I wish I could say I was surprised by what happened Thursday night in Buffalo.
That’s when the Buffalo Police riot squad shoved a 75-year-old activist and he fell backward, hitting his head and bleeding onto the pavement.
I even feel a degree of sympathy for the police. They were doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing.
And that’s the problem.
For a long time, police in Buffalo have thought it was their job to bash heads and take names. That’s what they thought people wanted them to do, and for a long time maybe the were right. They’ve been doing for about as long as there have been police in Buffalo.
And some of them take joy in doing it. They enjoy beating people up.
An old friend of mine (he died in 2016) hit the skids a number of years back and wound up homeless. It was the usual combination of alcohol, mental issues, etc. He was no saint, but you shouldn’t have to be to be treated fairly under the law.
He was scared witless of the Buffalo cops, and he had good reason. At one point, he was picked up while suffering a medical issue. The cops stomped his glasses and dropped him off, shoeless, a block away from Buffalo General and told him he could check himself in.
Another time there was an issue over who had the right to be in an apartment (the actual renter was gone and was letting two people use it; the other called the police and told them my friend was trespassing).
My friend, who had a hernia and was walking with a cane, wasn’t leaving fast enough for the police officers so they threw him down the stairs. He spent 11 days in Erie County Medical Center and was charged with obstructing justice, if I recall the charge correctly.
The police figure people like my friend aren’t likely to even show up for their court date, but I made sure he got there. The case kept on getting postponed by the city.
From what I’ve been told, you have 90 days after an incident to file a notice of claim to sue a governmental entity.
After 91 days, the city dropped the charges.
Now I know there are a lot of good cops. Great cops, even. I have a lot of respect for Capt. Jeff Rinaldo, the guy who frequently comments to the press for the Buffalo Police Department. My own experiences with my local police have always been positive.
But until the police are ready to police their own, to out the guys who beat up people simply because they can, who put their knee on the neck of a suspect for nine minutes, who somehow manage to shoot unarmed people in the back in “self defense,” the good cops aren’t going to receive the respect they’re due.
We all know it’s practically impossible to convict a police officer of a crime, even with video of them doing it.
They claim that they felt endangered and the jury lets them off.
Well, think about it. A lot of people feel endangered right now – by them. Pretty much everyone who is black or a person of color. People who aren’t straight and white. People who are poor.
To “serve and protect” is a common motto for police departments, but what happens when larger portions of the public feel they need protection from the police?
Who is being served?
Until the police themselves are either willing to address that or forced to do it, nothing is going to get better.