SIFTED & WEIGHED
"The gullible believe anything they’re told; the prudent sift and weigh every word."
Proverbs 14:15 MSG
Proverbs 14:15 MSG
Last week Stephon Clark, 22, was shot and killed by Sacramento police. Police were responding to a report that a black man was breaking car windows in the neighborhood. A police helicopter reported seeing a person looking into cars and breaking a patio door/window. This person, they said, ran through several backyards trying to elude police surveillance. Two officers on the ground caught up to the man they believed to be the suspect in the car break-in’s and ordered him to stop but did not identify themselves as police officers. When he stopped they ordered him to show them his hands. When he did, they fired 20 shots, killing him. The police allege that Clark had something in his hand which they thought was a gun. It was, in fact, a cell phone. That is what separates this fatal, police shooting from the other 243 that have taken place so far in 2018. He was unarmed. The killing of unarmed civilians by police has been much in the news for the past few years. According to the Washington Post police shooting database and confirmed in two other sources, police shot and killed 68 unarmed people in 2017, up from 51 in 2016 but down from 94 in 2015. The Guardian ran and in-depth study of police shootings in 2016 called “The Counted.” Here is their conclusion: The Counted was launched on 1 June, logging 464 deaths in the year to that point. At that time 102 or 22% of those killed had been unarmed. This proportion has since fallen slightly to 20% or 198 of the total 1,000. In 59 deaths, however, it remains unclear whether the suspect was armed. [This number would account for the disparity between the figures in the Post and the Guardian.] As of 1 June, black Americans were more than twice as likely to be unarmed as white Americans when killed by police. At that point 32% of the 135 black people killed by police had been unarmed, compared with 15% of the 234 white people. This disparity has since shrunk, with 26% of the 248 black people and 18% of 490 white people being recorded as unarmed. If the Sacramento case plays out as most others, the police will rationalize the shooting with one of two defenses, perhaps both: 1.) The victim did not obey a lawful police command; or 2.) I thought the victim had a gun. The first defense is not offered so often by police as by their civilian defenders on social media and in private conversations. “If he just would have done what the officer said he would be alive, today.” The second defense might be credible if the victim is holding one of those toy guns that looks uncannily like the real thing, but when the item in the person’s hand turns out to be a cell phone or a wallet, the viability of the defense is considerably diminished. To the families of the victims and, especially in minority communities where the majority of these shootings take place, as long as these two defenses of police officers who shoot unarmed civilians are accepted without question, they sound like a license to kill. Inevitably, we know, that those officers will be placed on paid administrative leave until it is determined by a group of fellow officers that they did nothing wrong. And even if they are found to be at fault the most we can usually expect is that they will be fired from their job or forced into early retirement. And whether this is true or not, it is the perception with which we must deal. The problem with all of this lies at the very foundation of our justice system. When unarmed people are killed by police, the police are acting as judge, jury, and executioner. The victims are assumed to have done something wrong, the police try to make an arrest, the victims resists, the police assume they are guilty and kill them. But that’s not how our system of justice is supposed to work. We are innocent unless (not until) we are proven guilty in a court of law. “Until” assumes that we will, eventually, be convicted. No, we are innocent “unless” we are convicted. So, every time police shoot and kill an unarmed person they are executing an innocent man or woman. Solutions? I can imagine some, but let me first be clear that it is not my job to create legal remedies for this problem. That’s what we elect legislators to do. If you want me to come up with solutions, elect me to office. That said, however, her are a couple of thoughts. 1.) The law should say in clear terms that police may not shoot an unarmed person simply because they are non-compliant with a command, even a clear and direct command. Use a taser. Overpower the person with physical strength or numbers. But, if no one is placed in danger by the non-compliance, you aren’t allowed to kill them. That seems like a no-brainer to me but, given the number of unarmed shootings we see each year, maybe not. 2.) Police must be trained to tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun. Cell phones are ubiquitous and of a size that young people routinely carry them in their hands. If you can’t tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun you are going to be shooting a lot of innocent people. So, let’s turn the training up a notch. This may mean waiting just an extra beat or two before opening fire. I know, people will argue that that beat or two could cost police lives but police officers are paid to risk their lives and I am confident that they can come up with a safe way to wait two seconds before killing someone. As it is, the absence of that beat or two is costing the lives of innocent civilians. 3.) The command, “let me see your hands” must be abandoned. In several cases the victims have complied with this command while holding a cell phone or something else in one hand and, upon seeing it, police have opened fire. A command to “empty your hands” would be more reasonable and safer. People are not going to show their hands if they think that doing so will lead to them being shot and killed. 4.) Toy manufacturers must be held to account for making toys that look like real guns. This goes for BB guns and pellet guns as well. States must begin to require clear, identifiable markings that differentiate between real guns and toy guns. I’ll let them figure out the details but those details are crucial as the cost of inaction will be the loss of more lives. 5.) Police officers who shoot unarmed people must be held to the same standard as civilians who shoot unarmed people. The same laws should apply to both. “It was an accident” may make it a tragedy but it doesn’t mitigate the fact that a person’s life has been lost and someone is accountable for that death. Losing your job and moving to a different community to be a cop does not seem adequate. Our democracy cannot stand if police killings of unarmed civilians are dismissed with equanimity. We have always been a nation not of persons but of laws and we will be safe in our homes only as long as we continue to be precisely, that.
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Saturday, March 24, 2018 -- Columbus, Ohio Those who grow rich by manufacturing killing machines, and their lackeys in the NRA, love to talk about their dubious “God given right” to make, sell, and own guns. But that so-called right is not God given, my friends. It comes from the minds of the privileged, white men who wrote and ratified the Constitution of the United States 229 years ago this month. It is, literally, a man made right and privilege. There is no divinity in it. So, today, we gather together to put the lie to the claim of divine approval for gun ownership. Today, we are met in this place to speak of real God given rights, rights that have been conveniently forgotten by those who worship at the altar of weaponry. It was not in the Constitution but in the Declaration of Independence that those God given rights were first articulated, when Thomas Jefferson, borrowing from philosopher, John Locke, and reminded us that we are all created equal and that we are endowed by our Creator “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those are our God given rights, brothers and sisters. And they are the rights that are being stolen from us, our children, and our grandchildren by those who insist that their manufactured and unfettered right to own instruments of death somehow trump our rights to live and be free. Gun fetishists speak loudly of their rights but tell me, please, what about the rights of Hannah Ahlers, the 34-year-old, a wife of 17 years, and the mother of three young children who was killed in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire on country music concert? What about the rights of Jesse Lewis, 6 years old, "just a happy, little boy" who was supposed to make gingerbread houses with his family after school but was gunned down, killed at Sandy Hook? And what about the rights of Scott Beigel, a geography teacher who was gunned down after he opened and attempted to relock his door to let a group of students into his classroom at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just a few, short days ago? What about the rights of the 461 people who were killed in mass shootings last year, and the 11,000 killed by guns in the USA every year? What about their rights? Their God-given rights of life and liberty? Well, according to the gun manufacturers, their lickspittles at the NRA, and the gun worshippers whose god is the killing machine and whose holy writ is the 2nd amendment, the answer is more guns. More guns in people’s hands and more bullets in the air. This is their prescription for life, liberty, and happiness. And this, brothers and sisters, is idolatry of the most blatant and egregious kind. By it they cultivate hate and fear so they can justify arming themselves with instruments of pain and death against the very neighbors we are called to love. It is surrender to that hopelessness and despair that would turn this country into a state of perpetual war between, in their words, “good guys with guns and bad guys with guns.” It is the destruction of every good principle, every good value, every good thing that people of faith proclaim and upon which this country was founded. And it is for that reason that we are gathered here, today, to say to these disciples of violence, “No. We’ve had enough. You shall not press down upon the brow of youth this thorny crown made of bullets. You shall not crucify our children and grandchildren upon a cross made of guns.” LET US PRAY: GRACIOUS AND LOVING GOD CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THAT IS IN IT WE COME TO YOU WITH HUMBLE AND CONTRITE HEARTS FORGIVE OUR PROCLIVITY FOR VIOLENCE FORGIVE OUR FAILURE TO LOVE OUR ENEMIES AS YOU HAVE COMMANDED US TO DO FORGIVE OUR ARROGANCE AND PRIDE FORGIVE US WHEN WE PLACE OUR FAITH AND TRUST IN INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH AND NOT IN YOUR LOVE AND KINDNESS WALK WITH US, O GOD, AS WE SEEK TO BE PEOPLE OF PEACE AND LOVE ARM US WITH GRACE ARMOUR US WITH LOVE BLANKET US WITH RECONCILIATION AND MAKE US INSTRUMENTS OF YOUR PEACE WHERE THERE IS HATRED, LET US SOW LOVE WHERE THERE IS INJURY, PARDON WHERE THERE IS DESPAIR, HOPE WHERE THERE IS SADNESS, JOY WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS, LIGHT. GRANT, O GOD, THAT WE MAY NOT SO MUCH SEEK TO BE CONSOLED AS TO CONSOLE, TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS TO TO BE LOVED AS TO LOVE. AMEN Walk in peace, brothers and sisters. Walk in peace. |
AuthorDean Feldmeyer is the author of 5 novels, 4 non-fiction books, three plays, and over 100 essays, articles, poems, and short stories, some of which can be found on this web site. Archives
January 2020
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