The tensions between law enforcement and community are high in cities across the country where there have been a number of police involved shootings this year. The relationship has been strained for decades, where incidents of police brutality, excessive use of force, and other police misconduct have led to a severe breakdown in public confidence in the legitimacy of decisions made by police.
Yesterday, 13-year old Jimmell Cannon, a middle school student athlete, was shot eight times for pointing a BB gun at officers in Chicago. Earlier this month, five police officers stood trial for the fatal shootings of New Orleans residents seeking to cross the Danzinger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005.
In Miami, outrage over the police involved shootings of seven African-Americans this year has resulted in an investigation by the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, while violent crime rates declined by 5.3 percent last year, the third consecutive annual fall, more stories regarding police involved shootings are making the news.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, communities have continued to grow impatient with law enforcement since the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant. Recently, 19-year-old Kenneth Harding became the third police-involved shooting in two months in the Bayview/Hunters Point area of San Francisco after he allegedly fired at officers before they opened fire on him, sparking outrage among community members.
Last week, more than 40 people were issued citations during a large community protest against both the fatal shooting of Harding and that of Charles Hill, an older man who was shot on a BART platform earlier this month after publicly wielding broken glass as if it were a knife. Following these incidents, more than 300 community members gathered in a heated San Francisco town hall meeting regarding the matter of potential police misconduct.
These recent incidents in the Bay Area are complicated — because both of them include alleged threats against the safety of the police officers in question, so their actions may, in the end, be deemed “justifiable.” According to the FBI, 48 police officers across the country were killed in the line of duty in 2009. Policing is a dangerous job, and officers are trained to protect themselves.
According to San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr, ”[Harding] was shooting indiscriminately, more than one time…He fired at them, they fired back. That is what officers are going to do. If you fire at the police, they are going to shoot back.”
Further confounding the public’s reaction to this is the fact that Harding was a convicted pimp who engaged in the exploitation of girls as young as 13 years of age. Still, footage on YouTube has shown the officers failing to respond to Harding’s medical needs while he lay bleeding on the ground.
But while investigations may find that the level of force used by the officers were necessary, the legacy of the past is less forgiving.
In 1901, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that poor constructs of justice “indissolubly link crime and slavery as forms of the white man’s oppression. Punishment, consequently, loses the most effective of its deterrent effects, and the criminal [gains] pity instead of disdain.” In other words, if broken, all of the virtues of a justice system are lost. The relatively few bad apples do affect our taste for the entire crop.
In 1998, Chief Suhr and I were in the same Leadership San Francisco class. At that time, in response to my open criticism of the Department, he told me that he wanted to change my perception of law enforcement. Overall, I believe that he wants to lead a department in which fairness prevails. Unfortunately, history’s troubled imprint is not something that can be erased through training alone. Across the nation, civil rights advocates generally agree that training within the police academy and among active officers is insufficient, particularly on addressing implicit bias.
In the Bay Area, time will tell if the structural reforms implemented after the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant, including the creation of the new independent investigator position, will lead to an increased public confidence in fair and just decisions being rendered in police-involved shootings.
Ultimately, in addition to developing a much more robust training curriculum to support a fair enforcement of laws in every community, we must also create more opportunities for meaningful response strategies to crises that can build trust and prevent the spread of violence of any kind.
Our collective response, in addition to ongoing efforts toward reconciliation, must include litigation, legislative responses, public education and infrastructure development toward to the goal of collective, public safety.
If our ultimate goal is to create peaceful environments — in Chicago, San Francisco, Miami and every community — we have to structure response systems that provide a continuum of tools and options such that in the end, no shooting is justifiable.