by
Mwizenge S. Tembo
Author of “Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture”.
Professor of Sociology
Huge peaceful public demonstrations have gone on for many days from coast to coast in protest of white Police officers killing unarmed black men. Three of the numerous cases are so outrageously tragic. A twelve year old African American boy Tamir Rice was playing alone with a toy gun in a public park. The video shows the Police Cruiser driving up to him within feet and the boy was shot dead in less than two seconds. Eric Garner in New York gasped for his breath as he said 11 times “I can’t breathe” as one of the more than 5 police officers chocked him to death because of he was allegedly selling loose cigarettes or mishanga; loose cigarettes in my native country of Zambia.
Police officers maintaining peace in a city 4th of July Independence Day parade.
John Crawford was a 22 year old African American man playing with a harmless bb gun in a Walmart store. The victim had no chance. The video shows he was on his cell phone talking to his girlfriend and not even paying attention. He wasn’t threatening any one. The police shot him dead within less than 10 seconds. In both of these cases all it took was for a white person to call the police saying there was a black man with a gun. These cases are now just an endless epidemic. What has gone wrong? Are the police racist, out of control, and trigger happy?
We cannot arrive at useful solutions unless we understand what is going on beyond these tragic incidents. If you are looking for one quick simple answer such as because of the “racist white police” or “the black victims resisted arrest and were thugs and deserved to die”, you may need to rethink.
The first thing that should be clear is that the vast majority of Police Officers in almost all communities perform their jobs very well in keeping the public safe. They follow the rules. But just as in every organization you will get a few rogue officers whose idea of policing may be distorted by racism or the Hollywood movie images of the thrill of shooting bad guys. Otherwise how does one understand the most recent case in which a rookie police officer was reportedly patrolling a public housing stairway with a drawn gun which accidentally fired and shot dead a completely innocent black man? It is common knowledge that we tell children not to run in the house holding a knife, folk, pencil, sharp stick or object? Why would a police officer be running around in a staircase with a drawn gun?
Some of the major reasons why the police are shooting black men are that there are too many guns in America an estimated 270 to 310 million guns or 101 guns per 100 citizens including babies. Forty years ago, many of the poorest neighborhood small time gangs in American ghettoes did not have guns. There may also be an estimated 3 million people today who may have mental illness in America who may need to be institutionalized but they may not be getting medical treatment. Families are managing these people and some are on the streets and are among the homeless population. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) says that blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009; 841,000 black males and 64,800 black females out of a total of 2,096,300 males and 201,200 females in the jail population. These same statistics are used as a justification for police racial profiling of black men. Lastly, the recent proliferation of digital social media may have weakened both the citizens and the police’s social skills and ability to socially interact with each other in an amicable manner.
So when the police attend to calls, they may be dealing with very highly volatile situations. Many of these black victims in these police encounters are either innocent or deserve a day in court and not to be killed. We may need to think of all these factors before we find a solution to white police officers shooting unarmed black Americans.