I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!

The incident was a PR disaster for the Ferguson police long known for stereotyping minorities and killing ants with sledgehammers. Had it happened here in Africa as it usually does, it would be put down to our penchant for destroying our youth — the “kill-them-before-they-grow” syndrome. But that is supposed to be America, God’s own […]

The incident was a PR disaster for the Ferguson police long known for stereotyping minorities and killing ants with sledgehammers. Had it happened here in Africa as it usually does, it would be put down to our penchant for destroying our youth — the “kill-them-before-they-grow” syndrome. But that is supposed to be America, God’s own country which sometimes doubles as the black man’s nightmare. The police alleged that Brown attempted to steal the officer’s gun, but his friend who was walking by his side insisted that Brown made no such attempt; rather, he raised his hands in a motion of surrender, making it clear he was unarmed.
The proper thing to do in the aftermath of the killing was to immediately identify and suspend the culprit, then institute a demonstrably unbiased investigation. But the Ferguson authorities did nothing of the sort. Instead they reached into their dirty tricks bag and released a video of a robbery incident in which the deceased had starred minutes before falling victim to extra-judicial murder. In a classic case of how not to manage a disaster, the authorities figured that if they cast the victim as an undesirable element, the killing could begin to look like good riddance to bad rubbish. They were absolutely wrong.
As thousands of Americans poured onto the streets in protest, the police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, SWAT teams and mine-resistant vehicles. The protesters were unrelenting: plastic and glass bottles were thrown, including some with urine, according to police. Officers faced off against hundreds of chanting youths and occasionally lunged into the crowd to seize individuals identified as ring leaders, spraying some with pepper gas.
There was a déjà vu feeling in the air. Two years earlier Florida authorities had attracted similar condemnation when Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager was shot dead by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Before that killing, there had been the case of Oscar Grant who was killed at an Oakland train station on New Year’s Day in 2009 by a BART police officer, leading to mass protests and racial tension in the St. Louis suburb. Grant’s life and the shooting were depicted in the 2013 film Fruitvale Station.
One thing was common to Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown: they were all unarmed black teenagers.
There is a sense in which one could understand the difficult position law enforcement officers often find themselves when confronted by very testy situations. But there is no rational way to explain the shooting to death of an unarmed teenager. If a robbery was ongoing and policemen have to contend with a shootout, it is understandable that they could take down the aggressor in self defence. But to shoot an unarmed youth? That is murder in broad daylight.
The US has to be ashamed of these murderers in uniform. Their comportment runs against the grain of liberty professed by the founding fathers of America. Many people the world over look up to America for leadership but this kind of incident only goes to show that there is still a lot of work to be done in the department of race relations by the US authorities. Even foreigners like this writer who occasionally visit the US often notice the unspoken profiling. In some districts, it is almost as if a black man is presumed guilty until he proves himself otherwise.
I do not and cannot excuse the bad behaviour of some black people. But the truth is there are also bad white people, bad Hispanics, bad Chinese, bad Italians … You cannot on account of some undesirable elements within a racial group tar the whole race and react instinctively to kill whenever you are in a hot argument with the object of your derision. If the law enforcement officer identified himself as a member of the KU Klux Klan one could understand; but to hide under the authority of the law and the state to continue serially depopulating the black community is evil.
As the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, pledged a swift and thorough investigation into the killing of the unarmed Missouri teenager, it became clear that the federal authorities had come to terms that this was an issue of universal interest and not just one minor incident in the backwaters of Missouri. Holder spoke against both the violence of protestors and police behaviour that many blame for sparking the unrest.
“Good law enforcement requires forging bonds of trust between the police and the public. This trust is all-important, but it is also fragile. It requires that force be used in appropriate ways,” he said; adding that “Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.”
The FBI announced last week that it was carrying out an investigation to determine whether the shooting of Brown amounted to a civil rights violation. It may also be widened to examine police practices in Ferguson. All told there is evidence that the problem is being addressed and that something would be done to ensure that such incidents of intentional extra-judicial killing are minimised if not eliminated.
Over here in Nigeria we have over the years lived with the same problem of police brutality and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight because we seldom bring overzealous or downright sadistic officers to book. What happened after the killing of the Apo Six, namely Ifeanyi Ozo, Chinedu Meniru, Isaac Ekene, Paulinus Ogbonna, Anthony Nwokike and Tina Arebun? The victims, aged between 21 and 25 years, were returning from a night party when they were allegedly killed by policemen in Garki, Abuja.
Adjournment after adjournment the case drags on; the victims rot in the grave while their killers strut around and bend the law to their will. We should not wait until it happens to our own family before crying foul. Justice for the Apo Six is justice for the rest of us who are lucky — so far, not to have been at the receiving end of a policeman’s metallic discharge.