All police shootings are local (op-ed)

In the 1980’s speaker of the house Tip O’Neill always emphasized “all politics is local”. In other words, the hierarchy of problem solving for the citizen is local, state, federal.

He’s right.

One problem, nothing has been more oppressive for Black Americans than this hierarchy. Black Americans had to appeal to the federal government to declare local and state laws unconstitutional.

That’s history.

And based on that history President Barack Obama said racism is in the DNA of America, but is it possible the byproduct of that DNA is that Black Americans automatically indict the nation for local incidents?

Example.

Back during the 2000 Presidential Race civil rights advocates made racial profiling, or Driving-While-Black, a national issue. These advocates asked candidates if they were elected president, would they sign an executive order banning racial profiling. Candidates either made a campaign commitment to consider the possibility or they promised, like George W. Bush, that as president they would end the practice.

Bush became president.

In 2003 headlines read: Bush Issues Federal Ban on Racial Profiling

It was the first time the federal government imposed across the board guidelines on racial profiling. It governed the conduct of 70 federal law enforcement agencies.

Great.

But there are over 12,000 local police departments, each with their own policy manual, which a federal ban can’t regulate. The Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union said, “This policy acknowledges racial profiling as a national concern, but it does nothing to stop it.”

Sound familiar?

President Barack Obama has been accused of doing nothing to stop police shootings of unarmed black men in America but all police shootings are local.

Recently in Tulsa, Oklahoma another black man was killed by a police officer, a white woman. There were four officers, three male and one female, and the woman fired her gun at the same time another officer fired his Taser. In less than a week she was charged with first degree manslaughter.

After the officer was charged the sister of the victim said, “We know the history of these cases, we know this is a formality, we know she’s been charged, but then we get no convictions.” The LA Times called the felony charges “unusual” and said, “Since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo, in 2014 the string of officer-involved shootings has given visibility and momentum to the Black Lives Matter movement … And members of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington stood outside the Department of Justice and demanded a stronger, tougher response to repeated instances of police shooting blacks.”

Sounds good.

Except they recited a national narrative that is not representative of the local reality, just four months ago in Tulsa a volunteer sheriff’s deputy was convicted of second-degree manslaughter by a jury with no African American members. He was sentenced to four years in prison. The volunteer sheriff’s deputy stated he mistook his handgun for his Taser when he shot and killed an unarmed black man last year.

This case in the same city of Tulsa is a better comparison than what took place in Ferguson, New York, or Baltimore because the recent incident with the woman officer also involves the use of a gun instead of a Taser. The fact that two officers with the same training, with the same equipment, in the same situation pulled different weapons means one of them inaccurately assessed the degree of the threat and the inaccurate officer was charged.

And she’ll be found guilty.

But after the woman is convicted in Tulsa those that automatically indict the nation for local incidents will change my title to the dismissive: All convictions are local.

First published by New Pittsburgh Courier 9/28/16