Sunday, April 30, 2023 | 2 a.m.
On April 17, a grand jury declined to indict any of the eight Akron, Ohio Police Department officers who fired 94 rounds at Jayland Walker, 46 of which struck him, thereby taking his life. Though infuriating to many, the decision was hardly a surprise. When the grand jury’s decision was forthcoming, Akron officials boarded up City Hall, and installed gates around the city’s Justice Center. Those actions aren’t generally taken when good news is expected.
We all know that when the police kill a Black person, that story rarely ends with an indictment. And by now, we all know why. For one, the law that applies in this context is literally on their side. All an officer (in this case eight of them) has to say is, “I was in fear for my life,” and any hope of accountability disappears faster than you can say, “Abracadabra!” Two, the person dead is Black. The dual stories that Americans are told about the police and about Black people can only be reconciled with the belief that when the police kill us, it is our fault.
We know how the story usually ends. Generally, it ends with a funeral. Sometimes, though not as often as you think it does, it ends with a bag of money paid to the grieving family to settle a civil lawsuit. Officer indictments are like solar eclipses. Widely reported. Rarely seen.
As the typical story of the police taking another life ends, specific language tends to be used by public officials. This language is meant to persuade and impress a feeling upon the public at large. Specifically, it is meant to assuage members of the public who are angry by acknowledging a problem. At the same time, this language is soft, so as not to offend anyone who believes that the police were justified in taking that Black person’s life. The language goes like this:
“We need to rebuild trust between the community and the police.”
You hear this line time and time again. Everyone says it.
Trust is important in any relationship. Anyone in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, will readily agree with that sentiment. It is the foundation upon which any strong relationship is built. However, I wonder if the mention of trust in this specific context is really appropriate.
The problem, as I see it, is the police destroying Black people at a disproportionate rate. The data that we have on police killings say that we are more than twice as likely as a white person to be killed by police. Suggesting that this problem can be resolved by rebuilding or restoring trust implies that the problem is created by both parties.
Think about what else flows from that logic. If Black people are killed at a disproportionate rate because of a lack of trust between the Black community and police, then that suggests that, on the other hand, the other racial groups that are not killed at the same rate as Black people survive police interactions at a higher rate because they do not have that same trust problem with the police. In other words, the police and white people have a relationship of trust. The same can be said for the police and Asians (who are killed at lower rate than white people). Hispanics are also killed at a disproportionate rate, but not as high as the rate of Black people. It must follow then, that Hispanics and the police have a better relationship of mutual trust than the police have with Black people.
Does any of that make sense? I don’t think it does. If it does to you, then you accept an argument that is premised upon the implication that Black people are, in effect, the most untrustworthy people in America. Said another way, the police can trust every other racial group in this country more than us. There is a word for someone who would accept that argument, but I don’t think you want to be called it.
The solution to police killing Black people at a disproportionate rate is not “trust.” It is accountability. Accountability can look like a lot of things. It can look like changing the law so that it stops operating as a shield to prevent officers from criminal (and civil) liability. It can also look like municipalities extracting stronger disciplinary power to terminate officers in collective bargaining negotiations.
Most vitally, accountability also looks like acknowledging (and then working to address) the real problem that is causing Black people to die at the hands of police at a disproportionate rate.
You know what that deeper problem is. I know you do. And I know that you don’t want to talk about it. But the reality is, as James Baldwin wrote more than a half-century ago, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Until you face this deeper problem, it will remain a problem. And the bodies will keep piling up.
But hey, if you have entirely dismissed my argument, and you maintain that rebuilding trust is the best path forward, I offer the following quote to you from former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson:
“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”
Eric Foster is a columnist for cleveland.com.
