Scribbler's 'Boo This Man' Moment of the Month: The NYPD

Well, this particular 'Boo This Man' Moment will not be remotely as funny as the previous two, and it could only take the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to 1) upstage Kanye West when it comes to controversy and 2) be part of such an appalling incident that they would be the first "Boo This Man" Moment of the Month--and there are still ten days left in March.  By now, I'm sure you've heard about the March 6th killing of 16-year-old Kimani Gray in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn involving two plainclothes NYPD officers.  Here's NYPD's side: the officers spotted a group of young males and when they approached, Gray separated from the group and adjusted his waistband in a "suspicious" manner.  NYPD Chief Spokesman Paul J. Browne explained the rest of the story from the officers' perspectives:

After the anti-crime sergeant and police officer told the suspect to show his hands, which was heard by witnesses, Gray produced a revolver and pointed it at the officers, who fired a total of 11 rounds, striking Gray several times.

Mind you, the department still has yet to respond to requests for the source of that claim.  Additionally, some reports said that Gray "pointed" a .357 revolver, but other accounts say that a .38-caliber revolver was found at the scene.  I know...you don't think it adds up either.  Now for the other sides of the story...

Tishana King, who claimed to have watched the incident from her window and is the only official civilian witness to come forward, says she is "certain [Gray] didn't have anything in his hands" when the officers opened fire.  "Kimani started backing up," she said.  "The cop took out his gun and started firing at Kimani.  His hands were down.  I couldn't believe he let off his gun.  There was no reason.  No false move."  Sharon Smith and her daughter both witnessed the shooting as well: "[She] heard him [Kimani] say 'don't kill me, don't kill me.'  And they say 'stay still' or they going to shoot you again."  Devonte Brown claims to have been on the scene: "The cops, they just jumped out of the car so fast.  They started shooting him and he went down, he was bleeding, holding his side, screaming, ‘stop, stop!’”  Another witness, Camille Johnson, said, "He was running for his life, telling the cops, ‘Stop!'  They really are, seriously, walking around, shooting little kids."

Being an employee within the D.C. judicial system for the past 8 1/2 years, the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" gets overlooked when you deal with so many repeat offenders.  Having a rap sheet longer than Arsenio Hall's index finger makes it hard for judges to believe that a trial is worth their time or the taxpayer's money.  In this case, the NYPD have painted themselves into a corner based on their controversial history, especially regarding the shooting deaths of minority men and teenagers.  Nobody will forget the four plainclothes officers in 1999 that fired a total of 41 shots and 19 of which actually struck and killed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed and was actually reaching for his wallet before he was shot.  All four officers were acquitted at trial.  We're only seven years removed from the murder of Sean Bell (who was also 23) when a detective approached him and his friends in their car with his gun drawn after an incident at a nightclub, and after a collision with an unmarked police minivan and an assumption that one of Bell's friends screamed "gun", the detective and four other officers fired 50 shots in a matter of seconds that left Bell dead and his two friends severely injured.  Three out of the five involved detectives that went to trial were found not guilty.  I also remember a report that surfaced around the time of the Diallo killing that outlined somewhere between 50-100 questionable NYPD shootings going back as far as the late 70s and, of course, they all had to do with minorities.  So yeah NYPD...I don't believe you, you need more people. 

Granted, just thinking about my neighborhood alone, I am face-to-face with the fact that there are plenty of bad children out here who exhibit such wanton disregard for law and order.  (See present-day Chicago for the most chilling examples.)  However, by many accounts, Kimani Gray doesn't sound like he was cut from that cloth.  I know, people will always say somebody's a good kid without often knowing about their "dark side", but judging from the evidence that I have at my disposal, it sounds like the NYPD carrying out their version of "population control".  Hence, I express the following sentiments towards New York City's finest--and I need a lot of help this time around...

There are corrupt police departments all around this country--the LAPD and the New Orleans PD are the other two that instantly come to mind--and a lot of those police departments have a history of racial profiling.  A situation like this somewhat hits home for me because I have been a victim of racial profiling and it's only by the grace of God that I haven't been zipped up in a body bag.  About 13 years ago, my best friend and I were on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest D.C. waiting for our friends to get some food when these two cops arrived and started harrassing us--more so the Black officer than the Caucasian officer.  (That's a blog post in and of itself.)  Come to find out, my mother's beige 1982 Ford LTD--the precursor to the Crown Victoria and a popular car body type among young African-American males in the D.C. area--"fit the description" of a stolen vehicle.  Riiiiiight.  Three years after that, I was hanging out with some friends in Southeast, and these officers rolled up on us out of the blue waving their badges and guns.  Although there were admittedly open containers of alcohol--which were disposed before the cops arrived--none of us had any weaponry or engaged in any incendiary behavior to warrant such extreme measures.  I won't even get into my "Driving While Black" incidents or seeing numerous traffic stops where there are 5-6 squad cars to one stopped car with 2-4 people in it.  (Again, another subject worthy of its own post.)  That's why I can't take an incident like this lightly or be silent about it.

I understand that the police are under a lot of pressure to "serve and protect", and there are a lot of people out here that hate the police simply because they stand in the way of them breaking the law.  A lot of these officers spend an exorbitant amount of time doing paperwork and being in court--time spent away from their families and not getting a whole lot of money in the process--but then hear complaints about how there aren't enough cops on the street.  However, when you're the police department for the most powerful city in the free world, you are naturally going to get more attention than any other law enforcement agency and have to be aware of that automatic bullseye on your forehead.  No matter what the facts are, I'm sure that these officers weren't living under rocks during the Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell controversies.  They had to have known that among New York City's minority communities, especially Blacks, those wounds have never quite healed.  Now you've got an entire community screaming for your jobs because you shot and killed a young Black teenager who (by your accounts) may or may not have had a gun which may have been a .357 or a .38-caliber revolver and he may or may not have pointed it in your direction.  So congratulations are in order to the New York City Police Department...you have succeeded once again in 1) ostracizing yourselves from the Black community and 2) dressing up your "facts" like gazelles when they sound more like pigs.