At some point the actual conversation needs to commence.
Throughout the many injustices of police brutality towards particularly unarmed people of color, at some point the microscope needs to zoom out to allow for actual progress to be possible. I believe this is the special situation that can spark the change the Black community has especially been clamoring for. Today, Amber Guyger--a 31 year old former Dallas police officer--was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of the September 2018 murder of Botham Jean. Guyger claimed that the apartment she was entering the night of the incident was her own, and upon coming in contact with Botham--the true inhabitant of the apartment--fired two fatal bullets in reacting out of fear to the prospects of a potential burglar. The details of the case can be inspected and debated ad nauseam. After watching the testimony, I believe Amber Guyger was guilty of the crime in question and should have been sentenced to serve time in prison. Under questioning, Guyger's lack of appropriate follow-up action in face of what had been admitted to be a mistake--an intentional mistake--felt most damning. Yet the most poignant pieces, for me, came in the discussion of training; the prosecutor drawing a parallel to Guyger utilizing her training in assessing danger and incapacitating said threat to seemingly not continuing with training in administering aid such as CPR that could have saved Botham's life. While the temptation is within arm's reach to levy this charge of inconsistencies regarding training on Guyger, I have a better target in mind: Guyger's profession. The shooting did not take place in the line of duty, this circumstance could have befallen any of Guyger's co-workers on any given day. Being a police officer is not an easy job and there are bound to be grueling, disorienting days that may result in inadvertently being on the wrong floor or keying into the wrong apartment. There is no context to battle over here, where Botham Jean's actions or deeds could be misconstrued and misinterpreted in a rationale to justify Guyger's decision to fire her weapon. And it is just that action Guyger took in response to the emotion she faced in that moment that perfectly aligns her profession in the cross-hairs that the job should have found itself in similar cases of 'excessive force'. The prosecutor cross-examining Guyger spent a decent amount of time focusing on the training the former officer had in de-escalation. In my estimation, this appeared to be a topic Guyger did not feel too drawn to from her time in the academy. The point the prosecutor attempted to get across was that Guyger should have taken the time to figure out why a strange man could have been in her apartment in the first place. There was mention of repairs that were taking place around the general time of year the incident occurred. Even the door being ajar or noticing distinctions within the unit that did not coincide with Guyger's abode all serve as inquiries that might have come up in a de-escalation situation compared to what actually took place. This bit on de-escalation and the police is not solely lost on Guyger alone--it is a point I made previously in Protect and Serve--in calling to question exactly what role guns ultimately need to play in diffusing a tense situation. In the instances of Philando Castile or even Trayvon Martin, the stench of the true culprit is loud: fear. Particularly, the authority to respond to fear using lethal--and unnecessary--force. And yet instead of having this conversation, as a whole we get wrapped up in a question of if the assailant's primary motive was born out of racism. Here's what 'you' sound like when questioning Guyger, Zimmerman, or Daniel Pantaleo's penchant for racism; the same people that rush to point out that the perpetrators of mass shootings are mentally ill. That is, 'you' are assisting in pigeon-holing progressive dialogue by individualizing an epidemic. One mass shooting is not about the gunman, the same way Botham Jean's death is not about Guyger. The question of the latter should be: what is it about police and the concessions they are afforded that loans itself to the justification of numerous, uncalled for homicides of people of color? Again, it is that these humans--who may or may not be afflicted with possessing subconscious biases against people of color--have the authority to respond to these often times irrational-in-the-moment fears by shooting first instead of de-escalating first. And as I asked in Protect and Serve related to the profession of a police officer and mentioned regarding society overall in So It Goes: A Weak and Stupid Country, if we keep proving time and time again that we cannot responsibly handle guns then why do we have them? I ask again, of police officers specifically, if there are officers within the ranks and there is no ability to spot these people in the vetting process then is it truly asinine to begin to question the role guns play in de-escalation strategies? Might the de-escalation training have greater impact and effectiveness if officers did not have the authority to utilize lethal and excessive tools that seem more geared towards killing than it does calming tense situations? When 'you' are ready to have the real conversation, come see me--I've been waiting. |
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Ty FosterQuestion everything. WQHC Archives
June 2020
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