KING: The irrational demand for black victims of police violence to be perfect
By SHAUN KING
Oct 12, 2016 | 12:58 PM
Even as new details emerge in the fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher, the fact remains: he did not deserve to die at the hands of police. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
Last month in Tulsa, Officer Betty Shelby shot and killed an unarmed black man named Terence Crutcher. A dash camera and helicopter camera filmed the entire ordeal in which Crutcher had his hands up right before he was shot and killed.
Yesterday it was revealed that Crutcher had Phencyclidine, also known as PCP, in his system when he was shot and killed. Immediately, attorneys for Shelby — and conservatives across the country — began using this autopsy result as justification for the shooting.
This is not only absolutely illogical, it's grossly inhumane and unethical. Drug use is no justification for a state-sponsored execution. If anything, it's all the more reason why Crutcher needed to be treated with compassion. He needed a medical intervention. He needed treatment. Nothing, not a single thing he did on the road that afternoon, while surrounded by police on the ground and in the air, warranted a state-sponsored execution.
What we are seeing here is painfully familiar. It's the notion that a black life only matters if it is perfect. The slightest rumor or hint or innuendo of imperfection is used to justify the most brutal violence imaginable against black bodies.
Amadou Diallo was as perfect as a human being could be when the NYPD fired 41 shots at him on his doorstep. Claiming he remotely resembled a man wanted for a rape that happened a full year prior, police then said they thought his wallet looked like a gun. That was all the justification the courts needed to let the officers off.
Harrowing video captured Crutcher's fatal encounter with Tulsa police. (TULSA POLICE DEPARTMENT / HANDOUT/EPA)
When John Crawford was shot and killed by police in an Ohio Wal-Mart, he was leaning on an unloaded pellet gun he picked up from a shelf in the store. He never pointed it at anyone.
Someone falsely claimed that he had loaded a gun and was pointing it at people. Nothing like that ever happened. The police shot and killed him in seconds.
It goes beyond police brutality. After George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a local high school student, conservatives began floating pictures of Trayvon taking a selfie years prior with his middle finger up. Think about that for a moment. He was a kid. He did nothing wrong to warrant being profiled, tracked, chased and confronted by a strange, armed man in his own neighborhood. Emergency dispatch told Zimmerman not to chase Trayvon, but he did so anyway and then people begin using random photos of a kid flipping the camera the bird to justify his murder. That's outrageous. One has nothing to do with the other.
When 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio, also after breaking no laws whatsoever, local media in Cleveland began talking about his father's criminal record.
Betty Shelby was criminally charged in Crutcher's death. (HANDOUT/REUTERS)
Really? Tamir was a child playing in the park with his sister on a day off from school. The notion that his father's criminal record had anything at all to do with this shooting is preposterous. It was shared not because it was relevant, but because it fits with the narrative that Tamir was somehow flawed and thereby deserved such a thing. He did not. If his father were a mass murderer, it would've been irrelevant to the facts of the case.
But here we are, in this endless, inhumane loop of people using perceived imperfections to justify lethal violence against black bodies.
That's not how the law works. None of us are perfect, and perfection is not what's required for us to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in this land. This game of "gotcha," in which personal flaws and shadows of flaws are used to justify police brutality and racial violence, is rooted deeply in white supremacy.
The truth is this: When no apparent flaws — like a non-violent drug addiction, are present, they'll manufacture a flaw out of thin air and float rumors and lies to demean the character of victims. This is because the system of white supremacy will say or do anything to protect itself.
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