical diagnoses?

    The problem is that suspects often claim they don’t feel well, or the handcuffs are too tight, etc. How is a police officer supposed to know if it’s a legitimate complaint or if the suspect is looking for a way to distract the cop?

    Police work could become more dangerous if officers start to hesitate with the wrong suspects. Those angry young men who have nothing to lose may figure they have even less to lose by resisting arrest.

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