Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

“The rampant police mentality to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to a Black person is incontrovertible evidence that Black lives don’t matter to
too many law enforcement officers.”
Benjamin Crump, lawyer for the Hill family

ref: Yet another “first contact” gone bad

Gadfly keeping an eye on this Andre Hill case. The officer was fired. Still nothing put forth to explain or justify the shooting. But more details now about the shooting officer’s poor past disciplinary record. Gadfly says again that he would like to hear more about how our department handles misconduct. He can remember Chief DiLuzio saying that he had fired officers, so our disciplinary process may be just fine in weeding out “bad apples.” But Gadfly thinks we should hear more about it. Stories of such incidents very often show bad signs in an officer’s record and the role that police unions play in protecting them.

We should also note the 12-year-old Tamir Rice and killed-in-her-bed Breonna Taylor cases also made news recently, and not in a particularly good way.

———

selections from Andre Welsh-Huggins, “Police observed no threats from Andre Hill before shooting.” Associated Press, December 29, 2020.

An officer on the scene of the fatal shooting of Andre Hill in Ohio’s capital city last week didn’t perceive any threats and didn’t see a gun, contrary to a mistaken claim by the fellow officer who killed Hill, according to records released Tuesday.

The city fired Coy on Tuesday, accusing him of incompetence and “gross neglect of duty,” among other charges.

Coy asked Hill in a “normal tone of voice” to exit the garage and Hill complied but without responding, Detwiler said.

As Hill walked out, Detwiler “did not observe any threats from Mr. Hill,” nor did she see a gun, the internal affairs report said.

“Officer Detwiler stated Officer Coy observed a firearm and yelled, ‘There’s a gun in his other hand, there’s a gun in his other hand!’” the report said. “Officer Detwiler heard gunfire at this moment.”

No gun was found at the scene, police said.

Reports also indicate that Police Chief Thomas Quinlan felt something was off about the shooting as soon as he arrived, saw the officers and then saw the body cam video.

Coy’s handling of the shooting “is not a ‘rookie’ mistake as a result of negligence or inadvertence,” Quinlan said in his recommendation that the 17-year veteran be fired. Quinlan added that Coy’s actions were “reckless and deliberate.”

A review of Coy’s personnel file shows more than three dozen complaints have been filed against him since he joined the department in January 2002, mostly for rude or abusive language with a dozen for use of force. No details about the allegations are contained in the sparse summaries the city provided from the department’s internal affairs bureau. All but a few were marked “unfounded” or “not sustained.”

Quinlan noted that he had first raised concerns about Coy in 2008, when Quinlan was his patrol lieutenant.

“If sustained improvements are not fully realized a decision whether Officer Coy is salvageable must follow,” Quinlan said, quoting from a letter he wrote.

Coy was fired Monday hours after a hearing was held to determine his employment.

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

For more information or to register, please contact Wilberto Sicard at wsicard@caclv.org.

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

“Shelby Steele believes that the use of victimization is the greatest hindrance for black Americans. In his view, white Americans see blacks as victims to ease their guilty conscience, and blacks attempt to turn their status as victims into a kind of currency that will purchase nothing of real or lasting value.”

Gadfly believes in systemic racism, believes in the need for individuals and institutions and entities to be anti-racist.

Not everybody does, of course.

And a sometime but passionate follower believes the blog needs a counter voice, suggesting prominent Black conservative Shelby Steele.

Happy to oblige.

Gadfly asks you to listen (there is video on two of the links) to Shelby Steele.

———-

selections from Shelby Steele, “The American Dream is very much alive.” Fox Business Network, April 2, 2019.

“The American Dream is still very much alive . . . We are a free society essentially . . . based a good deal on individual initiative, effort, responsibility . . . These are the kinds of things that give you a very good chance of succeeding in a free society . . . [interviewer: You hear it all the time that somebody can be held back by their race, or their gender, or ethnicity . . . no?] . . . We live in a new age . . . I grew up in segregation . . . I know what it means to grow up in a society totally organized against your aspirations as an individual . . . I know what that’s like . . . That does not exist any longer . . . It’s not absolutely perfectly gone, but it is largely gone . . . So that today, no matter who you are, what your race is, your color, your ethnicity, etc., you can do pretty much what you want to do, what you want to work hard enough to really want to do . . . I don’t know any place in the world that offers more opportunity, more freedom, than this society . . . We convince ourselves , for all sorts of other reasons, that that’s not true . . . but as a Black American I can certainly tell you that one of the most important things I have ever understood in my life is that I am free . . . That was not the case when I grew up . . . That freedom is a very rare gift, and we need to appreciate it is the answer to all of our problems.”

selections from Charles Creitz, “Shelby Steele: Claims of ‘systemic racism’ are ‘expanding the territory of entitlement’.” Fox News, June 7, 2020.

“In order to pursue power as they [radical Blacks] do, you need victims . . . George Floyd is the archetypal victim . . . And the whole incident, his murder, is sort of a metaphor for the civil rights agenda, the grievance agenda . . . complete innocent . . . tortured to death . . . well, Wow . . . the excitement that triggers on the left in America . . . It validates their claims that America is a wretched country . . . that they must get recourse for what’s going on . . . It feeds this old model of operation that we’ve developed . . . that America is guilty of racism, guilty of this sin and has been for four centuries . . . and minorities are victims who are entitled . . . And so when people start to talk about systemic racism built into the system, what they are really doing is expanding the territory of entitlement . . . We want more, we want more, we want society to give us more . . . Society is responsible for us because racism is so systemic . . . That’s a corruption . . . The truth of the matter is Blacks have never been less oppressed than they are today . . . Opportunity is around every corner . . . Why don’t you take some responsibility . . . Why don’t you take more responsibility . . . If we had the nerve, the courage, to look at Black people . . . and say ‘You’re not carrying your own weight . . . Are you making things happen for yourself? . . . Or are you saying I’m a victim, I’m owed.”

selections from Shelby Steele, “The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter.” Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2020.

Insisting on the prevalence of “systemic racism” is a way of defending a victim-focused racial identity.

Even today, almost 60 years beyond the Civil Rights Act, groups like Black Lives Matter, along with a vast grievance industry, use America’s insecure moral authority around race as an opportunity to assert themselves.

Both [whites and Blacks] need blacks to be victims. Whites need blacks they can save to prove their innocence of racism. Blacks must put themselves forward as victims the better to make their case for entitlements.

This is a corruption because it makes black suffering into a moral power to be wielded, rather than a condition to be overcome. This is the power that blacks discovered in the ’60s. It gained us a War on Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, public housing and so on. But it also seduced us into turning our identity into a virtual cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our eternal flame, the deepest truth of who we are, a tragic fate we trade on.

Yet there is an elephant in the room. It is simply that we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. Today we are free to build a life that won’t be stunted by racial persecution. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill—a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin.

Thus, for many blacks today—especially the young—there is a feeling of inauthenticity, that one is only thinly black because one isn’t racially persecuted. “Systemic racism” is a term that tries to recover authenticity for a less and less convincing black identity. This racism is really more compensatory than systemic. It was invented to make up for the increasing absence of the real thing.

We don’t have to fight for freedom so much any more. We have to do something more difficult—fully accept that we are free.

———

Steele points to Burgess Owens, Herschel Walker, Daniel Cameron, Tim Scott — speakers at the Republican National Convention — as examples of Blacks who have succeeded, defying the existence of a systemic racism ceiling.

Scott Tim

to be continued . . .

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder 

On June 27, 2015, ten days after Dylann Roof killed eight Blacks in a Bible study class in a Charleston church, in an act of peaceful civil disobedience as American as apple pie, as they say, a Black woman, Bree Newsome, climbed the flag pole outside the South Carolina State House and removed the Confederate flag.

With her was a white man, James Tyson.

See the news story here

Gadfly talked yesterday about the image of anti-racism from “12 Years a Slave” that moved him during his participation in one of the local programs on race in the wake of the George Floyd murder.

In another one of those programs, the topic was the difference for white people between being an “ally” and a “co-conspirator” when it comes to the fight for racial justice.

That’s another way of saying the difference between being “not racist” and being “anti-racist.”

James Tyson was being a co-conspirator.

James Tyson was being anti-racist.

Simply by holding the pole.

When the Courthouse police threatened to taze Newsome, Tyson grabbed the pole, thwarting the police, who were reluctant to risk sending a “charge” through the white man.

And then he simply joined her in arrest.

A lively discussion among program participants centered on this very lively Bettina Love video (5 mins.) and the challenge to whites to be active in the fight for racial justice, to be co-conspirators. to “find your pole.”

Something to think about.

Being anti-racist, that is.

As we approach the traditional time of making resolutions.

If somebody today asks you if you found your pole, you’ll know what they’re talking about.

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is
that they take their feet off our necks.”
Sarah Moore Grimke’ via Ruth Bader Ginsburg

It’s kind of a quiet, in-between week in the Gadfly business.

City work mainly buttoned up till we hit the new year.

Time for a little “intellectual” work.

As you might have noted, Gadfly has been taking advantage of the various webinars, conferences, programs, etc., on race offered locally (BAPL has done a great job!) in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Will be doing homework today for a discussion tomorrow.

Ah, the luxurious gift of time: a joy of retirement.

But Gadfly has recently fretted here that the way the world turns in our manic-paced culture we’re in danger of losing the national reckoning with race his murder precipitated.

But maybe not for another week anyway.

We are entering the flush of those television year-end reviews of the big stories of 2020, and, like you, Gadfly has noticed that Floyd is much back in the news.

His murder still sharing top headline billing in a year overfilled with news.

The image of a knee [not the feet of Justice Ginsburg’s remark!] on a neck coming center stage again.

I was thinking of that image recently while watching for a local program on race the 2013 Academy Award Best Picture “12 Years a Slave” about a free Black kidnapped into slavery who for twelve years unsuccessfully attempts to free himself — a film based on a true story.

It takes the agency of a white man (Samuel Bass) to free the wronged Black (Solomon Northrup).

Sometimes it is not possible for a Black to “rise” on his or her own, though not for the lack of trying. [Think systemic racism]

At considerable risk to himself — a white man living in the South defying the laws of the South — Bass contacts white people in the North who arrange to free Northrup.

Northrup is able to reconnect and reclaim his life, once more becoming a valuable contributor to his society.

But it takes the agency of a white man, a white man performing an anti-racist act, a white man who moves from a hands-off passive intellectual repulsion at slavery to an active physical repudiation of and personal rebellion against the racist system, the very world in which he exists.

Gadfly was very much moved by this image of an anti-racism act.

We can’t have too many images of anti-racism, acts which are never easy.

to be continued . . .

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

“There’s no compression on the wounds, no attempts at CPR, not even a hand on the shoulder and an encouraging word that medics were en route. To see him lying in the driveway minute after minute after minute after minute with no attempt to render aid and comfort. To be honest, I had never seen body worn camera footage like that.”
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther

“Columbus voters in November also approved a city charter amendment to create a Civilian Review Board and inspector general, which will conduct independent investigations into police misconduct and policies. The city is currently accepting applications for the review board, which it hopes to seat early next year.”
NPR,  December 23, 2020

Gadfly gets no pleasure out of this.

And Gadfly makes no inferences about our police department, which, as far as he knows, has a fine record.

But the headlines read “Ohio Officer’s Bodycam Shows He Shot Unarmed Black Man Within 10 Seconds Of Encounter” and “Columbus officer who fatally shot unarmed Black man has history of excessive force, misconduct” and “Columbus mayor calls for termination of officer who killed unarmed Black man.”

Something is wrong with the way these “first contact” situations are handled. And perhaps with the way officer misconduct is handled.

And Gadfly feels that there should be open discussion of such topics in the wake of the George Floyd murder.

And the sooner the better.

We don’t want such occurrences to happen here.

The way the world turns, soon people will be saying, “George who?”

Consider this latest case of “first contact” gone wrong.

See news story here:

Bethany Brunner, “Here’s video and a timeline of the Andre Hill shooting by Columbus police.” Columbus Dispatch, December 23, 2020.

Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder

The headline on the Associated Press story on p. 13 of the print version of the Morning Call yesterday was “KC Star reckons with its past.”

KC Star. That’s the Kansas City Star. A major midwestern newspaper for over 140 years. Meaning it was founded in the post-Civil War generation. Just after the end of slavery. In the Reconstruction Era.

Gadfly has been fond of saying that the murder of George Floyd spurred a “nationwide reckoning with race.”

On December 20, the Kansas City Star editor Mike Fannin reckoned with the paper’s racial past: “The truth in Black and white: An apology from The Kansas City Star.”

It was brutal.

Today we are telling the story of a powerful local business that has done wrong.

For 140 years, it has been one of the most influential forces in shaping Kansas City and the region. And yet for much of its early history — through sins of both commission and omission — it disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians. It reinforced Jim Crow laws and redlining. Decade after early decade it robbed an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice and recognition.

That business is The Kansas City Star.

Before I say more, I feel it to be my moral obligation to express what is in the hearts and minds of the leadership and staff of an organization that is nearly as old as the city it loves and covers:

We are sorry.

The Kansas City Star prides itself on holding power to account. Today we hold up the mirror to ourselves to see the historic role we have played, through both action and inaction, in shaping and misshaping Kansas City’s landscape.

It is time that we own our history.

It is well past time for an apology, acknowledging, as we do so, that the sins of our past still reverberate today.

This spring, the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis beneath the knee of a white police officer ignited protests worldwide over racial injustice. In doing so, it has forced institutions to look inward.

Inside The Star, reporters and editors discussed how an honest examination of our own past might help us move forward. What started as a suggestion from reporter Mará Rose Williams quickly turned into a full-blown examination of The Star’s coverage of race and the Black community dating to our founding in 1880. . . . Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found — decades of coverage that depicted Black Kansas Citians as criminals living in a crime-laden world. They felt shame at what was missing: the achievements, aspirations and milestones of an entire population routinely overlooked, as if Black people were invisible.

Reporters felt regret that the papers’ historic coverage not only did a disservice to Black Kansas Citians, but also to white readers deprived of the opportunity to understand the true richness Black citizens brought to Kansas City. . . .

We encourage other Kansas City businesses to come forward and own their history as well, tell their stories, get the poison out — for the sake of the community and their employees.

It still pains me personally to know that in The Star’s monopolistic heyday — when it had the biggest media platform in the region — the paper did little to unify the city or recognize the inherent rights of all Kansas Citians.

But our history doesn’t have to own us.

We are grateful for how far we’ve come. We are humbled by how far we still have to go.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the Kansas City Star has taken an anti-racist step.

Gadfly has been scribbling such examples of institutional anti-racism he comes across on the back of an envelope. There have been many. Like Major League Baseball this month recognizing more than 3,400 players from seven distinct Negro leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 as “major leaguers.” The New York Times called it “righting a wrong.”

The Kansas City Star and MLB took a knee.

Gadfly finds such “anti-racism” morally aphrodisiac.

And totally appropriate for this Christmas season of good will to all.

While he has been excited by the targeting of systemic racism in the discussions of our Community Engagement Initiative, he has been impatient with, in his opinion, the slow speed that concrete actions are taking place here.

He is afraid we are in danger of missing the George Floyd wave of concern for racial equity, and he hopes that anti-racism will be a feature of mayoral and Councilpersonic campaigns that are probably now shaping up for the spring.