There's Only We: Keepin' It Real and Clear in Challenging Times....

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
 

- The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

 

Today, Officer Rafael Ramos is being eulogized and laid to rest.  It's a sad day for us all, but especially for his family and those who were privileged to know him during his earthly life.  And it will be so, too, when we honor the life of Officer Wenjian Liu, his partner.  There are no words that can capture the tragedy of the precipitating event fully, though senseless and inhumane begin to point the way.  The officers' execution a week ago is an horrific reminder of just how inhumane we humans can be sometimes....

 

And yet Ismaayil Brinsley, their killer, is both an afterthought and a symbol.  He's an afterthought because his own self-inflicted death accomplished nothing and perhaps actually made this situation worse, as we will never have the opportunity to try to understand why, specifically, this tragedy occurred.  To be clear, I don't think that we would've gotten a cogent answer from someone who was clearly deranged, but I do think that we may have had an opportunity to understand better both the causes and manifestations of Mr. Brinsley's mental illness so that we can endeavor to prevent them from metastasizing again such a lethal way.

 

Which is why I believe that Mr. Brinsley is also a symbol, in this latest case of our failure as a society to address mental illness effectively and thereby subjecting ourselves to the too often deadly consequences of this choice.  Simply put, better mental healthcare may not have prevented this particular tragedy, but it would be hard to argue that a better system thereof wouldn't reduce the number of such tragedies (and possibly their severity) in a meaningful way.  After Columbine ... Virginia Tech ... Sandy Hook ... the DC Navy Yard ... and now this, can we at least agree that we need to address mental illness in a far more consequential way than we have thus far?

 

(Notice that I used ellipses to allude to the dozens of shooting incidents between the listed tragedies and also that I've left unaddressed the twin issue of gun control as, sadly, I've almost come to accept that we'll never come to any reasonable and meaningful progress on this issue.)

 

Why did all of this happen in the first place?  Proximately, one could posit that a deranged man decided to assassinate two NYPD officers in retribution for Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island, as the killer is reputed to have claimed before his heinous act.  And yet the reality is that it's happened in the context of a massive, legitimate protest movement in response to these unfortunate - and unpunished - police-involved deaths.  But this has been lost amidst the media's virtually exclusive focus on the NYPD tragedy in the past week.

 

And that's the point: it's hard to believe that it's a coincidence that the focus on addressing police brutality in its most lethal form has been virtually totally lost in favor of the legitimately heart-rending family tragedies of Officers Ramos and Liu.  Again, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be present for the slain officers' families and NYPD colleagues, we most certainly should be ... and especially so after the glare of the cameras goes away soon after the funerals.  What I am saying is that we owe it to ourselves - and to the slain officers' families - to multitask, which in this case means staying focused on the police lethality issue as well.

 

Sadly, though, this situation has been hijacked because its politicization is virtually complete: I'm still trying to figure out who's more reprehensible, former NYC Mayor Giuliani for trying to blame President Obama for this tragedy - apparently some of us were wrong that there had to be something for which the president couldn't be blamed - or NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch's blaming it on current NYC Mayor DiBlasio.  When on earth has any modern-era elected official seen it as a personal, positional and/or societal benefit to encourage and/or endorse the slaughter of innocents?  Only the most craven among us would try to make this an Us vs. Them situation, which, at least for now, is what it seems to have become.

 

But why?  As far as I can tell, don't we all benefit from more effective policing, which, among other things, means less lethal policing (especially in Communities of Color)?  Isn't it better for us all if the police are rightly seen as our supporters, protectors and advocates in the achievement of public safety rather than an occupying force prone to prey on the least of us, especially Black and Brown males?  I couldn't agree more with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show who has presciently suggested (yet again),

 

"You can truly grieve for every officer who's been lost in the line of duty in this country, and still be troubled by cases of police overreach.  The two ideas are not mutually exclusive.  You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them held to a high standard."

 

This is not an Us vs. Them issue as if those of us in the community are separate and apart from those who are sworn to serve and protect us.  This is an Us issue, period.  Whatever decreases safety in our communities imperils police officers, too, and whatever improves it benefits both citizen and cops.  We truly are in this all together....

 

And yet we're not:  In many communities, where police have acted more like an occupying force, citizens are legitimately wary of them, often beyond the point of suspicion to active distrust.  So, too, within many police forces, the combination of (mostly) living outside of the community being policed and having to deal disproportionately with the dregs of our society leads to a detachment from those ostensibly being served and protected.  These are both underlying causes that deserve more address.

 

In fact, I can't recall the last time that I heard a police official acknowledge a mistake publicly, although, logically, with hundreds of thousands of officers and hundreds (if not thousands) of unfortunate police-community/suspect interactions each year, statistically speaking, some of them have to be mistakes.  With respect to New York City, the names Diallo, Bell and many, many others come to mind.  Are our police leaders beyond accountability (and, even worse, devoid of humanity)?

 

Yet, we have to acknowledge three realities about how we typically interact with the police, especially in communities where the estrangement is greatest:

 

First, we tend to lump them all together rather than treat them as individuals, which, it turns out, is exactly what we ask them to do with respect to us (i.e., "Don't treat me poorly - by profiling me, stopping and frisking me, etc. - because I'm a young Black male; get to know me as an individual," etc.).  We tend to speak of "the police" universally as if each of them is equally responsible for the actions of a (very) few offenders among them (much like we as members of certain groups don't want to be associated with the transgressions of a few members whom we typically don't know or whose behaviors we, too, detest).  Until we're willing to acknowledge them as a collective of individuals, we lump them to our mutual detriment.

 

Second, we (most/too) often choose not to trust the police, more out of allegiance to a misguided communal ethic than because of direct experiences with certain unprofessional (and, possibly, inhumane) members thereof.  Before I keep going, let me acknowledge that in certain (typically urban, poor and violence-infested) neighborhoods, this distrust is earned by the harassment to which many - especially young Black men - are indiscriminately subjected by members of law enforcement.  Driving While Black (DWB) and its unfortunately myriad variations are real and the actual, lived experience of too many (including me, a suburban, upper middle class Black man).  In these situations, I understand the inclination toward mistrust ... but the reality is that most of us - even those of us of Color - don't have this direct negative experience with the police, so we need to change our approach.  We can't have it both ways: we can't choose not to cooperate with the police and then blame them for the level of crime by which we're being victimized and that they, in turn, are receiving little if any help to address.  In fact, the accountability imperative increases in direct proportion to our level of cooperation and collaboration.  If we really want to experience the benefits of public safety, we have to partner meaningfully and constructively with them.  Only in this situation, in which we've provided them the greatest possible cooperation, can we hold them fully accountable for the outcomes that we seek.

 

Third, we must acknowledge the reality of the nature of policing by reflecting deeply on the answer to this question:  When do we call the police?  The answer is, in virtually every situation, when things have gotten out of control and we can't handle it anymore.  Into this morass, we invite the police to dive in and in so doing to resolve it both for our benefit and to our satisfaction.  In short, to be in law enforcement is to be the option of last resort.  Think about this carefully for a moment.  How hard must it be to be involved in situations that are disproportionately out of control and at a minimum confused/confusing and, too often, dangerous (if not potentially lethal)?  Let's face it, very few jobs are as difficult as being a policeman or policewoman.  Which doesn't mean that we condone their misbehavior, just that we must understand the conditions that can give rise to it amongst the less skilled or principled members of law enforcement.  Yes, police officers should know what they're getting into when they sign up for the job, but, so, too, we should acknowledge how difficult the job is that we're asking them to do.

 

If, all day every day, almost exclusively, you were asked to address nothing but problems - some of which could be quite dangerous for you personally - how do you think that you'd do?  Do you think that you might eventually begin to build up a psychic armor to protect yourself from this virtually constant negativity?  Do you think that you might tend to be more suspicious than the average person?  Which, again, isn't to say that we should allow police malfeasance, just that we need to appreciate the circumstances that can and too often do give rise to it.  We need to be compassionate enough to understand why the police often don't trust us while we also hold them accountable to acting conscientiously and professionally.

 

Which is what this is really about: we need to continue to honor those who serve and protect us - especially in life but also in death - while we continue to expect and hold them accountable to being compassionate, constructive and equitable in their service and protection.  We want the police to be protected, too, as we are, but this doesn't mean that they're allowed to violate our rights in doing so.  The Golden Rule applies still: the police don't want to be targeted so they should respect that we don't want to be, either.  And when outcomes are disproportionate, they must own and address them in collaboration with us, especially deftly and humanely in the segments of the community that are most and most often disadvantaged by their actions.  After all, we are all safest when the police are our partners, when we're safe and they're safe, when we are we and they are, too....

 

So, please consider this: isn't the best way to honor the lives of Officers Ramos and Liu (and all of those who've made the ultimate sacrifice in our service) to strive to have their legacy be that more of their fellow are like them?  They're being lauded as exemplary officers and people, so why not work together to insure that we can say this about everyone who has the opportunity to protect and serve?  And should a few members of law enforcement misbehave, let's commit to treating these unfortunate situations for what the are: aberrations by individuals that shouldn't be excused but understood and improved upon by the collective (which is admittedly supremely hard to do in the worst/most lethal of these instances).

 

In the end, there's no winning a war against the police or gain in conceiving of and acting as if this is an Us vs. Them situation.  The only victory is in seeing this as a We situation and working together accordingly.  Just like there are a few aberrant members in every family, in our communal family there are misbehavers who're civilians and those who're cops.  We all lose if we demonize either or both groups.  Our only solution is to extend the compassion and understanding that we'd want in situations involving a close relative to our more distant fellows, be they citizens or constables.  Our only solution is We, even - or perhaps especially - in situations when we may be deeply hurt by our fellows and our anger is authentic/right but not effective if expressed inappropriately.

 

Young Mr. Brinsley was angry (in addition to being deluded), but this didn't justify his heinous actions.  So, too, with the pack of officers - one of whom clearly applied a prohibited choke hold  - who wrestled Eric Garner to ground and, sadly, to his death (despite his protestations that he couldn't breathe).  None of us can breathe when we lose our humanity completely ... and, increasingly, our nerves frayed by too many tragic occurrences, it's hard for us to do so when we lose it even a little.

If we expect our police brothers and sisters to behave more responsibly and humanely in their service, especially with members of our communal family who may not look like them and live differently than they do, then we have to help them do so.  When we choose not to trust, then we can't demand trust in return.  Only by acknowledging our interrelation, however costly, can we live in harmony and peace.  Only if we truly live in alignment with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's memorable words quoted above can we all be protected and served.  Only if there's We will there be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all in our land....