Tamir Rice. Rekia Boyd. Tyisha Miller. Walter Scott. Eric Garner. Trayvon Martin. Laquan McDonald.
As the list gets longer, the scars get deeper. People call it “police brutality.” The paradox of a state apparatus endangering the citizens it is meant to protect.
At the JFK Jr. Forum “Divided We Fall: When Police and Communities Collide,” Kennedy School students introduced the panel saying, “We can waste our lives drawing lines, or we can live our lives crossing them.” It was a powerful statement of political idealism – but one in stark contrast with reality. The reality of policing in America is this: the lines have been painted in blood by history and have been made into walls by institutions.
One thing that all the panelists at the Forum – #BlackLivesMatter leader Brittany Packnett, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, former Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman – agreed on was this: the police are a small part of a much bigger failed system.
As I began my interview with McCarthy, I told him I’d arrived in America in 2014. He said, “You probably came the wrong year.” In 2014, Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by police officer Jason Van Dyke in Chicago. Video of the incident was not released until 14 months later, after much public protest, when a judged forced its release, and a week later, McCarthy was fired.
But that was a particular moment. This story is 300 years older. When asked how the police could regain the trust of people of color, McCarthy said, “I don’t think we ever had trust. Because slavery was written into the Constitution of the United States of America, and then over the years those racist policies that were laws such as Jim Crow, segregation, black codes, you name it, through the years were enforced by the white police officer.” When moderator journalist Candy Crowley questioned how to have legitimacy, Parker interrupted – “Safety comes first.” But when safety and legitimacy becomes an either/or choice, and when safety means different things to people of different races, it is not just the police who have failed America. It is the entire criminal justice system.
This means police cannot remain the sole target of public anger. In Packnett’s words, “the point is not to break off one branch, the point is to uproot the entire tree.” We can, and should, focus our attention on instruments of oppression. But when we do, reform-minded officers like McCarthy take the fall as individuals. Since McCarthy left office, the murder rate in Chicago increased by 120 percent.
Politicians like Chicago City Mayor Rahm Emanuel need to be held accountable. We cannot just demand greater change from those who execute the laws – greater change has to come from those who legislate them. In the words of Packnett, “Systems aren’t broken. They are functioning in the way they are intended to.” It is not just a matter of crossing those lines. It’s a matter of bringing down that blood-soaked wall.
Watch the full Forum conversation here:
