Whenever a white cop kills a black man there is the immediate suspicion within the black community that the dead man was the victim of a racist cop
There is no denying that no love is lost between the black community and the predominantly white police. Whenever a white cop has a physical confrontation with a black man in a black neighborhood, bystanders will look at it through the eyes of people who believe the police threat them unfairly. This means that in many cases they see what they want to see – evidence of a racist cop. Worse yet, if that confrontation leads to the death of the black man, some will see what they want the media to know, even though deep down they know that’s not the way it went down.
Every so often, a white cop ends up shooting an unarmed black man in a black neighborhood. The shooting may or not have been justified, but the black community will be in an uproar well before all the true facts on the confrontation will have been established. Sometimes that uproar includes rioting, looting and burning. That’s what happened Sunday night in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.
On Saturday afternoon, a white Ferguson police officer shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, to death.
From the Los Angeles Times, here is the police version:
According to [St. Louis County Police Chief Jon] Belmar, Brown was walking with a friend in the middle of the street when an officer attempted to exit his vehicle. Police said Brown pushed the officer back into the police car.
Brown then entered the officer’s vehicle and a struggle ensued over the officer’s weapon, according to police. During the altercation a shot was fired inside the car.
The officer and Brown then exited the vehicle and at that point the fatal shooting occurred, Belmar said. Brown was shot “more than just a couple of times,” but it was unclear how many shots were fired, the chief said.
Here is the version accepted by the black community:
The police chased after Brown, full force. He ran for his life. They shot him and he fell. He put his arms up to let them know that he was compliant and he was unarmed, and they shot him twice more and he fell to the ground and died.
Sunday night a peaceful protest by hundreds of blacks turned into an ugly riot. A dozen business were damaged. Stores were looted and a convenience store set on fire. While Belmar and Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson were standing in a Walmart parking lot, a car drove by and three shots were fired at the two police chiefs.
On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered the FBI to investigate the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
I do not know which version of the shooting in Ferguson is true. There is a good chance that neither version is true. Which brings me back to the root problem in effect when a white cop shoots a black man – the black community will believe the black man was the victim of a racist cop.
Only three of the Ferguson Police Department's 53 officers are black, while about two-thirds of Ferguson's 21,000 residents are black. That is a formula for a riot waiting to happen.
To end those racist cop accusations, I have a simple solution for police agencies: Do not assign any white cops to work in black neighborhoods! Let white cops patrol white neighborhoods and have only black cops patrol black neighborhoods. If you don’t have enough black cops, hire more of them. It will cost your city less money to hire those black cops than it will to pay for the damages resulting from riots.
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