Police Brutality – Site Title

Stephon Clark, A Senseless Killing

LEST WE FORGET

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 is a recurring event. 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 too. Take Michael Brown for instance. 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 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 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.

His 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?

Update:

As of 2024, Stephon Clark’s family is still waiting for justice to prevail in this case. The body camera video sparked national attention, outrage and calls against police brutality. It was announced in 2019 that then District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert wouldn’t file charges against the two officers who shot him, Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet. However, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in the Stephon Clark law in 2019 altering the Sacramento Police Department’s body-worn camera policies. And that was it.

The Manchester Uproar

Derek Michael Chavin, a former police officer, murdered George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020 by kneeling on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes while Floyd kept calling out, “I can’t breath,” and slowly snuffed out his life. During his tenure as a police officer, Chavin had 18 complaints against him and was involved in three police shootings and he had received two letters of reprimand for misconduct.

On April 20, 2021, he was convicted on all charges and was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison. He is just one of many officers involved in the killing of black males and for using excessive force while serving as a police officer. Police officers have always marched to a different drumbeat it seems, that of carrying a gun and a badge but when it comes to paying for their indiscretions, murder no less, they are untouchable or they walk off with a slight reprimand and are free to carry on as if nothing had happened while their victims lay six feet under, their voices silenced forever. Since 2015, police officers have shot at least 135 unarmed black men and women nationwide. At least 75% of the officers involved in the shootings were white. Excessive force and overkill was and is the name of the game. Willie McCoy, a black rapper, was sleeping in his silver Mercedes CLS500 outside a Taco Bell minding his own business when officers, six of them arrived and within minutes they had fired 55 shots in 3.5 seconds killing him. They put it down to “imminent danger,” and self-defense” would be the other and most often used excuse for the killing of unarmed black men.

Fast forward to what happened across the pond in Manchester, UK. A video has gone viral showing a police officer of the Greater Manchester Police kicking and stomping on a man’s head while he lay motionless on the ground. An older woman is seen trying to protect the young man on the ground. The uproar around this situation brings back shades of what happened in the US and the protests that ensued after the killing of black males in the US. As usual everyone especially the police are scrambling to come up with legitimate excuses for use of such excessive force BUT the video speaks for itself. The man has a cyst on his brain according to CT scans and his condition has worsened. Whatever happened before the attack by the police officer has nothing to do with this excessive use of force. The man on the ground was unarmed, motionless and no threat to any of the officers involved. Did racism play a part in this horrific and over-excessive use of force? Definitely.

According to a University of Birmingham report, “Police violence is not just a problem in the United States – it’s a reality in the UK, and at its core is “warrior culture among police officers. Warrior culture is defined as, “police officers defaulting to violence and aggression when conflicts arise.” It is, “largely characterized by aggression, machoism, intolerance, bias, suspicion, and detachment from policed communities,” which creates a ‘us versus them’ mentality. Furthermore, “policing research over many decades has consistently found that misogyny and racism persist in UK street policing culture.

The uproar is justified, the outrage more so. The officer or rather officers involved in this incident should lose their licence to practice or rather their badges should be taken away from them. They do not belong in a police force that is supposed to be out there to protect and to treat every individual equally and they certainly should not be condoned to go out and unleash the brutality they did. Having a badge and a baton does not give you the right to act with no principles and with such aggression. Shame on you!

The Killing of Alton Sterling

My heart cries today for a family who lost a loved one in such a horrible way and to make matters worse, it was announced yesterday that the two officers involved in the shooting will not face charges because of insufficient evidence and the “beyond a reasonable doubt” clause. That was enough to set the officers free with no accountability for the death of another black male.

The killing of Alton Sterling took place on July 5, 2016. The two officers confronted him in front of Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, and what happened next was hard to watch. The video shows a black man being pinned down by two white officers with one officer kneeling on his chest and the other on his thigh. One of the officers had his gun drawn and was pointing it at the man on the ground. If Alton Sterling was struggling, it’s only natural. Wouldn’t you, if you had someone pressing down on your chest? The situation escalated when one of the officers was heard yelling, “He’s got a gun in his pocket!” Three gunshots were heard and seconds later, three more. A life had been taken and Alton Sterling was dead with three shots to his chest and three to his back. A nation mourns again for a man they didn’t know but they had seen this before. This seems to be the sorry state of affairs in America, the overuse of force by law enforcement where black men are concerned and the no accountability factor afterwards. It almost seems like law enforcement has some kind of immunity from being punished for the killings. President Obama once released a statement saying, “Americans should feel outraged at episodes of police brutality since they’re rooted in long-simmering racial discord.” Are the shootings racially motivated? You decide.

It is not just Americans who are outraged by the killings which seem to take place at regular intervals. The world has a front row seat because of social media and all it takes to get it out there is a click of a button and the injustice is played out on the screen for all to see. Some may say, “There is more to the video than what is shown.” Perhaps, but what justification is there for shooting a man three times in his chest and then three times in his back? His gun was not drawn, it was in his pocket according to numerous eye-witnesses. What if he had had a gun? In a country that sees carrying a gun as a normal affair, why should this have caused any alarm? Alton Sterling wasn’t pointing a gun at anyone when the officers arrived at the scene, it was tucked away in his pants pocket. So, what justification did they have for the shooting? We will never know because this fatal shooting will go down as the others did. Protests on the streets in many different cities but to no avail, they can’t change the outcome which seems to have already been decided even before the announcement yesterday. Police officers walk to a different drumbeat. They can’t be prosecuted even if the evidence is staring you in the face.

So, it goes on and on. More killings will take place, more outrage on the streets, anger and rage simmering within but nothing changes. Let’s wait for the next shooting which will happen soon enough and maybe just maybe there is accountability for the taking of a life.

The only thing that is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” is the fact that Alton Sterling is dead. He is dead and gone. Nothing will bring him back. Did he get justice? What do you think?