BEWARE OF POLICE EXCESSIVE FORCE NARRATIVES

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2023

 

A recent news article in The Guardian newspaper about the January 18, 2023, killing of 26 year-old Forest Defender Manuel Esteban Paez Teran (nicknamed “Tortuguita”) by Georgia State Troopers several weeks ago (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/cop-city-georgia-activist-autopsy-results-manuel-paez-teran) touched one of my most painful memories as a retired judge. The article reports that Georgia police agencies have yet to release the official autopsy report of the slain environmental activist. However, an independent autopsy has concluded that the activist had been shot at least a dozen times.

During my 24-year experience as a state court judge – 13 years on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and 11 years as an Arkansas circuit judge hearing civil and criminal cases – I read numerous police reports. The police reports that I found least reliable, and which I approached with the greatest caution and skepticism, involved encounters between police officers and civilians.

The initial police report about the Louisville, Kentucky raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor did not mention that she was shot and killed. Instead, the report reads “none” concerning whether Taylor suffered injuries (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/louisville-police-breonna-taylor-death-incident-report/).

The initial police report about the arrest of George Floyd by Minneapolis, Minnesota police officers states that the man died from a “medical incident” following a police “interaction.” The 200-word report did not mention that Floyd was forcibly held face-down against a street surface with a police officer’s knee pressed against his neck for more than nine minutes (https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/21/us/minneapolis-police-george-floyd-death/index.html).

These examples show the tendency of government officials responsible for protecting public safety to not be forthright about their behavior when people are slain. They will conceal the truth. They will release information that is false or misleading. They will do so on purpose.

And when this happens, the officials are seldom held accountable. They are not charged with obstructing justice. They are not accused of providing false statements. They are permitted to act with impunity. Their supervisors are not identified. The people who lead their agencies are not disciplined. They are not accused or punished about such misconduct.

White supremacy depends, from the beginning, on the rest of us accepting what the white power structure says. And the police narrative about anything is the ultimate expression of white power. As long as the rest of us accept what the police say about anything, without questions, skepticism, or outright disbelief, the white power narrative is unchecked.

But the ability to question is, in itself, an act of power. The power to say that something makes no sense, that it is doubtful, or that the person making it is not someone who deserves to be treated as credible, is a powerful thing. And that is a power that has been claimed by white people for the police. That is a power that the legal system and white judges (including judges of color who think the police are above question) confers on the police (including police officers of color as long as they are following a white supremacist agenda).

That is what made the protests in Louisville, Minneapolis, and elsewhere around the nation in 2020 so powerful after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were murdered by police officers. That is what made the protests in Memphis so powerful after Tyree Nichols was murdered by the police in January 2023. And that is what is making the protests against Cop City in Atlanta and the killing of Tortuguita so powerful. Our power to question, dispute, and reject the white supremacist assertion of police narratives shows that we no longer consider what police say about anything – and especially about what they do when they injure or kill civilians – to be true merely because the police say it.

I hope we use that power more frequently. Let’s use our power to decide what to believe, who to believe, and why we believe. We have the power to say that we don’t believe the police, shouldn’t believe them, and won’t believe them, anytime they say something, and especially when they say something after abusing and killing civilians. We decide what we believe about what the police say. They cannot take that power from us.

Let’s use it.