Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Summary, part 3

Living Under Threat

Essayist Eisa Nefertari Ulen compares what survival means for white people versus Black people. For white people, survival is a daily experience with no significance but for Black people is a daily ritual and priority (p. 77). 

Shootings

Incidents of fatality with the police are mostly found justifiable by officials. In many instances, cities and towns do not track shootings, perform pattern analyses of shootings, or examine officers and units with high numbers of misconduct complaints in a short period. This makes it difficult to see the consequences of police shootings. Officers have been exonerated despite police dashcam video and surveillance that contradicts their accounts.

While many incidents are not documented, there are multiple profiles of people who have been repeatedly targeted by the police. Most of those people fit into certain criteria such as being Black, formerly incarcerated, or struggling with drugs. For the people targeted, it is hard to file complaints due to their and police often use aliases. Still, people do a report which does indicate generally that citizens are paying attention to how they are treated.

Richard Greenleaf is a former police officer and criminology teacher who killed an armed robber on duty. Greenleaf talks about the choices the police make in moments that result in shootings. There is a dynamic, the split-second and life-or-death that is cited in the way police operate. 

Greenleaf talks about this distinction he believes exists between “good shootings,” when someone’s life is in danger, versus “bad shootings,” the Michael Brown case. Upon re-examination, many of the “good shootings” are found to be unjust and unwarranted.

Black motherhood and Parenthood 

“Whiteness steals the childhoods of Black children” (p. 19). 

Black children are heavily affected by violence. Many Black children develop post-traumatic stress disorder when they are in violent environments. In addition to witnessing violence, Black children are not afforded the luxury to be seen and treated as kids. In school, they are punished more harshly and expelled more often than their white peers. Cops bully, harass and kill Black children because they do not view them as children but as a threat. Black children only inform us that they are not seen as the future: “Our children are disposable” (p. 19).

Ulen gives us the perspective of a Black mother and what that means. Black mothers have to prepare their children to go out into a violent world. Police violence is a major fear as it has taken away many Black children. Black parents teach their children the best way they know how to survive a police encounter, although there is still no guarantee.  

“We know that saying Black Lives Matter is another way of saying Black is Beautiful. We know our beautiful Black son matters” (79). 

Case Study: Gregory

In an interview with the author, Nicholas Powers, Danette Chavis describes the moments before her son was killed by the police. As Chavis is talking, Powers notes the carefree detachment of everyone around them in the coffee shop from the pain Chavis is describing. 

“He was caught in crossfire on the street,” Chavis said, “His friends tried to take him to the hospital, but police pulled them over and ordered them to put him down on the ground.” She took a moment and looked away: “They never called an ambulance. He bled to death a block away from the hospital” (p. 20).

Chavis talked further about how grieving families react differently to losing a loved one to police violence. Some may never recover from the loss. Some parents have succumbed to substance abuse to cope. Families have ruptured. And others have wanted to let it go. Chavis and many families like hers are fighting for justice in the name of those they lost.  

In December of 2014, 10 mothers of those killed by the police held a rally in front of the US Department of Justice. How can citizens be killed by agents of the very state that represents them, and no one is held accountable? Powers directs us to America’s democracy where the answer lies