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By Nicole Golden “When brutality fails to alarm” Recent cases involving unarmed citizens renew
questions about law enforcement. 
This
month the national media showed us, repeatedly, a distressing police video in
which several officers violently subdued an unarmed The
resulting death of Nathaniel Jones again shone the spotlight on allegations
of police brutality, which entered our consciousness so vividly in 1991 with
the video-taped beating of Rodney King in To
many of us in But
the issue came home this year in cases that attracted little if any attention
nationally, including the fatal shootings of Michael Simmons in It
is easy for us civilians to sit in judgment and wonder why the police could
not have done something differently to avoid a tragic result. We
instinctively ask: “where was the mace/pepper spray? Why did the officers
have to strike so many blows once the suspect was on the ground? Isn’t there
a way to subdue an unarmed suspect that doesn’t lead to a fatal result? In
some situations, such as those involving Simmons and Quick, you ask if
multiple shots were necessary to immobilize an unarmed man. Maybe we cannot
substitute our judgment for that of trained professionals who often make
split-second decisions that could mean the difference between life or death.
Maybe those of us who have never felt the rush of adrenaline that comes with
potentially dangerous police situations should not play armchair observer. We
often hear about a “blue code” in which officers vow to stick together, even
in the face of serious allegations against them. We wonder if this code
becomes so entrenched in officers that it fosters an adversarial relationship
with the public they are entrusted to serve. What would have happened in the
Jones case if some of the later-arriving officers had tried to stop the beating?
Would they have been viewed as traitors to police solidarity? We cannot help
but wonder when individual humanity trumps the instinct to follow the
prescribed rules of the group. In
the Jones case, we see that the suspect swung at the officers and refused to
put his hands behind his head despite repeated warnings. We are told that
while the coroner determined the death a homicide, the suspect was obese, had
a enlarged heart, and had traces of cocaine and
“angel dust” in his system, all of which may have contributed to the death.
Despite these supposedly mitigating circumstances, our gut re-action is that
something is wrong when unarmed suspects die at the hands of law enforcement
officers. Members
of the Yet
in these recent cases, the community outrage seems relatively muted,
especially when compared with the riots that engulfed Commenting
on the death of KING, Hinton
speaks for many of us who cannot escape the nagging feeling that something is
wrong when unarmed suspects die at the hands of law enforcement. We can only
hope that someday soon we reach a point in police-citizen relations where
that nagging feeling is laid to rest. NICOLE GOLDEN, host of a local talk-radio program,
writes from |