Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today rightly observes that the coming together of Americans of all color, races, and ethnicities over grand jury handling of the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, may be a defining moment in the way we perceive the victimization of black males in this country. The editorial states:

“In city after city, white and nonwhite citizens have surged through the streets chanting or bearing signs with Mr. Garner’s final words: “I can’t breathe.” Others chanted: “Hands up; don’t shoot” or “Black lives matter” — slogans from the racially troubled town of Ferguson, Mo., where another grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown.

The viral spread of the demonstrations — and the wide cross section of Americans who are organizing and participating in them — shows that what was once seen as a black issue is on the way to being seen as a central, American problem.

The question of the moment is whether the country’s political leadership has the will to root out abusive and discriminatory policing — corrosive, longstanding problems that bore down on minority communities, large and small, urban and suburban.”

Below is the entire editorial.

Tony

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Hope and Anger at the Garner Protests

New York Times Editorial – Brent Staples – December 6, 2014

The country has historically reacted with doubt or indifference when African-Americans speak of police officers who brutalize — or even kill — people with impunity. Affluent and middle-class white Americans who were treated with respect by the police had difficulty imagining the often life-threatening mistreatment that black Americans of all walks of life dealt with on a daily basis. Perhaps those days are passing away.

You can see that from the multiracial cast of the demonstrations that have swept the nation since Wednesday, when a grand jury decided not to indict a white New York City police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner, an unarmed black man.

In city after city, white and nonwhite citizens have surged through the streets chanting or bearing signs with Mr. Garner’s final words: “I can’t breathe.” Others chanted: “Hands up; don’t shoot” or “Black lives matter” — slogans from the racially troubled town of Ferguson, Mo., where another grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown.

The viral spread of the demonstrations — and the wide cross section of Americans who are organizing and participating in them — shows that what was once seen as a black issue is on the way to being seen as a central, American problem.

The question of the moment is whether the country’s political leadership has the will to root out abusive and discriminatory policing — corrosive, longstanding problems that bore down on minority communities, large and small, urban and suburban.

The scope of the problem is evident from the work of the Justice Department, which has opened 20 investigations into local police departments over the last five years and is currently enforcing reform agreements with 15 departments, some of which were investigated in previous administrations.

This week, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. released a particularly alarming report on the barbaric conduct of the police department in Cleveland, which has been riven with discord in recent weeks, after a white police officer shot and killed a 12-year-old black boy, Tamir Rice, who was holding a toy gun.

The Times reported on Friday that the officer had quit a suburban police force after his supervisors judged that he had a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training and was emotionally unprepared to deal with the stresses of the job. The Cleveland Police Department had failed to examine the officer’s work history before hiring him. Thus an officer who had been unable to cope in a suburban district was given the power of life and death over people in a big city, where the task of policing the streets is far more demanding.

The Justice Department report describes the Cleveland Police Department as something far closer to an occupying military force than a legitimate law enforcement agency. The officers, for example, seem to take a casual view of the use of deadly force, shooting at people who pose no threat of harm to the police or others. In one case in 2013, for example, they actually fired at a victim who had been held captive in a house — as he escaped, clad only in boxer shorts.

The report cataloged numerous incidents of wanton violence, with officers beating, pepper-spraying and Tasering people who were unarmed or had already been restrained. Officers escalated encounters with citizens instead of defusing them, making force all but inevitable.

The record in Cleveland is extreme. But aspects of illegal police conduct can be found in cities all over the country, subjecting millions to intimidation and fear that they could be killed for innocent actions.

Congress will have an opportunity to discuss this issue soon, during the Senate confirmation hearings of Loretta Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who has been nominated to succeed Mr. Holder as attorney general.

Ms. Lynch’s office will oversee the federal civil rights investigation into the Garner case. Some in Congress clearly understand that the grand jury’s failure to indict the officer — despite a clear video showing him choking the man — deserves review, not just on its face, but because it goes to the heart of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Others, however, seem poised to argue that the federal government, which has a clear responsibility to enforce civil rights laws, should not be taking the lead. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, for example, asked, “Why does the federal government feel like it is its responsibility and role to be the leader in an investigation in a local instance?” That sounds like something out of the Jim Crow era, when Southern states argued that they were entitled to treat black citizens any way they wished.

Mr. Holder was on the mark when he said that the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice raised urgent, national questions about the breakdown of trust between minority communities and the police forces that are supposed to serve and protect them.

That so many are in the streets protesting police abuse shows that outrage over these injustices is spreading. Now it is up to the nation’s political leaders to confront this crisis.