Month: April 2018

It was a cold October night in 2017, as I made myself ready for bed but somehow I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that clouded my thoughts.  It was as if something was waiting in the shadows ready to pounce when I least expected it.  I said a prayer as usual for my son who was away at college and  finally fell asleep at around midnight but that uneasy feeling was still there as I drifted off to sleep.

Around 3 a.m., the phone started ringing.  I sat up immediately as the jarring sound in the early morning hours woke me into consciousness.  I knew it was nothing good.  The voice on the other end sounded vaguely familiar as I suddenly realized that it was my son, Christopher.  He was a first-year law student and he had just started college about three months ago.  Living away from home was his dream come true and we seldom heard from him unless he needed something from us as is the case with most college students, I guess.  So, what did he want this late at night?

“Mum, don’t panic.  I’m in the hospital but I’m fine.  The police are here with me!”  Visions of horror swirled through my mind as I gripped the phone tighter.  I tried to understand the words from the other side but all I could hear screaming through my head was, “Oh God, no!”  Was my worst nightmare coming true?  I called the police station to get more details but all they would say was, “Your son is not fine, he’ll have to stay in hospital!”

The next morning, we made the dreaded journey there.  It was a two-hour drive with my head going into panic mode.  “How badly was he injured?” kept pounding through my sleep-deprived head.  We finally arrived at our destination and  walked into the hospital room and immediately I am confused.  The young man staring back at me from the hospital bed seemed familiar and at the same time unfamiliar.  His face was twice the normal size and his eyes seemed lost as they looked at me apologetically.  There was a bloody discharge oozing out of the side of his mouth.  I could see he was in pain as I reached out and held his hand.  The doctor told us that they had to wire his mouth shut after the surgery to make sure the wound healed properly!  He had suffered a broken jaw that needed restructuring to make sure that his bite and his jaw would return to normalcy.  I could feel the anger rising up within me.  I wanted to know the details but I had to keep my panic and my anger in check.

We learn that there had been a scuffle and that he and his friend had gone to the Bahnhof Viertel, the railway station area, to get a snack at around 2 in the morning.  They were students feeling free and invincible.  No parental noose around their necks and no curfew either!  It was time to let loose and enjoy the freedom.  Evil had another plan for them that night.  Just as they were heading back, laughing and enjoying their burgers, evil stepped in.  It came in the form of a 21-year-old German man, just a year older than my son.  He approached them demanding that they give him their wallets and their cellphones.  The boys stared back at the angry young man not really comprehending what was happening but before they could react, the assailant lunged at them throwing punches and  kicks.  One of those punches caught my son squarely on his jaw and his glasses went flying.  His friend also lost his glasses but only suffered minor bruises.  The boys took off running and made their way to the police station about a mile away.  The policeman took one look at my son and immediately called the ambulance.  Emergency surgery was performed and screws and a plate were inserted into his jaw.

It took him months to recover from such an ordeal which started out with only soft food.  Getting fluids down was difficult too but I was thankful it wasn’t worse than that!  “He could have lost his life!” kept rushing through my head so I was alright for the moment but the anger I felt refused to leave me alone.  Who or what gave this young man the right to attack in such a brutal fashion?  The police told us my son and his friend were just victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time but that didn’t help to calm the rage I was feeling.  We also learned that my son and his friend weren’t the only victims that night.  The angry young man had gone on a rampage of violence injuring six others but none were hurt as badly as my son.  Three months later, the victims received a small cash compensation for their pain and ordeal and the perpetrator was sent to youth detention to learn, hopefully, how to behave in a regimented society.  I don’t know if he will continue to do what he has done but I hope for my son’s sake and for others who lead lives away from evil that this angry young man has learned his lesson before he goes out and does this again and kills someone the next time around.

Christopher went back to college several months after the attack.  His jaw has healed although the plate still remains and will remain there forever.  Just as he was leaving for college, I decided to talk to him about his ordeal and to give him some safety tips.  The young man I had raised with such loving care and who now has the titanium plate in his jaw said, “Mum, I will not let that “animal” dictate how I live my life!”  There was nothing more to say after that.  I had raised him right.

Here is a quote that speaks to the heart of the problem.

“The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

On that particular night in question, the angry young man chose to cross the battleline and in so doing, he brought harm to his fellowman.  Sometimes raising your children right doesn’t guarantee their safety and all it takes for evil to find them is as the police officers said, “They were at the wrong place at the wrong time.” More often than not, this is all it takes for someone to lose a life or to carry their injuries for a lifetime because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have come to terms with what happened to my son, thankful that his life was spared on that night.   He is back to normal and psychologically he seems to be doing fine there too.  However, I am sure that this won’t be the last time that he will come face to face with evil but I hope if and when he does that the angels will be out in full force watching over him.  Evil thrives and it hits home when we least expect it just as it did on that October night.

March 18, 2018 dawned like any other day for Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African-American male but before the day was done, he would belong to the same club as all those killed before him, the likes of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin just to name a few who are now card-carrying members of the “shot dead by the police” club.

On that particular evening, the officers of the Sacramento Police Department were looking for a male suspect who was captured on film breaking windows in the Meadowview neighborhood.  The police camera shows officers breathing heavily as they run around the neighborhood trying to apprehend the suspect.  They come across Clark standing in the yard of his grandmother’s house with a cellphone in one hand.  What ensued is hard to watch as is and was the case in many other shootings involving black males in the U.S.  The camera footage takes you through the encounter and then one officer is heard shouting, “Gun! gun! gun!” and a barrage of shots follows.  The aftermath shows the victim on the ground his life seeping away.  The officers had fired 20 rounds, eight shots found their mark, six of them in Stephon Clark’s back. He died about 3 to 10 minutes after being shot.   The officers opened fire just seconds, six seconds in all, after they encountered Clark.

This is nothing new.  The “overkill” by law enforcement of black males is nothing new, it has happened often enough.  The horror and anger is nothing new either and so are the  protests that ensued as hundreds if not thousands took to the streets looking for justice.  We have yet to see justice prevail in such shootings because police officers are held to different standards and they march to a different drum beat or so it seems in this country.

According to the police, they believed that Clark was holding a weapon in his hand as they chased him into the backyard and opened fire at an unarmed man.  The weapon was a white iPhone.  The officers have claimed that they “feared for their lives.”  We’ve heard this excuse often enough.  Take Michael Brown for instance.  The officer, Darren Wilson, who shot him claimed that he feared for his life against an unarmed  Brown. The young teenager  had been shot six times at least twice in the head, those were the last two shots he delivered.  According to Darren Wilson, it was a “fight for survival” and he shot him because he feared for his life.  Sound familiar?

Coming back to the case at hand, no aid was administered to Stephon Clark after the shooting.  It took about 5 minutes before a female officer is heard saying, “We need to know if you’re OK. We need to get you medics, so we can’t go over and get you help until we know you don’t have a weapon.”  Right, how many bullets does it take to believe that a shooting victim is no longer a threat?  After five minutes, they walk over and handcuff the man lying bleeding on the ground.  More officers arrive at the scene and one officer is heard saying, “Hey, mute,” and that was the end of the audio recording.

This is just another shooting of yet another black male in the scheme of things.  The use of deadly force is also the norm where black males are concerned.  Shoot first and ask questions later is the stance law enforcement takes when it comes to black suspects.  The latest incident has sparked protests but this too is nothing new.  The anger will simmer long after the protests have died down but justice will take a long time coming, if at all.

California lawmakers are pushing to make it easier to prosecute police officers who kill civilians.  According to the author of the bill, Shirley Weber, “It seems that the worst possible outcome is increasingly the only outcome that we experience.”  How right she is.  These killings can only be described as an “overkill” to say the least.

In the meantime, another black male is dead, the victim of a police shooting.  Far too often we hear, “we feared for our lives,” from the officers after emptying their barrels into the victims but in most cases it was not the officers who had to fear for their lives, it was the victims who had no weapons to protect themselves and are no longer here to give an account of what took place.

Stephon Clark was the father of two young boys, ages 1 and 3 and at the time of his death, he was trying to turn his life around.  He had a criminal record but that is not the point here.  His record is irrelevant, the shoot to kill mentality is.  The case is under investigation but don’t hold your breath. The killing of black males will continue in a culture where it is condoned by the system.

Stephon Clark’s grandmother asked, “Why didn’t you shoot him in the arm?  Shoot him in the legs? Send in dogs? Send in a Taser?  Why? Why? Those are my questions too. but I will add one more question to that.  Why was Clark shot six times in the back if as the officers claimed that they had feared for their lives when they delivered the shots?  Finally, did Stephon Clark deserve to die even if he had broken some windows on that late March evening?  What do you think?