Officer Spradlin told this to Ms King after his partner threw the 112lbs woman twice onto the concrete.
The irony is not lost on me.
Officer Spradlin’s comment and his partner’s actions also encapsulate the root cause of the immense and violent rift between law enforcement and people of color in the United States:
The posture of Law Enforcement that most people of color they encounter are naturally violent. Law Enforcement proactively uses violent, sometimes lethal force when dealing with suspects.While many situations certainly require violence or lethal force, it should not be the default action taken in all encounters. Our country’s history is rife with incidents of police brutality. Why most police officers are upstanding and competent, people of color have long claimed that continued incidents of brutality are not isolated. The difference is, modern technology allows such incidents to be caught on camera. The undercurrent of hostility, as demonstrated by Officer Spradlin, has led to people being apprehensive of the police, with the citizens taking a naturally emotional posture.
A Violation of the Eighth Amendment
The constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishments that are excessive to the crime, or compared to the competence of the perpetrator. Thus, in the process of apprehending suspects, law enforcement should take care to correctly assess a situation, and match the level of force it takes to apprehend suspects. No one is saying this is easy. However with proper training it can be done. Police should be trained for these situations and held to a higher standard. Not everyone can be a police officer, and those who prove incapable of doing this should not be police officers.
In the case of Breaion King, no matter how combative she is, her size and lack of a weapon makes her incompetent as a threat compared to her arresting officers. Although lawful, it is completely unnecessary to body-slam her into the concrete, let alone taze her.
More recently, there is the case of Charles Kinsey. Mr. Kinsey is a behavioral therapist who was
Charles Kinsey, shot by police while protecting a patient.trying to protect his autistic patient when police arrived. He verbally told police that there was no need for firearms and explained the situation. He also went to the ground with his hands in the air. He did everything possible to show he was not a threat and the police still shot him. When Mr. Kinsey asks the officer why he shot him, the officer responded “I don’t know.” The officer then still handcuffed Mr Kinsey and flipped him over on the concrete.
Let’s think about this. Law Enforcement is the representative of the state. The state executes an innocent citizen. The state makes no effort to hold LE accountable, nor does it try to make amends to the family of those it wrongly executed. It is a violation of the citizens’ basic rights of the highest order, one to which when committed by the ordinary citizen, the state exercises its most severe punishments.
Much more egregious, when law enforcement actually kills the suspect, the police officers involved are almost never held accountable.
Caught on Tape
The examples are rife, but besides the aforementioned Breaion King, here are a few of the most blatant examples:
John Crawford III: Executed in a Walmart, holding a BB gun while talking on the phone with his girlfriend. Video shows that the police gave no verbal commands before executing Mr. Crawford. Even if LE did and Mr Crawford did not immediately respond because he was on the phone, LE’s assessment of the situation was incorrect, and they actively executed an innocent citizen. This is not an accident. LE took an intentional action to kill. John Crawford III with his newborn. He was a human being with a family, not a statistic. Tamir Rice: A 12 year old boy executed by LE for playing with a toy gun in an empty park. Police drove immediately up to Rice and executed him without any assessment of the situation. Even if Rice was holding a real gun, there was no one in the area he was an immediate threat to.These two cases in particular have certain elements in common. Besides both being caught on film, the police on the scene gave accounts of the event that are contradicted by the video evidence. The police giving clearly false accounts alone should be a fireable offense. It shows intent to conceal wrongdoing. However, it has been proven that police can give any account they want, knowing that there is no consequence for their actions. Also, both incidents were instigated by someone calling the police complaining that someone was threatening other people with a gun. Police often note that eye-witness accounts are often unreliable…thus, when approaching the scene of the complaint, police should take to assess the situation to respond correctly. In both these examples, police clearly made no such effort. This is negligent at best and criminal at worst. In either case, the officers involved should at least no longer have a badge.
Let’s be clear. We can still support police and still hold them to a higher standard. We can all acknowledge that their jobs are difficult. That being said, not everyone can be a police officer. Having the legal right by the state to discharge lethal force is an awesome power, and those who have that power should and must be held to a higher standard. Those who show poor judgement should not be police officers. Otherwise, it makes all of law enforcement look bad. When police officers protect even the incompetent and criminal of their own ranks, it makes the institution corrupt and breeds distrust. Putting an officer involved on paid administrative leave is not punishment. Allowing any of these police officers to remain such sends a message to law enforcement and the citizens they are charged to protect that they do not hold themselves to a higher standard.
Clear still, these acts are disproportionately committed against citizens of color. When the law takes no action against the police, the institution is complicit in the crime. It makes it clear that institutional racism exists (and as Officer Patrick Spradlin demonstrates, it is racism) , and is the preferred practice of law enforcement. Thus, minorities have every reason to be apprehensive and distrust police.
A False Image of Infallibility and the Infection of Corruption
Law Enforcement should make every effort to remove officers who fail at their job, yet they do quite the opposite. Law Enforcement goes to incredible lengths to retain bad officers and shield the public from their incompetent, sometimes criminal activity. Investigations into questionable accounts by police are few and far between. Most police officers want to do a good job and don’t want to kill anyone. However, when police insist on protecting their own, it makes every police officer look bad and diminishes their credibility as an institution. The reasons are most likely similar to those as to why the state is highly resistant to re-litigate prosecutions, even when new evidence demonstrates a citizen’s innocence:
The state wants to project an image of infallibility. The state can do no wrong, and they should never be questioned. The problem with this is, if they believe they are perfect and are not held accountable for criminal actions, they have no reason to try to improve. In 2010, the FBI completed an internal evaluation of its shooting incidents from 1993 to 2009. They concluded that the FBI had no bad shoots in that time period. It’s statistically highly unlikely that this is the case, however. No bad shoots means that the FBI acted perfectly in every situation, with no improvement necessary. Simply put, law enforcement is corrupt with power. Take for example the police civil forfeiture policy. Police can seize your cash and property without charging you with a crime, and put the onus on the citizen to try and get the money back. Most of the money goes to fund police activity, so they do nothing to return the money.Black Lives Matter
Ieshia Evans, a mother to a 5yo son, was arrested for taking a stand.The vast majority of the media, as well as the layman who discusses Black Lives Matter (BLM) completely misses the goal of the organization. BLM’s goal is to end the disproportionate and unnecessary violence law enforcement commits against the black community, and in this effort, hold law enforcement accountable when they commit these acts. BLM is not the instigator of violence against police. BLM is a response to the highly disproportionate violence police commits against the black community.
The phrase and the organization Black Lives Matter is important because it is meant to bring attention to the specific highly disproportionate level of violence law enforcement perpetrates upon the black community. Of course, all life is important, but when someone responds with “all lives matter” or some similar expression, they are purposely trying to take attention away from the specific issues BLM is trying to address.
Suggestions to Improve Relations Between Law Enforcement and the Citizens
Body Cameras: All police should wear body cameras. In the case of the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, the police not only claimed their body cameras were not working, the police also removed the surveillance recording from the grocery store that recorded the incident without a warrant. If not for the recording of the bystander, the word of the police would have gone unquestioned. If police on the scene of an incident fail to use their body cams for unjustified reasons when apprehending a suspect, let alone executing a subject, penalties should be exercised against the officers in question. All evidence that add context of a fatality should be made available to the public. Train law enforcement to deescalate situations whenever possible: This should be a mandate with federal standards. In the case of Philando Castile, if the police felt Mr Castile was a threat, there are a number of actions the police could have taken, other than executing a man with a woman and a 4-year old girl and the vehicle as well. The officer judged the situation incorrectly, resulting in an execution. End the War on Drugs: Not only was the War on Drugs started for illicit reasons, it is still used to disproportionally target blacks and minorities, although the rate of drug use in white neighborhoods is proportionately identical or higher. Prohibition did not work in the 1920’s and it is not working now. If the law is not enforced equally across society, either the law should be removed, or penalties should be legislatively adjusted accordingly. Create independent agencies to hold police accountable: The agency should be independent from police, and the necessary legislation should be passed to enforce punishments. If the state harms or executes an innocent citizen in the process of carrying out their duties, the state must make every effort for restitution to the citizen’s next of kin. If reasonable action could have been taken to preserve life or limb but that action was not taken, the acting officer should be removed from service. Some may ask who are we to judge how police conduct their duties. Other industrialized nations have demonstrated that police do not have to always act with lethal force to all situations. De-escalation is often possible. If accountability is taken when unnecessary force is used and de-escalation is rewarded, other police officers will learn to act accordingly. Community Policing: Police should be from the communities they serve in.Final Thoughts
BLM and Wichita Police start a dialogue. Source: Wichita Police dept/Facebook.Law enforcement must work to eliminate their institutional belief that blacks have, as Officer Patrick Spradlin put it, “violent tendencies”. Many police officers carry out their duties with this in mind. What they don’t understand is that this posture, along with disproportionate policing and severe sentencing in minority communities, is creating the ever-growing rift between police and their communities we are trying to solve. Disproportionately look for crime in certain communities, and it will appear that the particular community is performing more crime. Act disproportionately and unnecessarily violent against a particular community, especially when the people are justifiably apprehensive, and the community will respond in kind. If law enforcement would make every attempt to de-escalate encounters accordingly, that would go a long way to close the rift.
Also important, society must recognize that bad behavior committed by police are not isolated incidents. They are indicative of a systematic posture that permeates law enforcement.
This is a huge issue that will only get worse before it gets better. Talking about it is a start, but action must be taken by all citizens to reduce this problem. It affects every one of us and we all must do our part.