Police Brutality & Senseless Crimes: We Won’t Let You Rest
I can’t rest
My disabled brothers and sisters
Are shot, dragged and beaten to death…
My poem, Can’t Rest, is more than words on paper, and unfortunately its reality. In the last four years, Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization (DAMO) and I had many sleepless nights because of the continuous brutality and senseless crimes against our disabled bothers and sisters of color. What really keeps us up at night is the lack of awareness, media attention and no local community forums to educate and heal on this issue. Last July DAMO organized and implemented the first ever Senseless Crimes Open Forum dealing with people with disabilities of color in the community. However since last July DAMO and I still can’t rest.
It’s been a year since our open forum and the physical attacks and police brutality continues to happen to disabled people of color all over California. The following is a brief picture of this year’s senseless crimes and police brutality against people of color with disabilities:
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On Sunday evening March 16th Richard Tims, a Black, frail, mentally ill young man felt threatened when a teen stepped on his foot on a San Francisco MUNI bus, so he tried to protect himself with a knife. He stabbed the teen but when he got off the bus and hid in a bus shelter, the police arrived and talked to the wounded teen. After locating Mr. Tims the SFPD shot up the bus shelter, killing Mr. Tims and seriously injuring an elderly woman coming out of a nearby fast food restaurant.
During Malcolm X’s birthday on May 19th a disabled immigrant man of color was walking out of VALMAR SUPER LIQUOR & DELI on 16th & Valencia St. in the Mission District of San Francisco. A White male in his forties on a big skateboard was screaming how this country was his country and how he hated “fags and foreigners.” He approached this elderly disabled man and asked “Are you an immigrant?” but the elderly man kept on walking. That’s when this White man picked up his big skateboard and hit the elderly man in the back of his head. On top of that, the three men of color inside the deli watched the whole thing and did nothing.
David Smith, a Black, developmentally disabled youth from West Oakland was frisked and taken into police custody in the week of May 27th for no reason. After hours of questioning the officer realized they had the wrong person. David was let go with no apologies. David is still traumatized by the whole incident.
All of the above cases of police brutality and senseless crimes have been against poor people of color with disabilities — who have very little resources to fight back. None of the cases had a witness video taping the incident so they were invisible to the public.
Another example of this invisibility was the shooting and killing of Margaret L. Mitchell of LA. You’d think the LAPD and police in general would stop, think and learn? However, the recent LA police brutality against a Black, developmentally disabled and hard of hearing teen, Donovan Jackson of Inglewood, is an ongoing example that the LAPD doesn’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to learn from its own history.
The LAPD & SFPD share a common reason why their victims end up wounded or dead, and that is “…the victim had lunged towards the officer and the officer\s felt his life was in danger.” From the above cases this reason doesn’t add up to me. In the case of Margaret L Mitchell, and the recent shooting of Richard Tims of San Francisco, both were frail and weighed only a hundred pounds. Both were accused of lunging toward the police officer with a very small weapon. But in both incidents the victim was outnumbered by police officers at the scene. Now, why can’t these police officers use reasonable thinking and come up with a less lethal tactic to de-escalate the situation in which the police out-number and out-weigh their victims?
Donovan Jackson had a bag of chips, and he is a skinny teenager with developmental disabilities, but once again an LA police officer, Jeremy Morse, said the Black disabled teen lunged at him and squeezed his testicles. So this forty-something- year-old grown man who out weighed Jackson punched him with all his weight. After Jackson was punched and slammed on the roof of the police car and dragged by his cojones, Jackson was booked for investigation of battery on a police officer.
As a Black disabled advocate who worked with youth and young adults with developmental disabilities for almost twenty years I have learned a lot about common traits they share. One common trait in most of the youth and young adults with mental retardation is the strong sense of loyalty, and the protectiveness some have among family members and friends. So when Jackson returned to the car and saw the police still there, like anyone’s son he wanted to know what was going on and protect his father.
If you add that Jackson was hard of hearing, you get a very confused and hostile environment that this teen had never been in before. If Morse took his time and realized that Jackson had developmental disabilities and hearing impairment, he would have realized that Jackson needed accommodation.
Officer Morse could have let Jackson’s father do all the explaining about what was going on, or Morse could have turned face-to-face with Jackson to see if Jackson could read lips or from which ear he could hear better. Instead, Morse escalated the situation to where there was no turning back.
Another common factor found in some youth and young adults that I’ve worked with who have developmental disabilities is that if he or she has a good or bad experience with something or someone it’s very difficult to change his or her mind of that person. Jackson is only a teenager and from this horrible brutality it might very hard to change his views about police — and I don’t blame him! The most shocking but common finding in police brutality cases is that the officer/s nine times out of ten have a closet full of brutality cases against individuals or a whole class of people that haven’t been let out of their closet. Well Jeremy Morse’s closet is wide open and the media has been doing some spring cleaning.
One of his brutality cases that hit many news service including the Saturday, July 13th LA Times. One case almost resembled what happened on Martin Luther King’s Birthday this year in the Bayview/Hunter Point District in San Francisco where Black teens were physically and sexually assaulted, and were forced to lie on the ground at police gunpoint.
According to the July 13th LA Times, Morse had other legal and disciplinary problems including an off-duty incident in which he forced three teenagers at gunpoint to lie on the ground because he incorrectly believed they were stalking the sister of his then-girlfriend, according to court records. Morse was suspended for 13 days in connection with the incident, and the city settled a lawsuit with the teenagers for $37,000. Since before the tragic Jackson incident, Morse has continued to work for the Inglewood Police Department.
I’m glad that the Mayor of Inglewood, Roosevelt Dorn, took action and was vocal about the behavior of Morse, but I wonder if there was no video tape would he still react like he did? For example, the shooting of Idriss Stelley, a Black young man living with mental illness in the San Francisco Sony Metreon Theater didn’t have a video of the shooting that could have played nationwide. Although the grassroots campaign for Justice for Idriss is strong, Mayor Willie Brown and the Chief of Police have been very slow to the demands of Idriss family and supporters.
What are we saying, if it’s not on TV then it’s not real and elected officials don’t need to react?
I agree with the Mayor that these cops should be fired and brought up on charges! As the Justice system does its job, we, the people, must do ours. I think its time for a grassroots movement on police brutality and senseless crimes against people with disabilities — especially people of color with disabilities, including mental illness — locally and on a state level. Right here in San Francisco Idriss mother, Mesha Irizarry, has started a support group, Victory Over Violence, for families and loved ones who lost their disabled or non-disabled love ones by the hands of the police. They meet the first Sunday of the month. There also has to be more open community forums on this issue with financial and community support, and more training of police officers on how to de-escalate a tense situation involving people with mental illness and others with disabilities. Local groups and activists like Najee Ali of Project Islamic HOPE of LA, Mesha Irizarry of Victory Over Violence of San Francisco and myself of Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization of San Francisco Bay Area need more support, resources and media attention throughout the year for our work on this issue, not national leaders and not only during crisis! My disabled brothers and sisters are put to rest On the streets, in psychiatric wards and in prison.
But I feel your sprit & anger in my chest
I won’t rest
Your sprit & anger won’t
We won’t let you rest
Leroy