Category: Police

WASHINGTON POST SPORTS SCORES!

This was supposed to have been a commentary on the Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, I shut down over the repulsive narrative of Donald Trump singlehandedly defeating the coronavirus and championing the cause of Black people. Drastic times call for drastic actions.  So, for the first time since leaving journalism school, I started reading the sports section.

To say that I am not a sports fan would be an understatement on a par with the assertion that Yogi Berra was not a skilled linguist.   There are, I suspect, some traumatic youthful memories prancing about in the deep reaches of my hippocampus that might explain my estrangement with competitive athletics. Suffice it to say they remain beyond the scope of this essay. The single purpose of this paragraph was to establish my bona fides as a confirmed sports news nonreader. Until now.

I had imagined the sports pages as almost a parallel universe, an abyss of meaningless scores and statistics on the way to the classified ad section. To the delighted astonishment of my wondering eyes, this was far, far from the case.  At least in our local newspaper, The Washington Post. 

These sports writers have managed to elegantly and empathically capture the poignant and painful ethos of our long summer of racial reckoning. And they have done so in a manner – and with a depth – that far and away surpasses most of the straight news reporting I’ve seen on this issue.

The sports news of the week, of course, was the decision of most professional athletes to cancel games as a way of shining a light on yet another heartbreaking story of a Black person shot by a white cop, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Video shows the officer firing seven shots into the back of Jacob Blake, who remains hospitalized in serious condition, paralyzed from the waist down.

The immediate news reports were heartbreakingly formulaic, only because we’ve been through this too many times. Peaceful protesters march through the streets chanting the names of Black people felled by police. Late into the night, a few among the many of those marchers channel their rage into acts of vandalism, smashing and burning cars and storefronts.  This is when Trump reminds us once again that the only way for white America to feel safe is by reelecting him. 

The Post’s sports writers reached far beyond the inverted pyramid of basic news reporting. As a result, their storytelling wasn’t just about the Milwaukee Bucks leading an unprecedented strike for racial justice. They captured – as well as any words could – the pain of being Black in America in 2020.  Our language has inherent limitations when it comes to conveying the profoundly visceral. Yet, these sports reporters, to borrow a metaphor from their domain, hit it out of the park.   

Here’s what Post sports columnist Jerry Brewer wrote: “(Sports figures) do not exist in some imaginary world that can be turned on and off. They are people – part athlete, all human. To be Black and human is to know society can separate the former and dismiss the latter.”  That’s why, Brewer wrote in a later paragraph, that “NBA teams stopped dribbling because too many fellow citizens would rather they shut up and watch a man get shot in the back without feeling a sense of desperation.”

This sports coverage was replete with anecdotes about strong, macho, manly players and coaches reduced to tears over what it means to be Black in this country.  According to The Post, a New York Mets star sobbed in talking about his fear of what police might do to family members simply because they are Black. 

A Los Angeles Clippers coach was quoted by The Post as saying, “You hear Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.”

Post columnist Thomas Boswell, who is white, wrote about being deeply affected by such words from Black sports figures. Not just their words, but also their “facial expressions, their honest human anguish. . . their angry exhausted tears.”  

Wrote Boswell: “We white people don’t have to face the daily biases and injustices Black people experience. Nor do we have to live with the fear that we or a loved one might be choked to death or shot in the back seven times by a cop for a minor or imagined wrong. We just need to know it is profoundly wrong, and we need to stand and be counted against it.” 

Boswell then ties it all together with this conclusion: “The solution in any society in which one group opposes another is dependent on the majority viewing the afflicted minority as fully human and then saying: ‘Wrong. Our fault. Must be fixed.’”

Since I’m not a regular sports reader, I will go out on a limb and suggest that this is not typical prose for that section of the newspaper.  But right now, in these turbulent times, this is journalism at its best. Nothing involving race relations in this country has been the same since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer more than two months ago. These deaths have been occurring for. . .well, forever.  But it’s different now. 

The Post’s sports coverage explains why it is different.  We see in these stories the intense pain of millionaire athletic stars confronting the reality that they and their kids are just one police stop away from being killed.  We see revered sports heroes who are cheered during the game, only to lose their humanity when it ends. And we learn that we white folks will never fully comprehend the pain of being Black and treated as if you don’t matter, but that we need to see the injustice and fight to correct it.

The day may come when a rich blend of police reform and a healing of hearts eliminates the anxiety of Black people upon viewing a flashing squad car in their rear view mirror.  Basketball players can then go back to dribbling. Sports writers can go back to box scores and statistical spreadsheets. And I can go back to tossing the sports section into the recycle bin upon its arrival every morning.

Until then, however, I will turn first to the sports pages of The Washington Post to follow our reckoning of racial justice.  So far at least, nobody does it better.

BUSTING POLICE UNIONS: NOT A PANACEA FOR REFORM

Less than a month ago, police unions sat, with comfort and arrogance, atop the power pyramid of this country’s labor movement.  Through campaign contributions and endorsements, they curried favor with the politicians who legislate and negotiate their working conditions.  They won job protections most private sector union members could only dream of.

Then, in the eight minutes and 46 seconds it took Minneapolis police to kill George Floyd, all that leverage and power went poof. It may have been the quickest power reversal in labor history. 

Calling for profound structural changes in policing, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the first step is to deny police officers the right to bargain collectively.  Black Lives Matter and at least one national labor union have called on the AFL-CIO to kick all police unions out of the country’s labor federation. Scores of progressive commentators have jumped on this binary bandwagon, insisting on the elimination of cop unions (here, here and here). 

I will argue here that the choice is not binary, and that there are far better fixes for this mess than to deny collective bargaining rights to the 800,000 workers – including 175,000 people of color – who police the streets of this country.

Negotiating over employment terms – things like pay, vacation, insurance, discipline and a grievance procedure – is hardly the source of our policing problem. Collective bargaining is content neutral; it is a process, not a result. The content of the agreement produced by that process is largely determined by how much power each side has. 

Mayor Frey’s frustrations are understandable.  Minneapolis’ police union is led by a macho, right wing zealot whose resignation has been demanded by state and national labor leaders.  (Unfortunately, democracy – in a union or a country – is no guarantee that the elected leader won’t be an idiot.) Yet, Frey was being irresponsible and disingenuous when he said collective bargaining had to be abolished in order to achieve meaningful police reform. He, or someone on the city’s behalf, agreed to accept a contract he now says was a bad deal. 

So Mr. Mayor, instead of burning down the union hall, negotiate a better contract.  The power dynamics couldn’t be better for him, and for other cities that want to make it easier to rein in errant cops. A month ago, that wasn’t the case.  The power of police unions flowed from law enforcement’s generally high police favorability ratings. That, in turn, placed a high value on police union endorsements from public officials involved in negotiating contracts and writing laws.  That meant powerful leverage for police unions.

And they used that power well.  Discipline language in police contracts (here and here) goes far beyond the basic standard of fairness and due process used in most private sector labor agreements. For example, many police contracts purge prior discipline from an officer’s record. That means an arbitrator deciding whether to uphold discipline for excessive force will be barred from giving any weight to prior acts of brutality. Other provisions require cops accused of misconduct to be given days or weeks to prepare for an internal investigative interview.  Some contracts prohibit a civilian review board from meting out punishment, and others require police management to complete an officer’s investigation within a defined time period. Since an arbitrator’s job is to enforce the contract, many have overturned discharges on the basis that contractual disciplinary procedures were not followed.

In the three weeks since George Floyd’s murder, the pendulum has swung far and wide, from police union power, to a national consensus favoring massive structural changes in policing.  Polling shows that a substantial majority of Americans support recent protests and want meaningful police reform.  This overwhelming change in public opinion has pulled even Senate Republicans out of their comfort zone. Almost overnight, they developed a sudden dim view of the choke hold and no-knock warrants.

Police union leaders are going through a similar death bed conversion by realigning their goals to comport with the diminution of their bargaining power. The three largest PD unions in California took out full-page newspaper ads this week calling for reducing the use of the force, more officer accountability and a rooting out of racist cops.  Washington, DC police union leaders signaled an interest in loosening some of the contractual restraints on management’s ability to discipline. The national president of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the country’s largest police union, also expressed support for revising disciplinary rules.

The Supreme Court once referred to labor union contracts as “living documents,” meaning the parties can and should modify their agreements as conditions and circumstances change. There is no problem created by collective bargaining that can’t be fixed by more bargaining.  Calling for the abolition of police unions is a grotesque overreach.  More than 90 percent of most police contracts have nothing to do with the issues triggered by the murder of George Floyd.  They cover such matters as pay, clothing and equipment allowance, work schedules, vacations, holidays, sick leave, insurance benefits and drug and alcohol testing.  

The policing problem now before the country, of course, goes far beyond a few incorrigibly abusive officers. The “defund the police” rhetoric of Black Lives Matter, and others, speaks wisely to a need to completely reimagine the role of dealing with public safety.  Why would we want to break all of the police unions before doing the reimagining?  Wouldn’t it be better to involve them in helping to alter the paradigm so that whatever we call them – cops, public safety specialists, social workers, facilitators – they will have an ownership stake in the change?

There has never been a better time to rewrite police disciplinary rules. The old ones were products of a different era, if only weeks in the past.  The union power propelling those lopsided agreements has turned into a public mandate for deep structural police reform.  

As a retired union negotiator, I remember what it feels like to go to the bargaining  table with less power than you’d like.  I also know that the choice in those circumstances is clear:  Sacrifice the merely nice in order to hang on to the essential.  In this case, that means union concessions on disciplinary rules in exchange for the right to continue bargaining collectively. 

That would be a win for both sides, and for the rest of the country.

THE WORDS OF GEORGE FLOYD AND DONALD TRUMP: A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA’S DISGRACE

George Floyd and Donald Trump represent the insidious polarities of black oppression and white privilege, of powerlessness and excessive, abusive power. One was a black man down on his luck, unemployed due to the pandemic, dead due to a white cop who took a knee on his neck. The other is a rich white man packed with privilege, who secured the presidency by trying to make racism great again.

Together, they represent opposing archetypes in our abyss. They demonstrate how far we have fallen from America’s ideals and values, and the enormity of the work needed to restore our country’s soul.  

What follows are the words of both men. In Floyd’s case, they were among his final utterances (here and here) between his Memorial Day arrest and death at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Trump’s case, his words were spoken or tweeted in response to the protests over Floyd’s murder.  Floyd’s remarks are in bold. Trump’s quotes are in italics. Together, they depict a gaping and deeply infected wound in the fabric of American life.  

“Please, man, I’m claustrophobic.”

“My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”

“I can’t breathe, please.”

“Just spoke to (Minnesota) Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

“My neck, (long guttural groan) my neck.”

“(If protesters had breached the White House fence), they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons I have ever seen.”

“Please, please, I can’t move.”

“The lowlifes and losers are ripping (cities) apart.”

“Please, the knee in my neck. I can’t breathe.”

“The thugs must be stopped.”

“Can I have some water?”

On a conference call with governors and mayors: “Get a lot of men. You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“I’m your president of law and order.”

“My neck hurts.”

“When someone is throwing a rock, that’s like shooting a gun. You have to do retribution.”

“Everything hurts.”

“Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors. These people are ANARCHISTS. . .The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe (Biden). Is this what America wants? NO!!!”

“They’re going to kill me.”

“I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to . . .protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”

“Don’t kill me.”

“I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel . . .to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property.”

“Mama, Mama. I can’t breathe.”

Against that backdrop, together with Trump’s declining poll numbers, the 45th president of the United States summoned the news media to the Rose Garden Monday and insisted that he is “an ally of all peaceful protesters.” As he spoke those words, peaceful protesters in front of the White House were being attacked by smoke, flash grenades and tear gas at the hands of riot officers and mounted police. 

The mission, on orders of the Trump Administration, was to clear a path so the president could safely walk two blocks to a nearby church and pose with a Bible for a photo op.  The New York Times reported that the stunt was the idea of his daughter, Ivanka, who accompanied him and pulled the Bible he used as a prop from her $1,540 MaxMara bag.  

George Floyd did not live in the world of photo ops and $1,540 designer accessories. He died after allegedly trying to buy cigarettes with a $20 counterfeit bill. Neither his life nor his humanity mattered to the four police officers who ushered him to his death.  To them, Floyd was, in the poetry of our president, just another “lowlife thug” they needed to “dominate.”

To be sure, a Trumpian testosterone tour of military might is the last thing we need right now. The road to fixing this problem is long and winding. But it necessarily begins with the acknowledgement that black lives matter. It ends only when that truth is fully codified in the policies and procedures of everyday life, and in the hearts of those who hold power.  

Until then, justice and peace will continue to elude us. 

THE VERDICT IS IN: JURIES ARE NOT CHANGE AGENTS

Two high profile trials that ended last weekend reminded us that petit juries are no venue for profound social change. In two very different deliberations, jurors did what they were supposed to do: examined the evidence and applied the law to those facts. To say that neither outcome advanced broader underlying causes would be an understatement.

Philando Castile was a black 32-year-old Minnesota school cafeteria worker. He was driving with a broken brake light last July when a suburban St. Paul police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, stopped him. Within minutes, Castile was dead. The officer, after approaching the car window, asked Castile for his license and proof of insurance, which he immediately produced. According to police records, Castile then told Yanez that he was carrying a firearm (duly registered). The officer told him not to pull it out, and then proceeded to fire seven shots at him. Yanez became the first Minnesota police officer in modern history to be charged with manslaughter. On Friday, a jury acquitted him of all charges.

Meanwhile, about 1,200 miles to the east, 12 jurors deliberated for 52 hours in Norristown, Pennsylvania over whether legendary comedian Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted a woman more than a decade ago. The case was a proxy of sorts for at least 59 other women who, going back over more than half a century, claim they were similarly assaulted by Cosby. Only one case, however, was before this jury, and since the alleged incident occurred 13 years ago, strained and inconsistent memories resulted in conflicting testimony. On Saturday, jurors said they were “hopelessly deadlocked” and the judge declared a mistrial.

These two juries, sitting in separate county courthouses 1,200 miles apart, sparked viscerally adverse reactions among those who had hoped for verdicts that would send strong messages on two important issues: racism in policing, and aggressive prosecution of sexual assault.

A Star-Tribune story on the Minnesota verdict started with this sentence: “For black Minnesotans, the acquittal of Jeronimo Yanez in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile was the latest sign of a criminal justice system that often delivers heartbreak.” That angst is more than just a Minnesota thing. In 15 recent instances of black men killed by police nationwide, there were only two convictions. Still, the facts of this case seemed particularly strong. According to prosecutors, Castile did everything right. He was polite and compliant. He wasn’t running from police. There was no weapon in his hand. He just sat there, calmly and quietly, while the officer fired seven shots at him.

While the jury heard those facts, it also listened to Yanez’s tearful testimony about being confused and in fear of his life. Jurors, according to a Bowling Green State University study, are inclined to distinguish between a cop’s serious mistake and manslaughter, particularly if the officer was scared or confused. After 29 hours of deliberations, these 12 people – 10 white and 2 black – decided that the seven shots Officer Yanez fired at Philando Castile did not rise to the level of criminal activity. Jason Sole is the president of the Minneapolis NAACP. He told the New York Times the verdict was “more of the same.” “How are you going to kill this guy and still say we have a fair system? How? Man, this behavior has gotta stop, and they can’t stop so they are going to continue to kill us.”

Back in Norristown, the jury system was also taking it on the chin. Andrea Constand, a former Temple University athletic administrator, testified that Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004. Dozens of other women have come forward with stories of similar Cosby encounters, but have been time-barred from taking action. The jury’s inability to reach a unanimous verdict was seen by some of his accusers as a repudiation of sexual assault victims. For example, Lise-Lotte Lubin, who claims Cosby drugged and abused her in 1989, called the lack of a unanimous guilty verdict one more sign that rape victims are rarely believed.

As a distant observer of both trials, I too was disappointed in the outcomes. I would have gone with guilty verdicts, based on what I had read, together with my values and beliefs (also known as biases). But I wasn’t a juror. I didn’t hear the testimony or see the evidence. I didn’t take an oath to apply the law only to what I heard and saw in those courtrooms. Juries for better or worse, are the centrifuge of our justice system. As a reporter covering courts years ago, I marveled at how well this seemingly quaint and archaic process worked. On the surface, it might seem flawed to plunk 12 random citizens into uncomfortable chairs and expect them to make important decisions outside their comfort zones. Yet, a mammoth review of multiple jury studies by a Cornell University team concluded that jurors consistently take their role seriously, follow the rules, and make decisions based on the evidence and the law, as opposed to crafting their own brand of justice.

And that is precisely the point. Those Minnesota and Pennsylvania jurors were not there to solve the weighty problems of racism, police violence or sexual assault prosecutions. Their job was limited to a single case, with specific facts and legal standards. The real fix for the larger social issues lies in other venues: police leadership, city halls and state legislatures. That’s where the pressure needs to be applied. It’s already happened in the Cosby matter. Many states have eliminated time limits for filing sexual assault charges, a nod to the horde of Cosby accusers who came forward after it was too late to prosecute. With respect to police shootings, if city administrators can’t find a way to stop scared, confused cops from killing people, then it’s time to change the statutes. Make the law crystal clear: a police officer’s fear and confusion are unacceptable defenses to manslaughter.