At a time when police seem to hold such an exalted place in society that they are beyond the justice demanded by common citizens, it’s no surprise that few give any credence to the man who attempted to blame the victim last week by declaring that Freddie Gray intentionally tried to injure himself.
Actually, many expected something like this would emerge, to deflect responsibility from the Baltimore police — and justify the use of force with impunity.
But the fact is that, as I write this column, two weeks after Freddie Gray, 25, died while in Baltimore police custody, no officer has been fired, arrested, or prosecuted — although Friday the State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, said that Gray’s death had been ruled a homicide.
“We have probable cause to file criminal charges,” she said. The whole country will be watching Mosby to see if in fact she takes the necessary action to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“We face a profound crisis that extends far beyond simply trust between police and communities — one that notions of ‘community policing’ or body cameras alone will not resolve,” said Priscilla González, spokeswoman for the New York-based Communities United for Police Reform. “There is a crisis of police abuse and violence that is perpetuated by a policing culture that dehumanizes our communities and provides impunity for it.”
According to a recent FBI report a white policeman killed a black person almost twice a week in the U.S. between 2005 and 2012. The report shows that 18% of the African-Americans killed during those years were under the age of 21, compared with 8.7% of white victims.
Last December, a Daily News investigation found that in New York there were 179 deaths involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years, but only three of those cases led to indictments and — hard as it may be to believe — just one conviction.
The deaths of Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and so many others are not aberrations but symptoms of a deeper problem: The racism of our laws and police officers who don’t value the lives of people of color.
González is right on target when she asks for criminal justice reform that “deals with fixing the failed police culture and systemic lack of accountability that perpetuates these abuses and killings.”
As long as this doesn’t happen, the senseless deaths of young blacks and Latinos will continue, and so will the protests of a citizenry not willing to passively watch the killing of their children and the rampant abuse of their communities.