Who is the unarmed man in this picture?
Who is the one in danger?
Who is the unarmed man in this picture?
Who is the one in danger?
I just grabbed these pictures and threw them up because they’re from my own limited experience and they illustrate how unclear the dynamics can become in an entangled encounter between two men when one of them is armed and the other one isn’t.
If you haven’t ever been faced with this, it can seem like a no-brainer. The guy with the gun calls the shots. He has the gun, the other guy has to do what the guy with the gun says. You know, or he’s fucked. Dude’s gonna shoot him.
But in both of these pictures it’s pretty clear that things actually are not that clear at all. A gun in play, when things are up close and personal, is a gun in play. It’s not always the case that the guy who starts out with the gun gets to finish with it. Sometimes the bigger, stronger, more violent guy can take that gun away and use it for what he wants. Sometimes the bigger, stronger, more violent guy doesn’t even WANT the gun. He doesn’t need it. He’d rather use his hands to kill the other guy.
So, Ferguson, right? Michael Brown.
You guys all know I carry a gun and a badge so I must be on Officer Darren Wilson’s side. When cops look at this shooting of an unarmed teenager on his way to his grandmother’s house, we see a good shoot. I know it doesn’t look that way to a LOT of people, and frankly, I don’t expect it to. It should horrify people when an unarmed black teenager on his way to his grandmother’s house is shot by a white cop in broad daylight.
But that doesn’t make it a bad shoot. It just doesn’t.
And I’m not here to argue that it’s a good shoot and everyone should agree with me and move on, lets end the discussion. I think the discussion is so vital, so important, and so necessary. It really is. Because it’s totally fucked all the way through and we have this terrible tendency to look at the many facts involved and choose to see the ones that support our view as the ones that really, truly carry the most weight. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t facts that don’t support our view, it’s just that, honestly, those facts just aren’t as important as these other facts over here that really do prove that how I see it is justified.
So I have some limited experience with these kind of encounters, where there’s a fight, there are some punches thrown, there’s a struggle over a gun, and I just wanted to take a second and throw out some stuff to consider around that dynamic. And maybe I’m just sensitive about this issue because I know that one day I might be in Officer Darren Wilson’s situation and it’s a horrifying thought. And I’m not saying it’s not horrifying to find yourself in Michael Brown’s family’s position, either. It’s just that this was, in the end, a human interaction. Two human beings’ lives intersected in a moment of violence that changed both of them forever. There’s a human cost on both sides.
And, you know, I recognize that this isn’t going to solve anything, or change anyone’s mind about the significance of this shooting and the presence of racism in this country and the rage and helplessness that people feel when they’ve been on the receiving end of racist acts by the people who we pay to protect us and to enforce the law. I know that. And really, in the end, that’s the conversation that needs to keep going- how do we address these problems so we can drag them out into the light and uproot them?
But I keep coming back to this particular shooting and I want to poke around at the dynamics of the encounter because there are aspects of it that may not be apparent to people who don’t get in fights like this. And my heart goes out to Officer Wilson and his family and I want to come to his defense a little bit because I haven’t heard or read anything that sheds much light on this messy aspect of the lethal encounter.
So we know a couple of things about how the violence in this encounter began. We know we have a cop on patrol, in uniform, driving around the city he’s working, doing his job. And he’s heard this scanner traffic about this theft of cigars and a description of a suspect in a black shirt- he’s not going to the call, but he hears the traffic and it registers. Then he sees Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson walking down the street and he contacts them, tells them to get out of the street.
And we can shift our camera view now and look at this from Michael Brown’s perspective- he’s just walking down the street with his friend. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s completely innocent. He might have boosted some cigars, he might have smoked a little bit of pot, but this cop right here doesn’t know any of that. As far as this cop right here knows, all he’s got is a innocent black man walking down the street, minding his own business, and now he’s trying to tell him what to do. Trying to tell a grown man living in a free country he can’t simply walk around with his buddy in the middle of the day doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG.
Both of them are coming at this thing from VERY different perspectives, and both of them have some justification for their points of view.
Officer Darren Wilson’s been on the job a while, he’s had plenty of encounters with people having bad days, people who are angry, who feel that they’re being harassed- this is not the first time he’s talked to someone who doesn’t want to hear what he has to say. He’s going to handle this contact, and the dude’s going to do what he’s supposed to do. And if there’s something up, if there’s something went down he thinks is criminal in nature, well, he’s going to do something about it. He’s not just going to let it go. That’s what we pay him for.
And I’ll bet that Michael Brown had had some contact with The Man before, too. And even if he hadn’t, he knew lots and lots of people who had. Men in his family, in his community, who couldn’t walk down the street without the po-po messing with them. He’d lived with it his whole life. I don’t know a single black American man who has not had some encounter with a cop that left him feeling harassed just for going about his business. So, yeah, it’s pretty easy to see that even if Michael Brown had been up to no good, he could seriously feel justified in saying to himself that this cop didn’t know anything about what might have happened earlier, and RIGHT NOW all he’s doing is walking to his grandma’s with his friend and fuck this cop if he is going to apologize for THAT because that’s bullshit.
So, things don’t start out well, and they get worse fast.
And there comes this point where Officer Wilson is in his car, seated, and Michael Brown is reaching into the unit and punching Wilson in the face a couple of times. And Officer Wilson gets his gun out and at some point the gun goes off, and then Michael Brown starts to walk or run away from Officer Wilson’s car.
And that fight in the car is where I think a lot of people might look and say that Officer Wilson is just not justified in trying to shoot Michael Brown at all. I mean, the guy is hitting him, or hits him, and the cop tries to shoot him, that’s an unreasonable use of force! That’s overkill. That’s racist or unfair or crazy bloodthirsty, just looking for an excuse to shoot a black man. And you know, maybe it was. I don’t know.
But I do know something. I do know that when you’re seated in your patrol car and there’s a guy reaching in through the window and beating you in the head, you don’t have very many options to unfuck your situation. I haven’t ever been hit in the head by someone who was 6’4″ and 280 pounds, but I’ve been hit in the head by some pretty big guys, and I’ve been hit in the head by little guys, too. And I’ve been hit by guys a lot when I’ve got headgear on and had my bell absolutely RUNG so that for a good long while I don’t know up from down- and that’s getting hit by a guy wearing big boxing gloves and hitting me when I know I’m going to be hit, and I’ve got a mouthpiece in, and headgear on, and I can defend myself.
I can tell you that it can be a very frightening, very disorienting, very unpleasant experience. It can make you want to cry, it can make you want to throw up, it can make you want to do anything in the world to make it stop. It’s fucking awful.
Now imagine that you are Officer Wilson and this guy is reaching in your car window and punching you in the head. You throw your hands up to protect your head and maybe block the punch a little bit, but how do you get the guy to stop doing what he’s doing? You can’t open the door because he’s blocking it. You can’t slide over because you’ve got your computer terminal and your radio and gun rack blocking you in, and there’s a cage behind you so you can’t jump back in the back seat. You have a baton, but you can’t get it out and if you could you couldn’t swing it. You’ve maybe got pepper spray, but if you launch that you’ll blind and choke yourself, too, and that’s no good. You know that any one good punch can knock you unconscious, and you know that whatever happens after that, it ain’t going to be good.
So you do the only thing left to do, and you take your gun out and hope you can get the guy to stop hitting you and chill out and let you arrest him, and if he’s not going to stop, well, then, you’re going to stop him. You’re not going to let him knock you out, take your gun, and kill you with it, which is a reasonable position to take.
But because he’s got a better position than you, he can see what you’re doing and he grabs the gun as you draw it out, and now you’re fighting over it. Now things really are pretty awful. Officer Wilson testified before the grand jury that Michael Brown grabbed his gun and twisted it down and into Wilson’s hip. This is really bad, any cop knows, because that’s where your femoral artery is, and if you take a shot into anywhere in the pelvic girdle you are in a world of hurt and you stand a very good chance of bleeding to death right where you’re sitting. You’d be dead long before any medics could get to you.
So now you pull the gun back and try to shoot through the door, but the gun won’t go off. If you look at that second picture up at the top, you can see that the top of the slide is slightly pulled back by the guy fighting for the gun. The gun is “out of battery” and will not fire in this position. In the picture, I am trying to keep the guy with the gun from shooting me, and I know that “out of battery” thing, so when I grabbed his gun I made sure to clamp down on the slide and pull it back towards him so he couldn’t shoot me even if he could get the muzzle pointed into my body.
Officer Wilson says he tries to pull the trigger twice, but nothing happens. His gun may have been out of battery from the struggle with Brown, and this statement to me is very telling, because it really tends to indicate that there was a struggle over the gun. That just wouldn’t have come up if there had not been some displacement of the slide of Officer Wilson’s handgun.
Then the third time he pulls the trigger and the gun goes off. This startles both of them, and Michael Brown breaks contact with Officer Wilson.
And so this is another point in the story where those of us who weren’t there can sort of slow things down and do some Monday morning quarterbacking, think of all kinds of different options to take so that what happens next, well, doesn’t happen next.
But what does happen is that Officer Wilson calls for backup, puts out “shots fired” on the air, and goes to try to stop Michael Brown from getting away so he can arrest him for the assault. Which is what we pay him to do, I mean, it’s his actual job. If he had just let Michael Brown walk away, he would have been violating the trust we placed in him. He swore an oath.
So, he goes to try to stop him.
And then things went one of two ways:
Michael Brown stopped, turned around, put his hands up, and Officer Darren Wilson shot him to death where he stood.
OR
Michael Brown stopped, turned around, and charged at Officer Darren Wilson, and Officer Darren Wilson shot him to death as Brown closed on him.
And I don’t know which one of those happened. I do know that Officer Wilson told the grand jury that Brown growled and put one hand down inside his waistband as he charged at Officer Wilson, and Officer Wilson shot a couple of volleys at Brown until Brown went down, which Wilson said happened after Brown lowered his head while charging and Wilson shot him in the top of the head.
And this is where my little bit of experience doesn’t really help. I think this part of the shooting- I’m not very sure that anyone is going to change their minds about it, because there’s just no way to know exactly. Eye witness accounts differ, and there’s no dispute that Brown was facing Wilson when he was shot. I’m inclined to look at the whole situation and to me it’s more likely that the guy who started handing out the violence kept handing it out, kept trying to hand it out- that whatever was in his head and in his heart that led him to start punching Officer Wilson in the face did not just suddenly go away when Officer Wilson had the drop on him. But I know human beings, too, and I know that sometimes adrenaline and terror turn into rage and violence, and maybe Officer Wilson shot Michael Brown because he was mad at him. Or maybe because he was black. Or because he was a teenager walking to his grandma’s house in broad daylight.
And here’s where the conversation, in my mind, needs to get a little bit more nuanced, more serious, more contemplative and less reactive. I think that what I’d like to see is that we don’t use Michael Brown as a symbol for all the dangerous, criminal, drugged out monsters who attack the police and make our world unsafe, and that we don’t use him as a symbol of all of the innocent young black teenagers who are violently gunned down in the street in broad daylight by racist white cops for no reason. And we don’t use Officer Darren Wilson as a symbol of all the badge-heavy, jack-booted, racist thug cops who are just looking for a reason, any reason at all, to gun down an innocent black boy. And we don’t hold him up as the shining hero who was out there trying to save the world (although, you know, I personally think there’s an aspect of that in his service to the community- my own bias, I admit.)
The fact is that there are two powerful forces in direct conflict here, and although race may play a part in them, I think that it’s a mistake to conclude that the encounter was all about race, or even about race at all. I think that there was a battle here between the drive for personal freedom and the state-sanctioned drive to control the citizen.
Call it freedom vs constraint, maybe.
I believe that what may have been driving Michael Brown was not a drive to kill a cop, or commit crime, or terrorize anyone. I think Michael Brown was probably, like all of us, simply trying to do what he thought would make him happiest. And getting hassled by the police for walking down the street, despite what he may have been up to earlier, threatened his sense of autonomy and freedom. It felt awful. It felt unbearable. It was unbearable. For whatever reason, he could no longer live with his freedom being constrained by some outside force that didn’t know him, didn’t understand him, didn’t care about him. It was intolerable. I think that is what may have driven him to reach into that police car and start punching away. I think that feeling only grew stronger the harder Officer Darren Wilson tried to control him, tried to stop him, tried to constrain him and take away his freedom.
And I think that Officer Darren Wilson took the job he took because he believed in the state’s right to constrain its citizenry when legally justified to do so. He probably thought that it was right and proper to constrain those who refused to follow the laws and rules of polite society. I think he was probably biased, not against any particular race or culture, but against those who feel that their needs outweigh the needs of others, those who feel that they can do whatever they like to others and not face the consequences. Officer Darren Wilson IS a consequence. And we asked him to take on that role. We gave him training and a uniform and a badge and a gun and paid him to go out onto our streets. We told him, “protect us.”
I think that’s what we rail against, and we’re really, really unclear about it. I don’t hear anything like this being said anywhere on the news or in the media. I mean, I get it, I do, most of our cops are white guys, and mostly we imprison our black males- there’s something wrong with that, there’s real racism active and alive in our society. But that’s true for every society. It’s not a black thing or a white thing, it’s a human thing.
But I look at so many of these encounters, and to my eyes it looks like the State taking individual enforcement action against the freedom of one of its citizens. I think the white cop arresting a black man might not see that. I think the black man being arrested by the white cop might not see that. It seems that the enraged protesters are blind to it, as are the talking heads on TV. If you ask a white cop if he’s racist, he’s going to deny it. He’s going to say he doesn’t give a fuck what color someone’s skin is, he just wants folks to do what they’re supposed to do, and when they don’t, he’s going to make them. A white cop can’t even hear you when you’re telling him he’s racist for doing his job. He knows that it just isn’t true. (Even for those white cops who actually are racist. Maybe especially them.)
Those roles are much deeper and more complex than skin color. It’s deeper than socio-economic status and culture. It’s a really primal thing that is beyond all of those factors. As a society, as a species, we value freedom. We hold it dear, and we’ve killed and been killed for it numberless times. And yet, conversely, we value safety and order. We value the laws and rules of society that allow us to go about out lives without having to carry our own spears and swords and machetes and guns around with us every day in case someone wants to take something that belongs to us- our property or our lives. So we pick a few of us to carry the spear, and we ask them to do the violence for us. On our behalf.
And that’s the discussion I wish we were having. That’s the discussion, it seems to me, that’s important to have and isn’t happening. It is terrible when one human being kills another human being, for any reason. We should be outraged. But we should seek clarity about what exactly we are outraged about. We want our cops to go out there and be brave and heroic and when things get ugly we want them to take care of business. But we don’t want them turning against us. We don’t want them out of control. What we really want is we want them to take it to the other guy, but to leave us alone.
And we should understand the moral weight involved in interfering with another human being’s freedom. As cops we should have the highest respect for the individual freedom of those citizens were are sworn to protect. Even the ones we’re trying to take to jail. The same white cop who can’t hear you when you call him out as a racist for throwing a stop and frisk on a young black man might actually stop and think about what it means that he’s constraining someone’s freedom if it was put to him in those terms. Yeah, okay, you’re not really racist, but you are powerist, you know? You’re exercising power on a brother. No cop can deny that.
And that approach, the one that kind of slips past the obvious, easy to see conflict and actually gets to the dynamic that’s really in play, that might open up some interesting conversations. Because then no one is put in the position of having to admit that they are wrong before the conversation can even begin. Both sides can sort of look at that like, you know, yeah, I’m exercising power over those people that I stop and make empty out their pockets or whatever. Or, yeah, I actually do value my freedom, and it isn’t so much that this guy who is hassling me is white, it’s that my sense of autonomy is being threatened, I’m being controlled by some outside force. That shit sucks, and it sucks if it’s a white cop doing it to me or a black one. It’s the interference with my autonomy that I cannot abide. It isn’t really what the guy dispensing it looks like.
I think it’s easy to imagine a world in which everyone was the same color. Do you think there wouldn’t still be these terrible shootings? There wouldn’t still be injustice? When a human being is the pointy end of our system, and it always will be a human being, then justice is going to be meted out in a human way. And that’s going to be messy.
When these two forces that are in direct opposition come together, it’s only natural for there to be serious conflict. But we need to understand that those forces can never be fully reconciled. It will never be possible to have laws and public safety without being willing to take away someone’s freedom. And we don’t want to give up our own personal freedom, even if we’ve done something wrong. So there are going to be fist-fights, and car chases, and foot chases, and people are going to get killed. It’s messy. It’s a philosophical quandary made flesh, and it’s ugly and horrific under the best of circumstances.
And I think it’s right that we get outraged. I think it’s proper that we examine these shootings and killings and take a look at what happened and see if there’s something we can learn, some way to make it as clean as it can be. But so many times, it’s not that the innocent teenager was really all that innocent, or that the cop was all that racist, or all that pure- it’s just that two opposing forces collided.
Forces we all hold inside us all the time.
We should talk about it.
***
Namaste.
***
The Dishwasher's Tears 
this is the most intelligent and thoughtful response I’ve read or heard yet and I’ve been thinking about you awful hard how it must be on your end and I’m so glad you wrote of it. as in all societal breakdowns it is the history that precedes the gunshot that we react to. love to you. be safe.
Rebecca-
Thank you.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt hesitant to put something up on my blog before, but I certainly was feeling it around this post. The last thing I want to do is add to the noise and confusion, or to cause any harm. But I really don’t hear anything like this being said, and I think it’s an important aspect of the dynamic that’s being totally overlooked.
Thank you, too, for your concern and your love. I have been thinking about you awful hard, too. And wishing and praying wholeheartedly for your happiness and peace.
Anyway, thanks. I’m relieved to hear that what I’ve said makes some sense.
yrs,
scott
Thank you so much for giving us a nuanced and thoughtful account of this tragedy. You’ve helped me see both sides which in this polarizing incident few people seem to have been able to do. Be safe in your work; we need you here.
Judy-
Thanks for the kind words and the well-wishes, I appreciate them. And you.
yrs,
Scott
Wow, thank you so much for this! I have avoided all the noise about this, all of it, can you believe it?! I just knew it would sicken and confuse me, and the whole us/them issue would be so big, so so big and made as complicated as people could make it. What you say resonates with my thoughts and I appreciate that very much. Thank you, and all the best for a wonderful day tomorrow when we will all hopefully pause to find all the things we can give thanks for…
Carroll-
Glad you came by, glad you found some value in my ramblings. And, yes, very much yes to the well-wishes for Thanksgiving!
yrs,
Scott
i am so glad you pushed past any discomfort or second thoughts on posting this – perhaps this post and you, will lead the discussion. you are on your path for a reason, some of which is to help others, to ease suffering, promote understanding. all of your posts are powerful, balanced, incredibly well thought out and written.
and necessary. but this one – this takes on a very specific, critical issue.
it is a human issue – and i really do agree with you on the power/loss of autonomy aspect to this.
i am so grateful to you for this – because there is so much that goes into such a tragedy as this. it’s tragic for all involved – and the trappings of suffering – the anger and frustration carry even further. it carries out like ripples – and business owners suffer losses in the rioting. understanding flows outward as well – and this post is like throwing a boulder into a pond. may it promote peace.
i sense this is groundbreaking – and i am grateful to have found you and your voice. you are a teacher – and i value what i learn from you.
Mary Jane-
Thank you so much for your response to this essay. I really do think it would be good if these thoughts could somehow percolate into the larger discussion that we’re already having- I can’t help feeling that we’re missing an important piece of the puzzle and the whole conflict doesn’t make any sense without it. But once you drop it in, things suddenly become much clearer.
And, yes, may it promote peace. For all of us.
I’m deeply humbled by your kind words and I so appreciate that you shared them with me.
Namaste,
Scott
We all view things from the lenses of our own knowledge and experience. Most of us don’t have either of those two things which you do have in abundance.
Here’s why it’s so difficult for me to be objective- I have known too many black young men who were shot by police officers in very, very questionable circumstances. One of my husband’s high school buddies, a very successful athlete, was shot in the back by the police “fleeing” while supposedly trying to carry a newspaper vending box to get the change out of it. I mean- every one knew that was a lie. And yet…the police absolutely got away with it. And the list goes on. Just of people I knew. And so, when another questionable shooting occurs, my first thought is…oh god. Another.
Which is unfair to everyone. And I know it. But it just does trigger that thought, those emotions in me.
But I am grateful for your perspective which is so much more balanced.
Mary-
Yes, I think it’s so important to recognize that there are many, many factors involved in these encounters, and that sometimes it really is racism, sometimes it really is a criminal cop doing criminal things, sometimes you just don’t know. Probably lots of times it isn’t even one thing or another, but its a mixture of some or all of them.
It’s just that we do a disservice to ourselves and to the conversation when we try to make it less complex than it really is, when we grab on to one aspect of it and run with it because it aligns with what we already know to be true.
And, you know, the other thing that I didn’t even bring up is the role of fear in these encounters- that’s a huge factor that almost no one talks about or considers, either. If we don’t think fear played a huge role for both of the men involved in this lethal encounter, we’re really missing something. And fear changes everything. You know that line from Dune, “fear is the mind killer,” well, that’s totally true. Once fear is running the show, the outcome is liable to be something that no one set out to see happen.
Anyway, thank you for your kind words, and for your honesty in sharing your own experiences and how they color how you see this event.
I hope your Thanksgiving is abundant and full of blessings!
yrs,
Scott
The intolerable piece of the puzzle for me was the testimony of Wilson which I heard for the first time last night: he “thought” he saw Brown “bulking up” like he “was” going to run at him, that “all [he] could see was his head, so [he] shot that”.
I don’t contest his right to shoot Brown in the car altercation- it was self-defense. But to gun a man down out of panic? Fear is a huge player, and that’s where latent racism comes into play- by and large black people are perceived as more threatening, more dangerous, more suspicious, and those split-second decisions that must be made are not conscious thoughts in an officer’s head. You are right about this being a “powerist” issue. That needs to be discussed; I have many family members who are officers and many family members who believe it is our job first and foremost to side with law enforcement, but these things have to be asked, and protested, and rebalanced, and sometimes destroyed altogether. We deserve to be kept safe. We also deserve to have our basic human rights upheld.
It will always be messy, as you say, but then there are the parts that must be changed. By God, they must be changed.
Kate-
Thank you so much for sharing your own thoughts on this difficult issue. I agree with you that things must change, and that process must begin with each of us laying open our own hearts and looking within at what is really there. Once our hearts are open, we can take wise action that can begin to effect real change. I hope this conversation can be a part of the change that needs to occur .
I am honored to have your voice here, thank you .
Yrs ,
Scott
I am so glad you wrote this post, glad you shared how things appear from where you stand because what we see is always, always affected by where we stand, always informed by our experiences up to that moment, and by the visceral desire to keep ourselves and especially our loved ones safe. You so clearly lay out the role that fear played in what unfolded; less clear are the tapes that were playing out at a subconscious level in Brown and Wilson and how these informed their split second choices, provoking each man to act in a certain way even before the underlying beliefs ever became conscious. This is where racial constructs run the show, too often masquerading as something else. And you’re right. It’s impossible for any of us to know for sure how it went down. We have only Wilson’s side of the story, which of course is self justifying. No doubt Brown’s testimony would have been equally so but we will never get to hear it. He’s dead. And so we’re left piecing the story together based on what makes sense from where we stand, the things we fear, the encounters we’ve had, the people we love and want to protect. Yes, we need to discuss it in nuanced ways. Because we need to bring the subconscious tapes that say Black men are scary and dangerous into the light of day. To Black men and those who love them, it’s White cops who are scary and dangerous. So: How would Wilson have approached Brown if Brown had looked like his cousin or brother? How would Brown have responded if he hadn’t likely held his own deep seated belief that this cop would have no regard for his humanity? We don’t know. So we have to make the unconscious conscious. You help to do that here by telling your truth and allowing me to tell mine, and holding out the possibility that we can find common ground on which to stand. At the very least we can admit that your truth does not negate my truth and vice versa. So thank you, dear Scott, for writing as you have, for caring enough to have the conversation. Love to you and Yolie.
You are so wise and compassionate! Thank you for bringing your perspective in, I think it’s so valuable. I don’t know if we can ever fully bring our subconscious mind into the open- I know that I am trying hard to do just that and I find small success at it. But talking about all of this with each other and contemplating it, going deeper and deeper , probing with skill and open-mindedness, is essential.
I wish I could be with you and your family around the kitchen table and just listen. I know I would learn so much from all of you.
I am blessed to have your friendship. Thank you for listening to my thoughts on all this.
Namaste,
Scott
I saw a rainbow the other day. Half of a rainbow, actually. Huge and gorgeous, a broken, incomplete arc of color juxtaposed against stormy grey clouds, each hue of its spectrum vivid, alive. The color that stood out for me, that spoke to me was a startling, fuchsia that seemed electric next to the purple it bled into. I wanted to take a picture of it, but no photo I could’ve taken would’ve expressed or proved the beauty of that half rainbow as I saw it in that moment. So, I took it into my skin and grey cells. I memorized it. My rainbow. Yes, that rainbow was mine. I claimed it, I named it. Laurel’s Fuchsia Moment. I’m sure other people saw that rainbow, but it was there for me. It was mine.
My rainbow has nothing to do with what you wrote here. Your calm, intelligent, articulate essay on what happened on that day in Ferguson is not rainbowy. But your writing conjured my father instantly, a man who was nothing if not calm, intelligent and articulate, a man who could see both sides of a story, or as the late great Paul Harvey used to call it, the rest of the story. I couldn’t see the other side of my rainbow anymore than I could see what happened or did not happen on that day in Ferguson. But I am certain that if my father were alive, he would’ve articulated a stance very similar to yours despite his lack of civil peace keeping.
Today is Thanksgiving. Brother, I am thankful that you are who you are, that your heart is as big as this world, and that you say what you say the way you say it. I am thankful for my half rainbow. How do I reconcile the beauty with the horror? I breathe. I see rainbows. And seeing something as momentary, as impermanent as a rainbow somehow lifts me up and gives me an undefeatable, indefatigable hope for this world.
Your happiness makes my heart glad, sister. You show me how love can and does change the world .
Yrs,
Scott
I still don’t understand how the cop, any cop, has the right to tell someone to get off the street in this arbitrary fashion. I would not tolerate it for myself, and I certainly wouldn’t tolerate if for my son.
In fact, I have gone to the station to have a conversation with the Sergeant over my honour-roll, Bach-loving, hospital-volunteering son being harassed at age 14, 6 foot 4 inches, because he happened to be at a basketball court in the housing project. He had gone there because it was the only outdoor court in town and he was a recruited athlete trying to get in some shooting practice. I know that my white nephews had never ever been stopped by police in our town, despite their weed-smoking and petty theft and brawling and rowdiness. My son always knew that he could not afford to be rowdy or to take a chance with youthful miscreation because of his colour, but it wasn’t enough.
I told that Sergeant my tale of my deep roots in this white affluent town, my honour roll son, the volunteering, the treatment that my nephews and brothers enjoyed and left the picture of my son to the end. When he saw the overachieving son of this white woman the surprise was evident. I told him I don’t expect a repeat of this harassment and he better make sure of it or I will know just who to call. It was never repeated, and before long my little boy was recruited, off to the US to a tony prep school and is now on a Fellowship at UPenn Law. But calling me and wondering if he is in danger in the US, is he a target, is it open season on young black men.
I have a cousin a cop and a lovely guy. I am old enough to remember when a cop was a friend, a wise and understanding member of the community, “To Serve and Protect.” Andy Griffith, Elmer the Safety Elephant and all that. When did they become quasi-military forces, interlopers in our communities? Why should black boys and their mothers have to go through this?
Tell me Tearful, I really want to know. I admire you and your thinking so much, but I can’t tell you the pain of watching a child who strives to do everything right, to work twice as hard as the other guy and yet the world signals to him that it is never quite “enough” to be seen as who he really is, instead of as a large young black man. His tailored suits, bowties, pocket squares, expensive shoes, soft voice, refined manner, law degree, none of it gets him one tenth the respect that his drinking, brawling blue-eyed cousins get. What can I tell him?
-invisigal
Dear Invisigal-
First, thank you for sharing your own experience with race and policing. I don’t have a black son, so I can’t know what you experience as his mother, but in reading your words I can sense the fear and sadness in them, and the bewilderment as well.
As far as what to tell your son, l am sure that you have already given him all the tools he needs to navigate these complex waters. We need to know how things really are. That is vital if we are to survive and thrive in the world. Once we know how things really are, we need to know ourselves intimately, and without distortion. Then we have to make up our own minds about how we should be in the world as it is, knowing what we know.
For myself I have chosen love and compassion as my default, coupled with the ability to kill anyone who is intent on harming the innocent. That’s just me, though.
I don’t have any wisdom to illuminate this issue for you, but I believe that talking about it in all its particulars is the only way to lay it open.
Thank you for your words here. May they bring benefit and clarity to us all.
Namaste,
Scott
Sorry to talk so much, but would it blow your hair back to know that police in the UK don’t routinely carry guns? My mother is from Newfoundland, which was part of England at that time, and their officers only started carrying guns in 1998, and I believe they carry them in the trunk of their cruiser. This in a land of large wildlife, bears, moose, etc. My husband is from the British Virgin Islands, a tiny nation in the Caribbean. Their cops, like their citizens, are black, to a man, and they don’t carry guns at all.
Maybe there is something to this “gun in play” stuff. But then again, I am Canadian.
-invisigal
I think that it’s society’s job to decide what it wants its cops to carry, and how it wants them to look and act. As one of the guys who has chosen this job, I want the tools that I think I need to stay alive and take care of business. I think it’s correct for you to tell me that guns in my hands make you feel unsafe, and that bullet-proof vests and helmets, although they keep me safer, make you feel like I am an interloper in your community. You decide what you want us to do and how we are to do it, and our job is to follow those guidelines. That’s why your voice must be heard.
Thanks again for sharing your own experience and thoughts.
Yrs,
Scott
glad I stopped by.
thanks, scott.
k.
Kay!!!!!!!
Dude I miss you, I can’t help it.
Thank you so much for stopping by and esp. For saying hello. I hope your Thanksgiving was awesomeness personified.
Yrs –
Scott
Thank you for your insightful piece, and I hope too that the public dialogue continues to go deeper. The split between wanting our freedom but also wanting the rule of law as long we aren’t personally affected, that divide seems an ocean. There are so many dichotomies: we want protection but we don’t want to see it too much. We are repelled by a show of force (Ferguson in August) but we want it when we need it, when the place is already burning down and looted (Ferguson now). Then it appears acceptable to see 2,200 national guard members and 500 cops in full riot gear. We dislike the militarization of our police forces but, as a nation, we train our 18 and 19 year olds to operate sophisticated, expensive military equipment and send them off to foreign soil to defend our freedom or someone else’s and possibly to die for us. Yet, we don’t want our police officers (who are usually older and vastly more experienced) to have that equipment here at home because it looks too jack-booted. It’s ugly; not our view of civil society at all. In the same breath, we want and love our guns. Need them, we say, for our own individual protection and liberty, our inviolable right as Americans. Night vision devices, huge ammo loads, armor piercing rounds, bullet proof vests, all publicly available. So, we have the most militarized public in the world. By the same token, it is the advances and availability in weaponry that, in part, have led to police departments’ need for better protective gear. Whiplash, anyone?
I can’t speak to the specifics of the Ferguson case because I don’t know. We don’t have the objective advantage of a camera to see the sequence of events clearly. We have physical evidence and the testimony of individuals. But my truth as a former law enforcement officer is similar to yours. (There are some differences: I was a 5’7″ white woman in a time when seeing someone like me on the street in uniform or in the squad room was as rare as a Yeti sighting.) Have I encountered an officer or two that I thought had racist or bigoted tendencies? Maybe someone with a badge who seemed a little too cranked up on the power ride? Yes. However, my overall experience is that the overwhelming majority of officers I have known joined the force for service of the community and for everyone who makes up that community.
I don’t have the experience of some mothers who have watched their children of color harassed by police. It hurts to hear about their pain, anger and fear. It really does. I do have other fears: I have a daughter currently serving in law enforcement. Her Dad and I have done our best to instill decency, common sense and honor in our children. Our daughter works hard and long hours for her community. She sees things no mother would wish upon her children. Ever. And I want her to have the best protective gear available to keep her alive.
It is hard to have a reasonable conversation about these topics when the ugly specter of racism is raised. But you’ve done a great service by providing balanced and thoughtful notions that go well beyond the color of one’s skin. Peace, brother.
Thank you for this in depth and intelligent response. I think your voice adds a lot to the discussion and I’m really glad you posted it.
I think, too, that you bring up the point that things are always, always more complex than they might seem on the surface- when talking about cops, most people don’t have you in mind. Were you on a male bullshit power trip when you were on the job? I don’t know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.
We really can’t say this or that without excluding so many who aren’t this or aren’t that, but are still part of the dynamic. And we’re quick to say that okay, even if there are some who don’t fit my conceptualization, most do, and that’s the only thing worth talking about.
I don’t know. These issues are so complicated and messy, but it seems to me that it’s vital to keep taking big, deep breaths, letting go when our emotions get too high, and then wading back into the discussion. Keep peeling away, keep open, keep exploring and questioning- especially as to what we think, especially as to the conclusions that we draw about what things really mean.
Anyway, glad to have your voice here. I hope that I get to see you and your husband at the center again if circumstances permit it. I will keep you both in my prayers.
Namaste,
Scott
Is it just out of the question for a cop to put his foot on the gas pedal when the guy is beating his head and thus get the hell away? And why so many shots? Why are some given guns to use when their judgement sees fit to do so and others not? Why guns at all? Why SO MUCH authority and POWER? I know there are no answers to these questions (except maybe the car one), but I appreciate your thoughtful response to this travesty and found it incredibly interesting. I have to admit to always having a problem with authority anyway (at least in my head), and despite your nuanced discussion, I still can’t help but shake my head at the bullshit that is law enforcement and the bullshit that is male power struggle.
Elizabeth-
I think you’ve put your finger on a very good potential action in that situation- stomping on the gas and driving away is an option- assuming his keys were in the ignition and the engine was running. Of course, that’s still a potentially lethal act- and one that could have resulted in running over the suspect, dragging him and causing his death, or running over his friend who was standing there, or hitting another pedestrian or striking an oncoming car- the variables are many. Maybe it would have worked, though. But it comes with it’s own set of potential problems.
The “so many shots” question comes up so much, and I can answer that one quite easily, although the answer will probably not please you or be one that you find yourself in agreement with. But I’m a firearms instructor and this falls squarely within my expertise.
Basically, the stopping power of the handgun round is not sufficient to actually make anyone stop doing what they’re doing that is making you shoot them in the first place. The bullet makes a little hole in your body and depending on where the holes are you start to leak blood from the wound, but you can still keep doing evil for a long time before blood loss causes you to lose consciousness. You can take a fatal round right to the heart and still beat on someone with a hammer for three or four minutes before you bleed out. Unless you make a central nervous system hit- brain or spinal cord- then you’re talking instant incapacitation. Also, usually, instant dead guy.
But I’ve seen bullets bounce right off someone’s forehead, or get stopped in the teeth, or zip around the head between the scalp and the skull and do very little damage, and certainly not stop someone.
So that’s one factor. The other thing is that usually both the suspect and the officer are moving dynamically, so there are often missed shots. Also, a big factor is the human physiological stress response to a deadly encounter. There are a host of physiological effects that occur during the fight or flight response- auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, decreased fine motor skills and dexterity, amped up heart rate and respiratory rate- and this goes for the bad guy, too, so that lots of times they don’t even react to being shot at all.
Under those massive stress loads, the higher functioning parts of the brain really shut down and people revert to instinctive reactions- they’re really just trying to survive and their body can kind of totally take over. It’s very, very common for someone in a shooting to just thrust their gun out at the threat and pull the trigger until the gun is empty- and they’ll tell you that they fired one or two rounds and then the gun stopped working.
So in lots of ways what looks like a massacre, like terrible overkill and bloodlust, is really just a natural response to a deadly threat- one that’s hard-wired into our nervous systems from millions of years of evolutionary selection pressure.
Of course, lots of training, lots of good training, lots of hard training, can give you what we call “stress inoculation”- you put yourself in the bad situation lots and lots of times, and the mind learns to adapt to that and you can lessen the stress response and free up more processing space and time in the brain to really think through your best options and tactics. This is the path that I’ve chosen for myself and it’s pretty effective. But there are still going to be situations that I can find myself in that totally overwhelm my own capacities, and I’ll end up in that fight or flight response just like an untrained person.
So, anyway, when I see someone who shoots someone else a bunch of times, especially when the suspect is charging the officer, or shooting at them or stabbing/slashing at them, to me that shows me that the shooter was really absolutely in fear for their lives. It’s an indicator that this was a very bad incident for the shooter- it isn’t evidence of a brutal, uncaring, predatory executioner. It’s evidence, usually, of someone who truly felt they were in a fight for their life.
Basically, the gun comes out when things are going very, very badly, and then the trigger gets pulled when things are unstoppably bad- there’s just no other option to make that threat stop- and then the trigger keeps getting pulled until the threat stops being a threat. That can be one shot, or it can be dozens.
Keep in mind that you can empty a full magazine in just a few seconds- it’s not slow and methodical at all.
Add into all of this the basic biomechanics of input processing- once you make the decision to shoot, it takes time for that signal to make it’s way to actually pulling the trigger- and then the same thing on the way out of the shooting- the officer has to see that the threat has stopped, then has to react to that, make a decision to stop applying force, and then actually stop shooting- all of which takes time. You see this often in cases where suspects are shot in the back- they’re facing the officer at first, pointing a gun, then the officer draws and decides to shoot- but meanwhile the suspect has already started turning away- by the time this information is processed by the shooter, the trigger has already been pulled and the guy gets shot in the back.
There are a lot of dynamics involved in these shootings and I could go on for hours and hours about it. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing that sounds like bullshit, until I can put a training gun in your hand and send you into a room where someone is going to maybe try to “kill” you. Once you experience it from that point of view, you might have a different way of thinking about it. Before that, though, it’s merely academic.
And maybe you don’t want cops to have guns at all. That’s a valid position to take. Cops can just investigate in the aftermath of bad acts, and then prosecute the offenders, and really take no public safety and welfare enforcement actions on a proactive basis. That would really cut down on the incidents of these tragic shootings- both of citizens AND police officers.
It’s something to consider.
Basically, the citizenry has to determine where they want the boundary drawn between personal freedom and societal control. But wherever that boundary line is drawn, there you will have conflict, messiness, killings, and tragedies- that’s the nature of the boundary itself.
We can’t escape responsibility for that boundary, we can only abdicate it.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and I hope that my input is of some value for you, and at least makes you think more about this issue.
Namaste,
Scott
Scott — THANK YOU for this thoughtful post. I have wrestled with the dynamics surrounding the recent police violence against black men and boys, and I appreciate hearing your thoughts. While I do think a subconscious racism often guides police to respond in one way or another — pulling a gun versus taking some other action such as driving away, as Elizabeth suggested — I also understand that those officers are scared and that their “stop-the-threat” training kicks in. I hadn’t really thought about how these incidents raise questions about the kind of policing we expect. You’re right that these are conversations we should have.
Several commenters pointed out that most police in the UK do not carry guns. That’s true, but criminals in the UK are also far, far less likely to have a gun than criminals in America. Guns are just so much harder to get here. (I am American but I live in the UK.) For me, that’s at the core of these incidents — the easy proliferation of firearms in America, and the fear that is generated in police by the knowledge that almost anyone they encounter is likely to be armed. THAT is the conversation we need to have.
Thank you for your blog.
Steve-
Thank you for sharing your perspective here, too. I appreciate hearing from you and I’m grateful for the kind words.
I don’t have any answers to these deep, complex, and persistent problems, but I do have some specific expertise related to deadly force encounters and the strange dynamics of interpersonal violence, and I’m glad if I can help shed a little light- not to exonerate or blame anyone, but merely to provide the grist for some additional milling.
I don’t think there’s much benefit to be had in wrestling with the wrong question, or wrestling with the right question in the wrong way, and it seems to me that by focusing only on race we’re ignoring a pretty powerful dynamic that is in play in most of these incidents.
Like I said, I don’t pretend to have the answers. I’m paying attention, though, listening and contemplating, trying to think deeply and honestly about the whole thing- especially looking within for how racism might be dwelling in me unacknowledged, driving me to treat someone one way or another. I don’t see much evidence for that, but I believe it’s important to keep looking for it.
Anyway, thanks again for coming by and sharing your thoughts.
Namaste,
Scott