We need greater accountability for police

The killing of Michael Brown at the hands of Darren Wilson, and the subsequent, how shall we say-massive fuckup-by the Ferguson police department is an example of a wider problem in the United States:  inadequate accountability for law enforcement wrongdoing.

While the events in Ferguson occur at the intersection of racism, classicism,  capitalism and more social issues, they also are strongly affected by police officers not being sufficiently accountable for their actions. Michael Bell is a father who knows what it is like to lose his son at the hands of a police officer:

I have known the name of the policeman who killed my son, Michael, for ten years. And he is still working on the force in Kenosha.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either.

I got the phone call at 2 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2004. It was my oldest daughter. She said you need to come to the hospital right away, Michael’s been shot by the police. My first gut reaction was, “Michael doesn’t do anything serious enough to get shot by a police officer.” I thought he’d gotten shot in the leg or whatever. When I arrived, I saw the district attorney huddled with about five police officers. The last time I saw my son alive he was on a gurney, with his head wrapped in a big towel and blood coming out of it. I learned that an officer had put his gun up directly to Michael’s right temple and misfired, then did it again, and shot him.

From the beginning I cautioned patience, though Michael’s mother and sister were in an uproar. They had watched him get shot. But as an Air Force officer and pilot I knew the way safety investigations are conducted, and I was thinking that this was going to be conducted this way. Yet within 48 hours I got the message: The police had cleared themselves of all wrongdoing. In 48 hours! They hadn’t even taken statements from several eyewitnesses. Crime lab reports showed that my son’s DNA or fingerprints were not on any gun or holster, even though one of the police officers involved in Michael’s shooting had claimed that Michael had grabbed his gun.

The officer who killed my son, Albert Gonzalez, is not only still on the force ten years later, he is also a licensed concealed-gun instructor across the state line in Illinois—and was identified by the Chicago Tribune in an Aug. 7 investigative story as one of “multiple instructors [who] are police officers with documented histories of making questionable decisions about when to use force.”

[…]

It took six years to get our wrongful death lawsuit settled, and my family received $1.75 million. But I wasn’t satisfied by a long shot. I used my entire portion of that money and much more of my own to continue a campaign for more police accountability. I wanted to change things for everyone else, so no one else would ever have to go through what I did. We did our research: In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified. There was one shooting we found, in 2005,  that was ruled justified by the department and an inquest, but additional evidence provided by citizens caused the DA to charge the officer. The city of Milwaukee settled with a confidentiality agreement and the facts of that sealed. The officer involved committed suicide.

The problem over many decades, in other words, was a near-total lack of accountability for wrongdoing; and if police on duty believe they can get away with almost anything, they will act accordingly. As a military pilot, I knew that if law professionals investigated police-related deaths like, say, the way that the National Transportation Safety Board investigated aviation mishaps, police-related deaths would be at an all time low.

And so, together with other families who lost loved ones, I launched a campaign in the Wisconsin legislature calling for a new law that would require outside review of all deaths in police custody. I contacted everybody I could. In the beginning, I contacted the governor’s office, the attorney general and the U.S. attorney for Wisconsin. They didn’t even return my phone calls or letters. I even contacted Oprah, every Associated Press bureau in the nation, every national magazine and national news agency and didn’t hear a word.

(read the full article here)

Law enforcement should serve and protect the citizenry.  We shouldn’t be afraid of officers of the law.  Parents should not worry about raising their children in a society where police officers will employ lethal force on their children over trivial issues. In fact, lethal force should not be employed save for the most extreme circumstances.  Unfortunately, all too often-especially when it comes to People of Color-excessive and lethal force is brought to bear frequently.  To make matters, as in the case of the above story and as we see in Ferguson, there is insufficient accountability for law enforcement (remember, the Ferguson PD has lied, obfuscated, engaged in smear tactics, and botched the investigation into the death of Michael Brown).  This needs to change.  Law enforcement needs to recognize that they should be protecting all of us and lethal force should not be used, except in the most extreme circumstances. Further, they need to recognize how important it is for a full, impartial investigation to be performed in the event of a homicide by law enforcement officers.  They have a greater level of power than civilians and they MUST have a greater level of responsibility.

{advertisement}
We need greater accountability for police
{advertisement}

2 thoughts on “We need greater accountability for police

  1. 1

    Police haven’t “botched” the Michael Brown investigation. That suggests accident or incompetence.

    They almost certainly deliberately avoided speaking to witnesses long enough to claim that anything they might say now has been tainted by media attention, and i am willing to bet that any evidence that does not support their narrative has been lost or destroyed by now.

  2. 2

    Good point. Botched isn’t the best term.
    And yeah, at this point, I can’t imagine that even if Officer Wilson were to face charges, that he’d be convicted.

Comments are closed.