Kylen English, Police Brutality, and “Those” People

In the last few weeks, folks in Dayton, Ohio have been fuming over the mysterious death of Kylen English. In the first few hours of the discovery of his death, the Dayton Police Department and the Dayton Daily News both continued to issue conflicting reports of this incident. While the coroner's office has found that English committed suicide, it bothers me that:

1. The Dayton Police Department continued to issue conflicting statements and half truths about English's death.

2. Dayton Daily News did the same thing.

3. The reactions from everyone except the English family and the black community in general.

When there is a death linked to police brutality, several things happen. The first is that everyone immediately calls for the black community to calm down. This implies that we are only reactionary to these incidents. It's crazy to watch people flock down to city hall to question law enforcement authorities and local governments about these incidents and then watch as the local media, clergy, and other so called "community leaders" urge us to chill the hell out. I scratch my head at this. We are law abiding citizens. Why would we riot? Don't get me wrong, the riots in Cincinatti in 2001 and in LA in 1992 were crazy, but when you do the math, they are actually the exception instead of the rule. We will protest, write letters, go to city hall, and have discussions on this, but most of us don't riot. Most of us don't shoot back at police.

Another thing that happens is the victim's police record, if there is any, is published the next day in the paper. You hear many people, even within our community, explain that if the victim wasn't doing dirt, he or she might be alive today. When it comes to English, that may be correct. What business did he have messing around with a minor and then trying to kick down her door. Yet does this warrant abuse? Does this warrant death? English never had a record though just like many other victims of police brutality. What ever happened to guilty until proven innocent? Wait, that only applies to rich white folk. Yet often I hear people imply that we somehow deserve it.

The crazy part is that police departments across the country refuse to make the changes necessary to fix the problem. They might change of few tactics and teach "sensitivity training." They even ask people in our community to "cooperate" with their investigations when they never ask their fellow officers to "cooperate" in corruption scandals and police brutality cases. Ironically, most of their big arrests are because of informants so to assume that we don't cooperate is a sham. We honestly cannot expect police departments to investigate themselves. And they always refuse to allow an independent, community organization to do the investigating as well. Once police departments admit that they are part of the problem instead of those "bad apples," then we can take the proper steps to fix the problem.

Of course, the mainstream media is to blame as well. It seems that their job is to fan the flames by publishing half truths and smear campaigns against the victim and the family of those abused. They never ask the hard question and even publish racist statements. Of course, these leaves communities with no voices. With politicians on the side of the police and the press taking advantage of the situation, who speaks for them? That is another story for another blog post.

We have been talking about police brutality since the Slave Fugitive Act of the 19th century. Here we are in 2011 and we still have the same problems. Go figure.