Shooting in the Covid Part XI: Fall at Inniswood Metro Park

If you have been following my blog, you know that Inniswood Metro Park is one of my favorite places to shoot. The variety of plants is wonderful. You see plants and flowers in these gardens that you see nowhere else in Columbus. It is an interesting place to shoot all year round but is particularly beautiful in the fall. You can walk through the woods to find the changing of the leaves and you can go through the gardens to find many plants that are still flowering. And as the plants begin to die off, there are wonderful patterns, textures, and colors to see, if you look.

This week I wrote the following letter to our city attorney.

Dear Mr. Klein,

I am a resident of Columbus (since 1973). I have a few questions about lawsuits against the city that involve police shootings or abuse. I’m not an attorney, so I’m not familiar with the legal jargon.

Here’s my questions, if there is a lawsuit against the city from a police shooting, beating or other illegal action, and the city has to pay because they lose the case, or they settle the case, where does that money come from? Does it come from tax revenues? If so, is there a resource that I could look up to see what the city paid out over the last five years? Or does the city carry some kind of liability insurance for these purposes? And if that is the case, what are the premiums for these policies and what do they cost the taxpayer. And if the cost of the premiums is commensurate with what is getting paid out, could you please show me the cost of these premiums over the past five years?

I am not a reporter, nor am I doing any kind of formal investigation. I am plain old Joe Citizen who is so concerned about the shooting of unarmed Black people that I can’t remain silent any longer. This has to stop. I do have a doctorate in cultural anthropology and have done a lot of reading and studying about racism in our society. And I’m white. And I’m a Jew. I know something about the disease of hate in a society. My family escaped to this country from Russia because their villages were being destroyed and they were being slaughtered … only because they were Jews.

Blacks are being killed … only because they are Black. Racism is the American plague.

I respect, admire, and appreciate what our police do every day to protect us. It is amazing to me that there are people who are willing to go out every day to do these jobs … I feel the same way about our military. But no one gets a pass on killing an unarmed Black person. I think it’s time to take away their bullets and give them tranquilizer guns. And I’m serious. At least we would give these poor souls an opportunity to wake up in a hospital and then defend themselves.

Thank you in advance for providing me with the information I am requesting.

I also called the mayor’s office and recorded my outrage with the continuing problems our police are having with communities of color in Columbus. It is intolerable and good people are going to need to find ways to address the problems. They are incredibly complicated and are as tightly wound into American culture as individualism, freedom, and personal responsibility. Racism was a problem in America (and everywhere else) when this country was founded, and it sure hasn’t gone anywhere since. I’ve written many times about racism, ethnocentrism and hate in my blogs, so I won’t dwell on where it comes from in our society. I’m going to move directly into what we’re probably going to have to do about it.

I have to start with this … there are good people who serve in police departments across the country. They do some of the most important work we ask of anyone in our society, and most of them do it with professionalism and they treat people with respect and dignity. We should all be grateful that there are people willing to do this most challenging work. I don’t know lots of police officers but I do have a cousin who was a police officer for decades and is now retired. If there are people like him who serve, we’re ultimately going to be fine. He is a kind and gentle man and he is loved by his family and friends and was highly respected by his colleagues.

We ask our law enforcement professionals to do the most dangerous and stressful work. We send them into the most challenging situations and expect them to behave in the most exemplary fashion, regardless of the amount of stress involved or the risk to their life and limb. They are incredibly brave. Whether they are sent to check on a domestic violence call or are asked to rush into burning twin towers to save as many people as possible or to evacuate downtown Nashville in advance of a bomb blast, they go. These people are not compensated nearly enough for the work we ask them to do.

Ok, now on to the difficult part. Society gives police officers the most awesome power. We sanction these people to carry and use deadly weapons. We also give them the authority to use less deadly weapons that can do great harm to people. We also give them the power to permanently damage people’s lives. Given this power to ruin lives or to take lives, one bad police officer is one too many. That means that the screening and hiring process must be something different from hiring a cultural anthropologist. It also means that when police officers do not perform up to standards, the consequence must be something different from most professions. They have too much power over other people’s lives to do otherwise.

And unfortunately, we have a history of doing a lot of otherwise in our society. Codes of silence, relationships with prosecutors, lack of accountability and less than adequate transparent national records have rendered consequences sorely lacking. Our society can’t tolerate these continued practices and behavior. When we all say, enough, our politicians will have no choice but to act. We aren’t punishing people like my cousin; we are protecting them.

We have to assume that racism impacts criminal justice in our society as much as it does every other element of our society and culture. Racism exists in every facet of our lives in America. It was one of the Orange Emperor’s greatest selling points and he had millions and millions of buyers. He was selling before he announced his candidacy with the whole birther insanity. On the day he announced, he spewed his venomous racism. He sold it throughout his campaign and he not only sold it, he acted on it, throughout his presidency. As noted earlier, not all his supporters are racists, but he has all the racists squarely in his hip pocket. They love this guy because he says all this horrible stuff aloud and he acts on it without impunity. He’s their hero. He utters what they believe. He reinforces that what they believe is not marginal …it is making America great (white) again.

Also as noted in previous blogs, there’s no easy way to fix racism, to make it go away. We can’t control people’s minds. We can’t force people to believe anything or not to believe something. Ending racism is going to require a collective, monumental effort on the part of our society. That effort won’t begin in earnest until we accept that it is a fundamental problem that has to be fixed. And today, way too many millions of people don’t think racism is a problem, nor that they are racist. The problem will ultimately end up being addressed by demographics, which is one of the reasons white people feel so threatened by the directions of America and why making America white again is so appealing. How does one not feel nostalgic about white power and privilege?

It will take many years and more than a few generations before we excise racism from America. People of color in our society, Blacks, Hispanics, all of our indigenous peoples, can’t wait for us to repair our brains before they experience real change in our society in general and in our criminal justice system in particularly. The best cure for racism in my book is for people to live immersed in diversity. Our prejudices easily go unchecked when they aren’t challenged by reality. When we work with each other, go to school with each other, attend religious services with each other and share our lives with each other, we will discover that there is nothing to fear in the other, nothing to hate in the other. While we are making strides, our society remains as segregation as it has ever been.

There is so much work to be done in our society regarding disparities, for instance, in income and wealth, housing, education, and employment opportunity. But disparities in the treatment of people of color in our criminal justice system must be made a priority. We can’t keep killing black people. We can’t keep incarcerating Black people at the rates we are putting them away. There is nothing equal about how we treat Blacks in our criminal justice system.

We must eliminate private prisons as quickly as possible. Providing a monetary incentive to incarcerating people is insane. Lobbying for stricter drug enforcement laws to increase prison populations is moving backwards in the most profound way. We end up incarcerating populations that are least able to defend themselves. The Orange Emperor’s family sure looks like they’re breaking laws left and right. They are currently under investigation for a number of possible crimes both on the state and federal level. How much prison time do we think any of them are going to do? Joe Black Person gets caught with weed on their person; what do we think happens to him? A white guy can walk down the street carrying a high-powered rifle without law enforcement blinking an eye. A black guy with a concealed carry license gets shot.

So long as racism exists in our society, I’m not sure what a jury of one’s peers looks like when a Black person goes on trial. We can’t force people to change what they believe. And we can’t force people to admit how they feel and believe. Again, there are millions of us in America who do not believe that racism is a problem, nor willing or able to acknowledge that they are racist. During voir dire, how is an attorney supposed to unveil in a reliable and effective way that a potential member of the jury is racist? I don’t believe we have a good answer to that question, and I also believe that a person who is racist cannot serve justice in the way the blindfolded lady had in mind. Our society needs to face this reality and begin to deal with it in an honest and candid way. Does a jury of one’s peers, for the foreseeable future, mean an all-black jury? Perhaps.

There are a lot of reasons, in my opinion, for us to outlaw capital punishment. I’m not going to get into all of these. For this article I’ll narrow my perspective down to, we have to end capital punishment because we can’t be trusted. If one innocent person is killed by society, we no longer have the right to kill anyone. Do we honestly think that hasn’t happened? Do we honestly think that it doesn’t happen today? Our criminal justice system is far from perfect. In fact, we learn daily that it is monumentally broken.

William Barr. The Orange Emperor. So incredibly broken. His ongoing pardon rampage is really all you need to know for just how miserable our criminal justice system can be. Justice is not impartial or equal. Justice is about who you know. It is about power and money. Justice in America is about all the things we say we aren’t. It is a total fiasco. Until we admit it and steel ourselves to deal with it, we’re going to be immersed in hypocrisy. Do you think the rest of the world doesn’t see this? We’re no beacon on the hill. We look more like a cesspool, and particularly because we have the arrogance to promote the ideal to the world while we remain in denial about the real.

Racism is at the top of my list as to why society cannot be authorized to kill anyone. Do some homework on the history of police departments in the United States, their role during slavery and reconstruction. And then take a peek at how police departments have operated up to and after the civil rights movements in the US. If you don’t learn and understand this history, you aren’t fairly or honestly evaluating where we are today.

I urge you to read the following article by the BBC, published on December 11, 2020, entitled In Trump’s final days, a rush of federal executions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55236260

For all the reasons I have identified above, it is so way beyond disconcerting, and made particularly so by his pardoning of cronies left and right. And when these pardons also look like his own attempts to impede an investigation (of him), and to obstruct justice, they take on a more sinister character.

We should let everyone out of prison who has been incarcerated for a drug (any drug) possession charge or for selling small amounts of any drug. We should also clear (pardon) people who have any of these charges on their record. Given our world, these sentences and convictions are just crazy land.

Allow me a demonstration of the insanity by referring to an NPR article (March 16, 2019) about John Boehner, the former Speaker of the House from the great state of Ohio. Boehner had only one vote regarding marijuana during his time in congress, and that is probably because most of these drug laws exist on the state level. He voted to not allow medical marijuana in Washington DC. In 2018, Boehner jumped at the lucrative opportunity to join the board of a corporation that promotes the use of medical dope and advocates for the federal de-scheduling of weed. Isn’t that nice? According to the NPR article, he went on the record in 2011 to say that he was "unalterably opposed to the legalization of marijuana."

He’s since said that he’s never used marijuana but doesn’t see issues with other people using it. His position is evolving. Isn’t that convenient. Boehner makes the perfect case for why we should all be able to grow it in our backyards and basements. People like Boehner shouldn’t be encouraged to make a fast gazillions of bucks in the most opportunistic ways from an activity that they were so self-righteously and obnoxiously opposed to while they had the power to stop convicting people and having them thrown into prison from that same activity. Please return to reading this article/blog after you’ve stopped throwing up.

Suddenly, our entrepreneurial Speaker has become the model of libertarianism. Hey, I’m with you, John. What people put into their bodies probably shouldn’t be anyone’s business. As I’ve said before, if you want to regulate crap that goes into the body that causes the greatest societal suffering, start with refined sugar and saturated fat. Then you can work your way into less serious substances. I would think that marijuana would be pretty far down the list.

We must stop killing Black people. The killing of unarmed Black people only makes the situation more urgent and critical. Police need to have the tools to defend themselves and also to control a situation that could require the use of force. Most of us accept that reality. What we need to deal with are the tools. It’s time to take bullets away from police. We are a long way from getting control of our criminal justice system to make it fair and equal. Until we do so, police cannot be entrusted to kill people. They can still force their knee into a Black man’s neck for ten minutes until he is dead. And hopefully, because the act has been shown over and over again on the news, our society will have no choice but to convict this officer and punish him to the full extent of the law. Shooting Black people in the back who show no evidence of threatening anyone’s life or killing Black people while they are sleeping just cannot go on. No more bullets. Period. If an officer is within 35 feet of the person, they can use their taser. If they are further than 35 feet, let them use tranquilizer guns. I’ve watched lots of wildlife shows where lions, tigers and bears are rendered unconscious with a tranquilizer while medical care or tracking devices are given to the animal. After the tranquilizer wears off, the animal gets up and goes about their business.

If a police officer feels threatened or if a person is threatening others and they need to knock the person unconscious, tranquilize the crap out of them. When they become conscious again, you can offer them an attorney and settle the matter with a person who is alive. If you have an officer who is putting way too many Black people to sleep on a regular basis, society can come up with ways to disarm this officer. They should likely find another line of work; perhaps anesthesiology.

We landed a man on the moon and the military figured out a way to make a $400 toilet seat. We should be able to figure out a way to render a person unconscious even if they are wearing a flack jacket and a helmet.

We should also stop police departments from getting military equipment. If our military industrial complex is producing way more equipment than our military needs, maybe we should be making and paying for a lot less of it. Wouldn’t that be a novel idea?

I’m hoping that we have laws that forbid an officer who has unjustly shot or killed a person from ever owning a gun, rifle, or ammunition. We should also have a policy where all police officers are required to use dashboard cameras and body cameras. We should have a zero-tolerance policy regarding their use, as well. If they are not on for the entire time they are answering a call, they’re done. Period.

Finally, I’m waiting for a response from my city attorney about who pays in the court cases where a person is either hurt or killed by an officer and is found to be at fault. My suspicion is that it is the taxpayer. If that is the case, it is just a revolting development for a society so enamored with personal responsibility. It’s sort of bewildering to allow a person who shoots an unarmed person in the back to not experience a more direct consequence. Having the taxpayer shelter abusive behavior isn’t a great motivator to fix a really broken system. We must find a way for the police themselves to pay these costs. They can set up a fund to pay into in the same way they pay their union dues. If those funds are being spent out more quickly than they are being paid into, that would serve as some significant pressure on the part of others to control behavior. The police need to significantly increase the way they police each other. And then ultimately, the person who does wrong, should have to pay something to cover these costs.

Good police need to be protected and fairly compensated. They serve a critical function in our society and they should be appreciated by everyone. Bad police should be dealt with quickly, responsibly, and fairly. No one is above the law, except of course for wealthy, white people.