Dear Gwinnett Sheriff Conway:
Like you, I’m furious. Which is ironic because we’ve both been enraged by the recent, wanton murders of law officers around this country. Friday’s shooting of a DeKalb County officer speaks to the dangers of police work. Blanket, unwarranted criticism of all cops rankles me as well. More on that in a bit. We both agree society deserves better.
Our viewpoints diverge on other issues, though. Unlike you, I’ve been stewing as well at the relentless tide of people who have been, at best, routinely abused and, at worst, killed by police under circumstances that a lot of law-abiding people like me find suspect, at best.
So I was angered by your memo of last week. I believe society — and its sworn public servants — can do much better.
Your manifesto proves you don’t get that. And that’s a factor in the affliction that this nation’s currently enduring, one which has carried unnecessarily bloody consequences for cops and citizens alike.
It will take a lot more than shouting accusations by either side to make things better. I pray that happens soon, before more people die for no good reason.
Traveling the streets when you look like me is an alternate reality – one that many people frankly refuse to believe exists, no matter how many statistics bear it out. I’ve been threatened, patted down and cursed by cops since I was 12 years old. I’ve felt that adrenaline-fueled knot in the stomach when they’ve approached, gun in hand. Yet, I’ve never been arrested. That’s the routine for too many millions in this home of the free. Accusatory memos do nothing to help resolve that.
I also grew up in a family of people who wore badges and carried sidearms 24/7. Truth be told, I still harbor dreams of joining a police reserve unit somewhere. I always thought it would be a neat way to give back and determine if instincts honed on the streets seven miles from Ferguson would serve me well in trying to make a difference, up close and personal.
I was reared by a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department patrolman. His legacy led others in my family to wear the badge. A St. Louis City Sheriff’s deputy married into the family. All in, there’s north of 125 years of service to the law among my kin.
So, like you, I know that cops are human, even when they have to hide that humanity while shouting in a command voice or in just routinely seeing things that polite society doesn’t. Law enforcement’s wickedly rugged, sometimes-fatally dangerous work. My late aunt knew that. That’s why she recalled sobbing inconsolably when one of her sons announced he was following his dad into the blue ranks. Sadly, she didn’t live to see him hang up his gun belt last June after 35 years on watch.
Many folks of your viewpoint are likely to dismiss me as one with the looters, murderers, “race-baiters” and other riff-raff. So be it. I believe I’m just one of a growing number of good people of all races who’re increasingly concerned about aberrant behavior by some police. In our ranks, we don’t generally like true criminals any more than you do. That point too easily gets lost in this finger-wagging age.
The best cops I’ve encountered could discern truth, no matter how foggy its surroundings. You fell way short of that, I believe, in figuratively tossing nonviolent activists into the same cell that should rightfully hold looters, killers and other felons. Peacefully protesting police brutality is a constitutionally enshrined right. Criminal violence and mayhem is not. Good leaders should know the difference. By your line of thinking, Cobb County Commissioner Lisa Cupid might also be considered a “domestic terrorist,” as you put it. She’s bravely discussed her own harrowing encounter with Cobb’s finest. Yet, what law has she broken?
I’ve told my son to treat police with respect, even when they crush his courtesy beneath their boots. Which is inevitable. When you look like me, some uniform somewhere is going to treat you harshly and with disdain. Dispensed with in the process is the benefit of the doubt routinely accorded others. That’s real life for too many people of color.
And, yes, that’s a bright line of difference between many blacks and whites who are otherwise similarly situated in life. Shouting “race-baiter” at those who dare say this pattern exists does nothing to span the divide.
My son and I have had “The Talk” that black folk have with their boys – and increasingly their daughters too. To do otherwise is perilously asking to see blue lights in the rearview mirror.
Your touching on Ferguson brought back memories. A cousin long ago lived in the apartments near where Darren Wilson shot dead Michael Brown. You describe what happened clinically, as cops do – Wilson “acted within policy to preserve his own life.”
Yes, wayward young Brown was likely guilty of what might have been adjudicated as misdemeanor assault — had he lived to go to trial. My question as looters ransacked Ferguson was: Whatever happened to the cops skilled at nonviolently defusing volatile situations? The best cops I watched could usually calm matters by quietly talking things through, gaining citizen trust with each polite sentence spoken.
Yet, I know the world is not a peaceful garden. So policing, at times, is also a contact sport. Growing up, more than once I saw cops beat people bloody and unconscious. Sometimes with more justification than others. But they did not kill them.
Compare that to a now-infamous ex-Ferguson cop’s asserting that “Hulk Hogan” was running toward him and he had no other choice than to shoot dead his unarmed worst nightmare. I have the same uneasy questions as to why a DeKalb County cop shot to death a stark-naked, mentally disturbed veteran. If asking such commonsense questions amounts to “irresponsible reporting,” as you put it, this newsman who’s seen people shoot at each other pleads guilty.
As I read your memo, I thought too about a now-viral photo of the recent Confederate flag fest atop Stone Mountain. In it, a peacemaker of a cop stood between two protesters. One had an AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder; his hand hovered near a holstered pistol as a dispute apparently raged. A potentially deadly situation. All involved were white.
I sincerely believe a black person carrying that much armament into a tense encounter would be shot dead on the spot by an officer who would later claim they feared for their life. Statistics and anecdote alike back don’t dissuade this view.
Compare that to the Texas cop who roughed up a black, bikini-clad teen girl recently as she cried for her mother after a pool party went south. That cop’s actions did nothing to instill in many the respect for the law’s agents that you seem to genuinely yearn for.
Resolving the difference in these realities is at the crux of fixing just what ails America at this point. Which is why your memo troubles and angers me.
The American justice system can only work when it’s based on mutual trust among cops and citizens. I believe that happens only when our cops behave as guardians of the people – and not as conquering warriors.
This concept’s as old as our country. And you’re right — it’s in real danger of being lost now.
Rebuilding battered trust won’t come from our leaders firing off divisive memos that amount to race-baiting in reverse.
The best cops are proactive peacemakers. And society’s never needed them more. They employ all their senses; they listen; they know their communities.
We need more of that in Gwinnett and elsewhere.
About the Author
