Although I’m a movie buff, watching horror movies is kinda difficult for me (excessive blood ‘n’ gore kicks me out, sorry), so I’m not as knowledgeable about the genre as I’d like to be.
Having said that, whenever I think I’m out, subversive auteurs like Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, Ti West, David Cronenberg and Jordan Peele pull me back in.
As it is with most genres, horror movies have very specific rules that must be followed. Blogger Leo Yu compiled a list of How To Survive If You’re In A Horror Movie:
- Never go anywhere by yourself, always tell people where you are going, and stay in large groups.
- Don’t explore creepy or abandoned places, you’re basically asking to be killed.
- Work on your cardio and coordination, so you can run really far and not trip and fall.
- If you’re in a building, don’t unlock the doors or go outside until help arrives.
- Never assume the monster is dead.
- Always ensure proper measures are taken so that the monster won’t come back to life.
- Try not to have sex, horror movie villains tend to strike when people are trying to get it on.
- If you encounter any strange things, events, or artifacts. Turn back, don’t touch anything.
(some of these rules are applicable in life as well, sad to say)
Unfortunately, outside of the reel world, there’s another rule that must be added to Leo Yu’s list:
- Don’t be Black or Brown in White America.
For obvious reasons, the last rule is hard to follow for People of the Excessive Melanin Community, so some unlucky brothers and sisters never make it to the end credits.
In this brutal reality, the monsters are real. Ask me how I know.
I never wanted to deal with the hassle of driving to my job so I took the Blue Line to the airport. I could relax, drink my coffee, read the Boston Globe. Most of the time I would wear a nondescript jacket over my uniform so the other people riding on the train wouldn’t bother me with questions about the airport.
Usually, I got off at Revere Beach and walked home but my standard routine suddenly flew off the rails when a group of white men came out of nowhere and surrounded me. They weren’t friendly either.
Huh? What the fuck is going on?
I was scared, confused, and I realized I was in a lot of trouble.
“OK, buddy,” one of the white men growled at me, “You’re coming with us.” When I saw a badge hanging on a lanyard around his neck, I understood that these white men were plainclothes cops and they thought I was somebody else. I looked around frantically for help, but people just ignored what was going on, minded their business, and kept on walking.
When one of the cops grabbed me, I shook his hand off, which was the worst thing I could have done because I was “resisting arrest”, and legally that meant these white cops now had the authority to handcuff me, put me in a chokehold or shoot me, and get away with it.
But what I did next was the right thing to do. Whether it was dumb luck, instinct, or an angel whispering in my ear, what I did was quickly unzip my jacket, revealing my TSA uniform underneath.
And just like that, it was over. Maybe it was the thought of not wanting to do the extra paperwork, but the cops stopped, turned, and walked away. No apologies, no explanations.
But one of the cops gave me a long hard look before he left.
Behind those pale blue whiteboy eyes, what he was saying was next time, and there’s always a ‘next time,’ because sooner or later, your luck runs out. We’ll make sure of that.
It was a promise. Every black person has felt the oppressive weight of that Cyclops eye. When they say, ‘To Protect and Serve’, they ain’t talking about us. Cops started out as slave catchers.
“I had certainly seen him before that particular afternoon, but he had been just another cop. After that afternoon,he had red hair and blue eyes. He was somewhere in his thirties.
“He walked the way John Wayne walks, striding out to clean up the universe, and he believed all that shit: a wicked, stupid, infantile motherfucker. Like his heroes, he was kind of pinheaded, heavy gutted, big assed, and his eyes were as blank as George Washington’s eyes.
“But I was beginning to learn something about the blankness of those eyes. What I was learning was beginning to frighten me to death.
“If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy. In that eye, you do not exist: if you are lucky.
If that eye, from its height, has been forced to notice you, if you do exist in the unbelievably frozen winter which lives behind that eye, you are marked, marked, marked, like a man in a black overcoat, crawling, fleeing, across the snow.
“The eye resents your presence in the landscape, cluttering up the view. Presently, the black overcoat will be still, turning red with blood, and the snow will be red, and the eye resents this, too, blinks once, and causes more snow to fall, covering it all.”
— If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin
Discussing the concept of “monsters” in literary fiction, author Jacqueline Lichtenberg theorized that SF is based on trying to understand what the monster is and what it wants, whereas in horror the monster usually “is a menace because it’s a menace.”
And it’s dangerous to give monsters the benefit of the doubt. Whenever I see the blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror, I hold my breath until I see them pass.
“I think the majority of police are really good people and really good at their jobs,” horror film director Jordan Peele said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that with any interaction I have with them, I’m viewed as a potential threat.”
White people invested in “copaganda” will never take James Baldwin’s manifestation of a homicidal policeman seriously, so instead they’ll dismiss it as an implausible literary exaggeration.
Black people know better. Experience is a harsh teacher.
Horror icons such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Art the Clown, Sadako, Chucky, the Cenobites, and Jigsaw never leave their Hollywood slaughterhouses.
But Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in public and didn’t care who saw it.
The only reason Chauvin didn’t get away with it was because an expendable scapegoat was needed so white people in denial could pretend that police brutality wasn’t a problem anymore. It’s another fantasy informed by privilege.
Police in the US killed at least 1,232 people last year, making 2023 the deadliest year for homicides committed by law enforcement in more than a decade, according to newly released data.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, catalogs deaths at the hands of police and last year recorded the highest number of killings since its national tracking began in 2013. The data suggests a systemic crisis and a remarkably consistent pattern, with an average of roughly three people killed by officers each day, with slight upticks in recent years.
Here’s the new cops, same as the old cops.
But despite the lies they tell themselves, the white people who ignore killer cops are monsters too. The brutes with guns and badges are just tools these monsters use so they won’t get their hands dirty.
Unlike a horror movie, black and brown people can’t escape the monsters by walking out of the Cineplex or turning off the remote. I got to go home at the end of my encounter with the police, but there’s an awful feeling inside of me that won’t go away: next time.
Senior Airman Roger Fortson found out. Another name added to the never-ending list.
Trump’s NY Criminal Trial, Day 14 (More Stormy Weather!)
trollhattan
Hellofa ride there, with the Boston PD. Sorry you had it happen to you, and still must endure the memory. PTSD takes many forms.
Everybody has a television station in their pocket now so the landscape has changed, but maybe not for the better.
p.s. I don’t care who or what you are, watch out for rural county sheriffs.
Balconesfault
The other day and a Facebook interaction with a friends friend… He was resorting to the old “there really aren’t that many killings of innocent black men by police” statistical argument I fed him the quote from Senator Tim Scott talking about how as a black man he was constantly having to put up with threatening shit from White cops.
The response? Basically black men who have to deal with this kind of harassment should be happy to live somewhere where police can do this and keep the crime rate low.
And he considers himself a libertarian.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t doubt the constant stress of that knowledge is part of the reason AA men die younger than white men on average.
moonbat
A great post, TBD, though it makes me want to cry. Baldwin cut right to the quick, didn’t he?
Took them way too long in that story to get to the racial/ethnic breakdown on the people murdered by police last year. Tellingly, running away from someone who is likely to kill you like a sensible person just gives them another reason to kill you.
WV Blondie
I read an early version of the Fortson story that lacked all the details about “the wrong address” and the video call he’d been on – and yet somehow I knew it was a bullshit shooting. Later updates showed my instinct was right.
I keep wanting to say “I hate cops,” but that’s not quite right. I hate bad cops, racist cops, ignorant cops, bully cops – but somehow there’s no good way to tell the difference until it’s too late.
eclare
I read about that this morning, horrific and all too often. Like the police officer who killed a guy eating ice cream in his apt in Dallas.
moonbat
And to take your horror movie analogy just a bit further: In the original Night of the Living Dead, Romero subverts the trope of the black character always getting killed first to make him the one who follows all the horror movie rules and consequently becomes the only one who survives. When our hero emerges from the nightmare the next morning he is promptly shot on sight by a band of roving rural sheriff’s deputies.
Romero knew what country he was living in. It is a never-ending horror film for black men.
Nelson
This is even more alarming in the context of Trump vowing to “indemnify the police”.
JPL
@eclare: I only heard about that one this morning also. What a horrible story.
E.
That is one harrowing story TTBD. I am sorry you went through that. I hope you keep writing here.
Ksmiami
We need national policing training and standards. And cop’s should be required to have at least a two year degree.
Hob
Thin Black Duke: It’s good to see you back here. Thank you for this piece, even though I wish there had been no occasion for it (I mean both your own story and the May 3 crime).
I know that the post is not mainly about literal horror movies, so I hope it doesn’t come across as missing the point for me to bring up a movie here— I’m only doing so because it’s the best attempt I’ve seen to make a similar point to this post in the form of a literal horror movie, and it’s possible that you haven’t seen it (since it got no promotion at all outside of festivals), and maybe you would like it (since we seem to have similar tastes in directors at least). It’s The Obituary of Tunde Johnson by Ali LeRoi. I wrote this description/review when it was making the festival rounds in 2020, and it’s now streaming on Hulu. Content warning: scenes of murder by police, high-school homophobia, general dread.
Sure Lurkalot
Thank you for this post. I would have said “timely” post but it’s timeless.
I wonder what white people think when they hear or read that many black parents have a conversation with their kids that they do not have. I wonder what it’s like to have to have this fear and teach your children this fear.
gwangung
@Sure Lurkalot:
They dismiss it and/or think it’s made up. They don’t take non-white people’s concerns seriously.
tokyokie
Although I’m an old white guy, I’ve had encounters with cops that could have turned out horribly, even fatal, because the cop was an asshole. But I thought quickly on my feet despite the pressure, and offered a reply that satisfied the bastard enough that he didn’t taze me (and in one case it was a few months after cardiac triple-bypass surgery). Had I been Black, I wouldn’t have been offered the courtesy of a reply.
Convert
About 350 blacks/hispanics were killed by police last year. (There were also a similar number of “unknown” race so that’s probably higher.)
That’s a bit higher than the 300 or so people who are struck by lightning each year in the US.
Ohio Mom
Of course the police thought TBD was someone else, isn’t it well established that “they all look alike”? /s, of course
This story is a perfect example of why I have no patience for the organized Jewish community’s currently obsession with antisemitism. American Jews do not have to steel themselves every time they walk out their front doors*. Feeling insulted or having your feelings hurt is not the same as having to be eternally on guard for your life.
It seems obvious to me that no matter where Black Americans are on their way to on any given day, their travels are fraught. Some fields, like medicine, are working on the racial disparities they unknowingly and inadvertently perpetuate but I doubt that’s a concern say, of the food service industry (first example that popped into my head because Ohio Son and I are having lunch at our neighborhood diner).
*If Trump is elected, I may revisit this opinion. My people haven’t done well historically under dictatorships.
Ishiyama
Nobody in power is interested in my suggestion: Fire 10% of the police, chosen by lot, then tell the remaining ones that the decimation will be repeated until all the “bad apples” are gone, and the complaints of police violence are reduced to an acceptable level. Let them turn in their fellow officers if they want to keep their jobs.
Old School
@WV Blondie:
To clarify, “the wrong address” is just a theory at this point. Fortson’s family’s lawyer is the person who suggested that. From the article, it doesn’t appear that the police have offered any explanation/details at this point.
lowtechcyclist
And to put that 1232 known deaths at the hands of police last year, do you know how many police were killed by someone else in the line of duty?
58, and that’s including eight who were struck by motor vehicles. 46 shot, 8 struck by cars, 4 stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death.
There are roughly a million law enforcement officers in America, and of course they want to tell you they’re the ‘thin blue line’ putting their lives on the line to keep us all safe, but you or I are way more likely to get killed in an auto accident than they are to be killed on the job. They don’t have to treat every situation like it’s potentially life and death.
And of course they kill so many people who were neither in danger nor causing anyone else to be in danger until the police showed up. Like Airman Fortson.
I’d have a bit more trust in the police if they’d blackball and speak out against their compatriots who cost someone else’s life with their screwup. But of course they never do. They present a united front, no matter how horrible the conduct of one of their fellow officers is. Even if it’s ‘a few bad apples’ (and it’s a hell of a lot more than a few), are they trying to DO anything about their bad apples? No, they’re not, and as a result we have to expect that they’re ALL bad apples.
Ohio Mom
@Ishiyama: Sadly, don’t think union contracts and/or civil service protections would allow that to happen. I can see lawsuit after lawsuit for being fired without cause (“I’m not racist, you can’t prove that I am, give me my job back.”)
CliosFanboy
Welcome back TBD. Another thought provoking post.
Even as an old white guy who checks most of the “won’t be harassed by the cops” boxes, I dread any interaction with the police. I literally cannot imagine the stress and fear I’d experience if I were a black or brown man. It’s like asking me to imagine giving birth. Intellectually I can grasp it, but in my gut I know I don’t. And it pisses me off to no end that as a society we makes the choices that not just enable, but create that situation.
lowtechcyclist
@Old School:
Yeah, for all we know they could have let themselves be ‘SWATted’, that is, someone calls in on 911 with, say, an abduction in progress, and the cops don’t bother to check out the situation for themselves before coming in with guns blazing. And only after they’ve shot up the place (and its occupants) do they find out that nothing was going on there, just someone calling in to use the police as an instrument of revenge.
topclimber
@lowtechcyclist: I believe the saying is that a few bad apples spoil the bunch. The “good cops” who never speak up don’t really care if it spoils their rep with the public, because what you gonna do about it?
Martin
@Ishiyama: Unfortunately that’s unlikely to work. Cultures are a lot harder to uproot than that, and the 10% that come into replace the first are likely to just take up the old culture.
The better approach is to disband the PD entirely and rebuild it. Be selective with who is invited back into the new PD and provide substantial civilian presence to set the new culture. This probably requires flipping the prosecutors office as well. Send clear messages to the state legal system what the new expectations are. I would start with the state and work down through the largest cities, so that the superseding force is the reformed one.
And the leg and governor would need to consistently reinforce that new culture. No war on crime campaigning. None of the bullshit that Eric Adams constantly does. So you need to have sufficient electoral control over those individuals and who is elected to the state leg, so the public needs to be on board. It needs to be *the* campaign issue in the state. You need civilian oversight board by law, and you need a public willing to engage with that seriously. A lot of laws need to be rewritten.
There is no quick fix to something like this. It’s accrued over more than a century.
I’m honestly not sure what state could pull it off. Maybe some place like Vermont. CA has too many other problems to deal with to surface this as *the* issue. Other states, even blue states, are also too committed to having the police maintain the social hierarchy and that’s the main thing you have to kill.
I think we have a lot of work to do as a society before we can hope to actually fix this problem.
Ishiyama
@Ohio Mom: I can only propose the solution; making it happen is a political problem that I am not powerful enough to effect. But pointing out the right direction is important, even if the road appears impassable. “Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered”. If enough people demand a change in policy, it will happen.
Ishiyama
@Martin: Thank you for pointing out the intractable nature of the problem, but you are proposing firing every single current police officer, and I am only talking about firing 10%, “to encourage the others”. Decimation works to restore discipline, faster than anything else.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: This is part of why you have to disband the organization. This is how universities handle tenure and union contracts – you remove the entire department. You leave no job behind for them to contest being in.
There are laws protecting workers from doing this and then just replacing the jobs with nearly identical jobs – the law at least in theory can address employers operating in bad faith. So this has to be done quite carefully. You would have to change the charter of the PD pretty substantially, move some functions out, bring other functions in related to public safety rather than law enforcement, etc. You’d need to get the courts on your side on this one.
Ishiyama
That is the point of my proposal: decimation by selection by lot makes the “good cops” pay a price for their silence, too.
lowtechcyclist
@gwangung:
Oh, they know it’s real. After some Black person gets killed in a traffic stop, they’ll always run through the litany in the comments. Was he ready with his license and registration? Were both hands on the top of the steering wheel? All that stuff I’d never heard, and never needed to, but Black people had better know by heart or else it’s their fault if a cop gets trigger-happy after pulling them over.
When I read that shit, I think of all the times after being pulled over for my lead foot when the cop was at my window and I’ve still been rummaging through the glove box for my registration, or still digging my wallet out of my back pocket, and if the cop was bothered by it, they certainly didn’t show it. But I’m white. Other than a general ‘be polite,’ my parents never said a thing to me about how to act when a cop pulled me over. They didn’t think they needed to, and they were right.
ETA: You’re right that they don’t take the concerns of non-whites seriously. All that stuff I mentioned, they use to blame the person of color for their own death. They know Blacks are treated differently, but that just means Black people had better know and follow all the rules that don’t apply to people like me.
OzarkHillbilly
As I said elsewhere in reference to this story, “I think a lot of our problems with policing stems from the whole “warrior cop” mentality that is inculcated daily.” That combined with the inherent racism too many people possess, make this an intractable problem.
Ishiyama
You have to start with legislative findings that support emergency legislation overriding existing civil service protection and union contracts. And then you empower the executive to implement the new policy. And if you have to go that far, you can choose either complete restructuring, or my idea of decimation, or any other means that has political support.
(There is an outside chance that, even under the existing law, a federal court could order decimation as a remedy in a civil rights enforcement action, if the Justice Department pushed for it.)
Martin
@Ishiyama: I disagree. I’ve seen organizations try that and it never worked. The ones that remain recognize the culture you are trying to weed out and just instill it even more aggressively in the replacements because you’ve left 90% of the problem behind, with the gambit that each future weeding effort will make the problem worse.
If you remove all of them, and you think you can identify the good ones, you can rehire them. But you are rehiring them into a different organization, with different leaders, a different mission, and a different job responsibility that you make very clear from the outset.
By removing 10% of the people you leave all of the leaders, all of the mission, all of the culture, it’s the same job they thought it was before, and instead of the 5% turnover from retirement/hires, you’ve increased it to 10% expecting a different outcome. And even if you do fire 10%, they won’t leave. They’ll sue, and tie you up for 5 years before you can get them out of there because there’s still a job there they can argue they should be able to stay in.
If you remove the department completely what job are they arguing they should be able to stay in? There isn’t one. They’ll still sue, but there’s nothing left behind. You’ve wiped it out, and are building something different.
Citizen Alan
@WV Blondie: IMO, virtually all cops are bad cops. Because this is my criteria for a “good cop”:
If you, as a police officer witness a fellow police officer either committing a crime or else an act of wholly unjustified brutality against a suspect or detainee, would you
If your answer to any of those questions is “No,” then I submit you cannot be a “good” cop. You are, at best, an accomplice to and apologist for bad cops. If your answer to all three questions was an unequivocal yes, then you are a “good cop,” but you probably won’t be one for very long before the “bad cops” and their accomplices/apologists run you out of the profession.
Joe Serpico was a good cop. And he had to flee the country to avoid being assassinated by the NYPD.
Ohio Mom
@Martin: Oh yeah, I had a boss at a nonprofit once who had been a professor but then his department was cut out of existence. No more Public Administrstion at Private U.
He carried quite the grudge because he had left a different college for that job.
Citizen Alan
@moonbat:
While I agree with your larger point, did that trope even exist when NotLD came out? Because I honestly can’t remember a horror flick prior to that which had a single black person in the cast unless it was a black woman playing the lead character’s sassy maid.
Citizen Alan
@Ksmiami: No amount of training or education can overcome a system inherently designed to focus on keeping the lower classes subdued over all other concerns. Police work disproportionately attracts men with authoritarian mindsets (if not fresh out of the military) and a desire to be obeyed and to push others around with impunity. I wish it were possible to do some kind of deep statistical research and find out what percentage of active-duty police officers had discipline records for bullying in their high school days.
Ishiyama
@Martin: I won’t claim to have data to support my idea, so I can’t say that you are wrong. Certainly my proposal postulates that all legal obstacles, such as lawsuits by affected individuals, are overridden by public priorities.
As for internal resistance to change, that force is counter-balanced against the desire not to be punished for your co-worker’s misconduct – by the next decimation.
Meanwhile, the people hired to replace the decimated officers can be screened and trained to a higher standard of conduct.
Citizen Alan
@Ishiyama: The problem with that would be opposition from the police unions, which are simultaneously (1) one of the most powerful unions nationwide, (2) one of the few widely respected unions at least among normies, and (3) easily the most corrupt union in the country. Say what you will about the Teamsters, but they never insisted on a contract provision that said a Teamster who killed someone through an act of gross negligence while on the job was guaranteed paid leave while the incident was being investigated and was nearly impossible to fire even in most situations where the Teamster is at fault.
WereBear
UncleEbeneezer
(Major Violence/Racism/Trauma Trigger Warnings for all): Based on your taste in horror I would also recommend Little Marvin. Season 2 of Them is out now on Amazon Prime and looks good. Season One was really great but very disturbing to watch as it didn’t pull any punches on the history of racist violence in America.
Swarm was also another really good, recent, horror series that dove into race a bit. But mostly in regards to social media “stan” culture and the peri-social relationships many fans believe they have with stars. There’s a fantastic episode starring Billie Eilish where the main character (played by Dominique Fishback) who is a serial killer befriends a group of crunchy, white girls who are about to attend Bonaroo. The whole series has a very Jordan Peele vibe to it.
Also, despite the tremendous amount of online criticism it received, I think Dahmer actually did a great job of highlighting the role that racism of the police played in failing to protect the Black/gay communities that Dahmer targeted. It also told many of the victims’ stories better than I expected and really didn’t glamorize Dahmer in any way. He was just a really messed up dude who got away with his horrific crimes for so long because he was white and his victims were not.
Karen S.
Whenever I get into my car to go anywhere, I do feel some fear because, as a Black woman, my gender won’t necessarily shield me from racist cops. Color is all.
I don’t remember my parents teaching me specifically about how to act around cops, but I do remember them teaching me to be on guard around white people in general. To them, growing up when and where they did, it made sense and was life saving.
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin:
The better approach is to disband the PD entirely and rebuild it. Be selective with who is invited back into the new PD and provide substantial civilian presence to set the new culture.
I love this concept, in theory. But I have yet to see anyone present an actual, realistic plan for how to implement it. Things like the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights laws in several states would make it extremely difficult. Not to mention, getting the political support of voters required. It’s a hell of a political lift that would be difficult in even the Bluest States/Cities.
Spanky
An OT Public Service Announcement:
WereBear
I picked a fine time to read Aurora, a thriller with this theme.
Ishiyama
Yes, I can imagine the howls of outrage from the police unions if someone with more influence than I made my suggestion. Their opposition would be a starting point for building support to sideline them. Make them defend doing nothing about the status quo, and give the public a goal to fight for.
WereBear
But it’s true about horror movies, because it’s that creeping sense of dread.
It’s not right to have when not watching a movie. That’s voluntary.
Antonius
Damn. Great essay man.
Anotherlurker
The disbanding and reforming of Police Departments is very possible. Look to the case of Camden, NJ for a good example. Google Camden, NJ Police Department (defunct) as a place to start. It is now the Camden County Police Department.
My apologies for not providing a link. I’m still trying to figure out copy/paste command. I’m going from Apple to Chromebook and I haven’t mastered the skill.
Spanky
@WereBear:
Martin
@Ishiyama: I think you are seriously misunderstanding how individuals respond to an external threat when there is a strong cultural element. They rarely shrug and say ‘I guess that’s how it ought to be’ and always reinforce the culture and dig in. It’s why the response in Gaza to Israels efforts to eradicate Hamas was an increase in support for Hamas. They didn’t shrug and say ‘I guess it’s time for Hamas to go’ because that would be to accept that the external cultural force was correct, instead they rallied in defense.
I mention this in my post about the college demonstrations. Once universities started breaking up demonstrations by force, students at other universities tipped up new demonstrations. They didn’t agree with the move, they fought against it. And they didn’t set up a ‘students for demonstrations’ movement, they adopted the message that the administrations appeared to be afraid of – support for Palestine.
If the civilian leadership is afraid of the police culture, the police will respond with more of that culture. It’ll get worse, not better. The solution is to eradicate the culture completely. Give it no ability to organize and respond
I’ll add – this is why I think white christian nationalism will need to be crushed before it will yield. There is no convincing that cultural movement until they decide it’s completley hopeless. Alabama is going to be Alabama for a long fucking time. The did not yield in 1964. One county in Virginia chose to not have public schools for 4 years, rather than desegregate.
Sure Lurkalot
@lowtechcyclist:
Exactly. My father’s lecture to me about being arrested or detained was how much trouble I would be in AT HOME.
White people’s denial and/or dismissal of this happening is example number infinity of their privilege. Ignorance or willful blindness is no excuse.
Antonius
@lowtechcyclist: Although I present as White (I’m Latino), I always leave my hands on top of the steering wheel if I’m pulled over. When the officer asks for the docs, I carefully describe all the moves I will make, including “I am going to pull out my wallet with these two fingers only” and every scripted motion I make, I make very slowly. I got pulled over once by an obviously coked-up cop who started screaming at me for taking a turn a little too fast. By remaining icily calm and reasonable, he let me go with ranted lecture. I could easily have died with a wrong word or move in that situation.
UncleEbeneezer
@Anotherlurker: Camden is an interesting case that has been seemingly successful. But to make that happen you need a Mayor/City Manager and Police Chief who are all on board. That’s tough to achieve in many cities and probably downright impossible in Red States.
Tom Levenson
I hate everything about the fact of police violence against Black men especially, and people of color more broadly.
And I hate with the heat of a thousand suns John Fucking Roberts for blowing up the VRA on the grounds that racism is over in the US.
Leto
Fucking ACAB. Defund these motherfuckers, strip their immunity, and toss them all in jail. Reform isn’t possible with these pieces of shit. I’ll never change my mind on that.
Aim high, SrA Fortson.
bluefoot
TBD: Thanks for this. I think one thing that’s hard to convey is living with the fact that your experience can happen *at any time*. Any time a person of color is out in public, any encounter with law enforcement can become life and death that we can’t control at all. Even the most anodyne interaction can turn on a dime. I’ve had that happen to me – a short, middle aged, brown woman with bad knees – in broad daylight in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville more than once. Including once just walking along on the sidewalk. And once a cop went from coolly polite to pulling out a gun in seconds because I wasn’t complying fast enough with his directions.
WaterGirl
@Anotherlurker: Try using the Ctrl key (Control) wherever you would have used the Apple Cmd (Command) key.
Chris
You know, I don’t even believe this. No, they’re not good people; I’m sure plenty of the people who want to join them are, but organizational culture and pressure being what it is, either these people get washed out, or they don’t stay good people. And I don’t believe that they’re good at their job; there’s absolutely no fucking way people can remain this immune to the consequences of their fuckups without it affecting their job performance, and not in a good way.
Ironically, I might have believed this less half a century ago, despite the progress that’s been made since then. Without the right-wing monoculture enforced by Fox News (on all conservative institutions, not just cops), and with the growth of the security state (including all the cross-agency cooperation), I’d believe that there was more variety in police departments with some being on the better end of things and even the bad ones being, well, differently bad. Nowadays? Pretty much all of them are right-wing occupying militias.
Bill Arnold
@Spanky:
For space weather enthusiasts, NOAA’s space weather prediction dashboard: Space Weather Enthusiasts Dashboard
WaterGirl
@Sure Lurkalot: There really are two Americas. Across several dimensions.
Leto
Everyone remember this? Army officer pepper-sprayed by police gets $3,685 in $1 million lawsuit
Reform the fucking USSC, and strip these motherfuckers of immunity.
Regarding Florida, specifically, from 2020. Brennen Center for Justice: Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement
Fair Economist
@lowtechcyclist: It’s more dangerous to deliver pizza than be a cop, but we never hear about the “thin bread line” defending us from hunger.
Leto
@Chris: For training: you don’t need to know the laws you’re enforcing, you get to make the shit up on the fly, the firearms training is fucking joke, per the USSC (and other Federal court rulings) you don’t actually have a duty to “serve and protect” the public… and to top it all off: you have qualified immunity for basically everything. There’s more training, and responsibility, covering how to operate the fry station at McDonalds than there are for cops.
And that’s enough internet for me today.
Lyrebird
I nearly threw up when I saw the news earlier today and realized it wasn’t a misprint from 15 yrs ago or something. Foolish of me.
Thank you, Duke, for this beautiful tribute to Senior Airman Roger Fortson and to your own esteemed self.
Makes me sick that you had any reason to write it.
trollhattan
@Fair Economist: Once upon a time the top three deadly jerbs were ocean fisherman, logger, taxi driver. Cop was a couple dozen slots down the list.
Wonder if that still holds?
bluefoot
Here’s a telling anecdote from just last summer. I was waiting for the light next to Cambridge City Hall. For those that don’t know it, the lawn out front is a popular lounge spot for people to get some sun, eat their lunch, etc. I’m standing there with a couple others waiting to cross, and a young Black couple with their 2 year old comes up to me and asks if they are allowed to sit on the grass. I look over at the lawn, a little confused. There must have been 30-40 people sitting on the lawn, but then I noticed that on this particular day, all of them were white (unusual for the location). I had a lightbulb moment, assured them it was okay – that they shouldn’t get hassled. And the man smiled, and said they wanted to make sure since they had their son with them and I was the only person around they could ask.
jimmiraybob
Speaking of monsters, Trump is pledging to round up, sort and export 12-15 million undocumented human beings living peacefully and productively among us. Most people might think “brown people” from south of the border but if history tells us anything black is close enough. Inevitably, mistakes and “mistakes” will happen.
House speaker and pastor for the evil insane Christian contingent, Mike the Johnson, has just stated that he’s on board but says the hard part is going to be identifying “them.”
How many will die in the identification and roundup phase of the Nazi fascist operation?
WeimarGerman
Thanks for this post.
Yes or LGBTQ, especially thinking of our trans friends these days, #NexBenedict.
WaterGirl
@bluefoot: They had to ask that in 2024. That’s fucked up
Curious. What made you safe enough to ask?
Melancholy Jaques
@Martin:
I agree, but can we all agree that’s not going to happen?
I’d like to consider creating new agencies that take over some of the tasks now assigned to general police responses. Mental health, domestic violence, drug overdoses, property crime complaints, and similar things that do no require response by officers armed to the teeth and trained to be violent in the extreme.
JCNZ
One of the best posts I’ve read on this magnificent site.
bluefoot
@WaterGirl: I guess because I am a harmless-looking middle aged brown woman? Weirdly for Central Square, I was the only PoC on that block at that time.
Rob Roser
Great post, thank you.
Chris
@Martin:
A pet theme of mine is that once you lock people in to the kind of “racial supremacism uber alles” view of politics that the Republicans are preaching, there’s essentially no going back – not without the entire system either being destroyed from the outside or somehow coming crashing down. The South didn’t abolish slavery or segregation until the North forced it to in both cases, South Africa didn’t abandon apartheid until it was cut off by everyone else and facing the very real possibility of extinction, Nazi Germany didn’t abandon fascism until it was conquered, crushed, and forcibly rebuilt in a very different image. If Republicans manage to lock in Jim Crow rule on the national level? Well, it won’t last forever, but only in the sense that nothing lasts forever. At that point, the only end we can look forward to is the entire system crashing in some fall-of-the-Roman-Empire level shit.
Baud
Good to see you. Sorry to hear about your harrowing experience.
The Thin Black Duke
Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the feedback and insightful comments.
Baud
@Chris:
Not really. There was slavery in the north for many years before it was abolished without outside intervention. The British were leaders in abolishing slavery around the world without outside pressure. Brazil abolished slavery after us, but I don’t think there was any outside pressure other than moral pressure.
Trivia Man
Roger Fortson shook me. So i posted a short bit about it to family text chat. They range from nuttiest prepper living in rural red state to older white woman whomis very Christian in an old fashioned way – compassionate and kind with heavy (mostly) unacknowledged white privilege.
Her response? “White people get shot by cops too.” Enrages me every time but i am resolved to say something occasionally. I don’t always dwell on it with them but I wont let them pretend it isn’t happening,
OlFroth
I think I’ve shared this story here before, but one Sunday morning when I was on patrol, I noticed a sedan driving along the road. When it slowed and stopped for a stop sign, I could see that the brake lights were not working. I pulled the vehicle over, my only intention was to warn the driver that he had no brake lights, and needed to get those fixed to avoid being rear-ended. As I approached the vehicle, I could see it was occupied by an African-American family, and I could also see they were absolutely terrified of me, as if they expected I was going to pull someone out of the car and beat them to a pulp. When I told the driver why I stopped him, that I wasn’t giving him a ticket, and that the only reason I stopped the car was because I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt, the look of relief on the patriarch’s face had a very profound effect on me. I asked where he was headed to, and he said they were going to Sunday services at church a few miles away. I advised him to put his flashers on, and followed behind him to make sure he and his family got to church safely. When I got back to the station and related the story and how if affected me to my sergeant, an African-American woman, she told me, “And now JT, you are officially woke.”
Trivia Man
@Sure Lurkalot: Im white with black sons. I did my best to have that conversation. Heart breaking.
Miss Bianca
Making my way (slowly) right now through Michael Herriot’s Black AF History, and it’s sort of sickening to come to TTBD’s post here and realize all over again how little has changed for African Americans in 400 years of white supremacy in this country.
Yep. Before we can have meaningful police reform, we have to have an honest reckoning about the history of policing in America, and how much it owes to slave patrols.
And, well…not to sound too pessimistic, but…how I should hate to be sitting on a red-hot stove till *that* happens.
trollhattan
It ain’t “the talk” by a longshot but before my kid ships off to North Carolina for a year, with her little furrin’ car and California plates, have to impress upon her not to give the cops shit if she’s pulled over (which would be her reflex) and that the odds of being pulled over with California plates will be N-times higher than here. Also, mind especially the dudes in vastly jacked up shiny pickups, which I’ll rank above the local cops as to relative danger to lone young women.
Jay
@trollhattan:
not even in the top 25
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/03/02/most-dangerous-jobs-america-database/11264064002/
H-Bob
How To Survive If You’re In A Horror Movie: “why don’t we get into the running car?”
Raoul Paste
I saw a French documentary about Denzel Washington on PBS a few nights ago. They didn’t pull any punches on the racism he’s encountered, but I’ve got to say that reading this post today was even more gripping. It helped me understand, but only to the degree that a white person can
gvg
@Ishiyama: No it doesn’t. “Unfair” firings would just increase the resentments and resistance too the wanted changes. It’s not justice, and everyone, including those who want reform would know it. there would be NO support for this even among black reformers.
You have to actually be fair in order to get good results.
There are a lot of black police officers and other minorities as well. There was and probably still is a real effort to help things by getting more minorities into the police with the hypothesis that it would improve things. Maybe it has some, but it does seem like the black cops get coopted by the police culture.
Lets have some serious thought about this important issue not ill thought out fantasies.
cain
@Ishiyama: The problem here is the police union who are backed by the GOP. It’s the only union those assholes will support.
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: I believe it’s American police *culture.*
That culture was born in antebellum slave patrols and is passed on in police union halls today.
Did you notice that Trump’s first major endorsement was the FOP?
It’s *inherent* in American policing.
cain
@Martin:
It should have been crushed back at the end of the Civil War during reconstruction – somehow the South surrendered and then we surrendered in turn.
JustRuss
My shocked face, here it comes.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
No love for Larry Cohen and John Landis?
trollhattan
@Jay: “Roustabouts” included, which gets an instant Elvis shoutout.
A/V installers and repairers was not on my bingo card, even a little. Must be all those projectors bolted to high-voltage transmission towers.
Kayla Rudbek
@cain: The South lost the war but won the peace
WaterGirl
@OlFroth: Great story. Thanks for sharing it.
Zakariya
This poignant narrative serves as a powerful reminder of the harsh realities endured by Black and Brown individuals in America. The pervasive fear, uncertainty, and constant threat of violence they face simply for existing in a society that often perceives their presence as a threat is deeply troubling. It’s disheartening to acknowledge that in today’s world, the experience of being Black or Brown often entails navigating a landscape where safety and justice remain elusive.
As we confront these systemic injustices, it’s essential to amplify our voices against systemic racism and police brutality. We must strive towards building a society where every individual, regardless of race, can experience safety, dignity, and freedom. It’s crucial to recognize that even Black women face rampant racism, underscoring the urgent need for collective action and advocacy.
Figures like KIMBERLY BRYANT,, who dedicate themselves to fighting against racism, offer hope and inspiration. Bryant’s nonprofit organization for women of color exemplifies the resilience and determination of communities fighting for their rights. As we continue this struggle for equality, let’s stand in solidarity and work towards a future where every person can thrive without fear or discrimination.
RaflW
Part of what I despise so much about the never-ending Trump show of bullshit, preening, and venality is that something like the mistaken murder of Senior Airman Roger Fortson can barely break through the media fog for even 24 hours.
It should be a massive scandal. It should galvanize police forces, mayors, and everyone to g.d. fix this system (though really, fix implies it isn’t working as intended. I’m more and more persuaded that the job of uncontained violence against black people is what’s intended).
I’m horrified by this, but also struggle to know what to do to change it when the same racist purveyors of violence (cf Central Park Five full-page advertisement buyer) is possibly the new dictator of America.
karen gail
I am an “older” white woman who never had to worry about being pulled over by police; yet, when I was younger and alone I did since I often found myself in rural areas where a single woman alone needed to be worried about being raped. And yes, it was often an law enforcement officer who did the pulling over and raping; a woman I knew told support group that the officer bragged that no one would believe her over him.
Years later I discovered that my choice of four-foot companions would lead to law enforcement pulling weapons or at least unsnapping weapon when they saw my dog. My mastiff came close to be shot a number of times, my pit bull a few times, even had one that felt threatened by my black lab.
sab
@karen gail: When I lived in Las Vegas NV the swat team would cross the street to avoid my (friendly) shepherd, but their k-9 squad kept offering to buy her when we were taking obedience classes at Dog Fanciers Park. She was fascinated with their dogs’ bite training.
rikyrah
23
In his home
They didn’t announce themselves as police
He did what anyone would do if they thought someone was breaking in.
JML
modern policing has massive problems. My university is cutting 46 programs and Criminal Justice is one of them. used to be a very strong program and well-respected (still respected) but the enrollment is falling through the floor because people don’t want to go to university to become a cop any longer.
And it’s not just one thing that’s brought us to this point: it’s a bunch of them. It’s the militarization of police that really took off in the 90’s (especially when the feds started giving departments sweetheart deals on military surplus weapons and equipment). It’s the “warrior training” and mentality that wasn’t just allowed in departments but encouraged. It’s the fact that the loudest and most aggressive voices in the departments are often the biggest problems. It’s the whole “Blue wall” idea that keeps people from speaking out against their fellow officers, and the fact that many of them fear they will get hung out to dry if they speak up. It’s drug abuse issues (steroids run wild through some departments; I’ve had a big city cop tell me straight up that he knew at least 40% of his department was using). It’s cops no longer living in the communities that they police. It’s basic, unadulterated racism. It’s the refusal of leaders to actually discipline anyone for anything until something really bad happens. (No, those verbal reprimands don’t work, especially when it’s never put in a file and there’s no consequences for it) hells bells, how many times does a problem get skipped past just through the force of “not every cop” coming up and letting things get swept under the rug.
I don’t know what the solutions are.
I think we need national databases so when the thugs actually do get fired they can’t just start up again two towns over.
i think we need to seriously demilitarize the police.
I think we need a lot more mental health counselors handling crisis calls rather than cops.
I think we need to screen a hell of a lot better to keep the racists, power junkies, and thrill-seekers out of the cop shops.
i think we can’t give up because it’s going to be insanely hard. and it’s going to need all of us.
WaterGirl
@Zakariya: Welcome to commenting!
Now that I have manually approved your first comment, your future comments will show up for everybody right away.
rikyrah
@Nelson:
Yep. Terrifying.
WaterGirl
@karen gail: This makes me so angry. Not because you wrote the comment, but because of the truth of it.
Manyakitty
@The Thin Black Duke: what a punch in the gut. Brutal. Important. Thank you.
cain
@JML:
I find it preposterous that a cop can kill someone get booted out and then find work in another town.
My educator wife, who didn’t do anything wrong – was mislabled a racist and has something in her file has to deal with a possibly career ending action. Cops seem to get a lot of leeway.
cain
@rikyrah:
This should have been a 2nd amendment right thing – basically being punished for having a gun in your own home. That’s how you attack this – force these 2nd amendment cultist assholes to side with you.
Hell, start doing marches – that should blow their minds when you start doing 2nd amendment protests with his name on the poster.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Akron Ohio in the 19th century was supposedly a bastion of abolitionism. Sojourner Truth gave a famous speech here, and we have a plaque downtown commemorating it. My father’s prep school (it was a college back then) had black students in the 1850s. John Brown had a house here.
But when Akron was the fastest growing city in America during the 1920s, they decided the best place to recruit the police needed for the expanding population was Alabama. So the Northern Migration brought Jim Crow with it, at least among the police.
We used to have an amazing music scene for most of the 20th century because our nightclubs were not segregated, and Cleveland’s were. Famous musicians played there but they hung out here.
I am as white privileged as possible, but I have black grandchildren and I cringe every time they go out. We still haven’t recovered from Jayland Walker. The cop that fired 45 of the 91 rounds that killed him is still on the force, identity unknown.
We finally fired a cop that shot a 15 year old in the hand. Same cop had numerous complaints, including twice pointing a gun at his girfriend’s head in drunken altercations on vacation. He was fired then reinstated twice after those incidents
ETA I know you live in the next city south of us and know all this. I just have so much regret about who we were and what we have chosen to become.
sab
@cain: John Wilkes Booth had a gun, and we had a horrible VP all lined up to take over.
cmorenc
@Martin: Good luck pushing that “defund / disband the police” notion (at least, thats how it will be perceived as you are framing it). The notion has utterly flopped with the public in the vast majority of the US, pretty much in line with the reasons you cited – the dominant culture in the US is supportive of the police, and dig in rather than receptively listen about the problems within the internal police culture itself. You will likely get further pushing “reform police culture” than with the notion of disbanding and entirely remaking police forces.
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
As an old white man, I’ve seen this time and time and time and…..
There are white people that would have been perfectly content to live in olden times and likely think slavery should NEVER have been outlawed but being brutally honest, many of the people that are as bland as my skin, really are not all that far removed from many of those from the time of slavery. I’ll relive one of my worst times dealing with this. My gay sister had partner who was a beautiful black woman, who became a very good friend of mine, and I ended up knowing her a lot longer than my sister did. She had sickle cell so I have visited her in the hospital on more than one occasion. The last time she was assigned to a white male doctor who gave less than one shit if she lived or died. And she passed away. She was my best friend in the world. And she died due to a racist fuck of a doctor. This was over 2-3 decades ago and I am still completely fucking livid that this fuck ever had a medical license. Or could still breathe when she couldn’t.
Jay
And keep in mind, that while crime rates have continued to plummet,
Police closure rates, (at a time of smartphones and cameras everywhere) have continued to plummet even faster.
Van Buren
If they IDed themselves as PO there will be bodycam evidence…which I am sure will be released only if it exonerated them.
sab
@Jay: Why do your job if you can get paid to sit in your car and eat donuts instead?
karen gail
@WaterGirl: Thank you; I am old enough to remember when police weren’t someone to fear but once I became a teenager both my father and grandfather warned me that it wasn’t safe to be alone with a police officer. Once I started driving they both told me that if I saw lights to pull over I was to drive to well-lit place like drive in, bar or service station. My father told me that he was friends with too many police officers to not teach his daughter to treat them like a danger; and this was the 60’s and early 70’s.
sab
@Jay: Our police union wants any funding vote to be cops only. Ambulance guys always bring firefighters over the line, and that sucks for cops.(Ohio here, all our local services are funded by mostly property tax votes , although some local income votes). They might be in for a rude shock next election. A few decades back we voted down the library levy!
Antonius
@trollhattan: it does. “Cop” is not even in the top 10:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/workers-comp/most-dangerous-jobs-america/
Slightly_peeved
@Martin:
The issue with this approach isn’t so much the courts or the public – it’s the robbery of the mayor’s house in which the mayor is tragically killed a couple of days after the PD is disbanded. That could not be stopped or investigated because of the recent PD changes, oh what unfortunate timing.
Unfortunately, one situation where you really need police is the one where you just took away the jobs of a whole industry, a significant proportion of which are authoritarians with guns.
LauraToo
Thank you for this. Lots to think about, I really appreciate your perspective, glad to see you back.
Ryan
I dunno, if I’m going out, in the bag is about the 10/10 way to go.
Pink Tie
I’m so sorry.
It’s been said, but this is true for women, too. No justice. I don’t want to coopt anyone, but I wish none of us had to deal with any of this. I am tired.
Paul in KY
@Leto: I’m a USAF vet. Am so mad I can’t see straight. One of our fine young troops murdered in his own house. I think of all the great young men & women I served with. I’m sure he was just like them.