When I got out of college,
my first professional job was as a juvenile probation officer. It was both
awful and potentially dangerous. I briefly enrolled in a judo class just to
have a skill that might help me protect myself. As it transpired, a very troubled
kid happened to grab me in exactly
the place on my neck we had practiced the night before. Completely by instinct,
I flipped him—into one of those old-fashioned, free-standing, cast iron steam
registers. He was taken to the hospital (for what turned out to be bad bruises
and a small fracture), I gained an instant reputation for being badass, and I
never went to another judo class because I didn’t want to be the kind of person
who injured another.
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| This cannot be the standard of guilt |
This brings me to Ferguson,
Missouri. I’ve not beaten my chest over the shooting of Michael Brown on August
9, 2014, nor have I attended rallies demanding justice for him. It’s not that I
think Brown deserved to die or that Officer Darren Wilson is innocent; it’s
because I can’t be certain one way or the other. I wasn’t there. I got lucky
when I had my little incident: my door was open and three people witnessed what
happened. I also got lucky because if the kid had fallen in a different
direction, he could have died.
Was Wilson a racist who
seized an opportunity to kill a black kid? That could have been the case—not just
because it took place in Missouri, a state with a deplorable racist past, but
anywhere. I’ve worked with police and I’ve seen enough to assert that you
should not automatically respect the
uniform—some cops are little Nazis hiding behind a badge. But many of them are what
we want them to be: fine (underpaid) public servants trying to do their jobs the
best they know how.
Here’s another factor: Missouri
isn’t Florida, a state in which criminal oversight is nearly as bad as its
crooked-as-a-dog’s hind leg electoral laws. I’ve seen analogies between
Ferguson and the George Zimmerman case. Just stop. They are not analogous.
Florida’s stand-your-ground law was a disaster waiting to happen and it did. In
Missouri, a grand jury is deciding whether or not to indict Officer Wilson for
Michael Brown’s murder. That’s as it should be. Officer Wilson can only be tried in a court of
law, not the court of public opinion.
As I said, it’s entirely possible
that Wilson is a racist murderer. It’s also possible, though, that like me he
was in the wrong place at the wrong time and reacted in a way he wishes he had
not. It’s also possible that Michael Brown attacked Wilson. He wouldn’t be the
first kid to let his temper get the better of him, nor would he be the first to
try to get some quick street cred by going rogue on a cop. There’s a video
that raises doubts about Brown as an innocent victim. There is also blood evidence
that needs to be sorted.
Speaking of doubt, that’s the
standard by which Wilson should be judged. He cannot be convicted for being a
racist or overreacting; he’s only a murderer if the prosecution can convince a
jury that the preponderance of evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilson’s actions were either premeditated
or reckless. If Brown grabbed Wilson, or if the blood on his uniform shows smear
patterns consistent with being assaulted rather than splatter from a gun blast,
Wilson’s defense team will have cast doubt on his guilt.
Count me among the last
people who think we live in a post-racial society. America tragically remains a
nation of stark black/white racial divides. It’s understandable that millions
of African Americans would assume Wilson’s
guilt. But I must remind everyone that the law presumes he is innocent until proven guilty. Michael Brown’s death
was tragic. It’s also a reminder of how far we’ve yet to travel down the road
to equality. But we cannot erase past injustices by perpetrating a modern-day
miscarriage.
I know that my plea to allow
the legal system to run its course raises the cynical hackles of many. How,
they will ask, can one expect a justice system stained by institutional racism
to give a black man a fair shake vis-à-vis a white man? I get that. But what’s
the alternative? To throw Wilson under the bus to prevent angry riots? To make
him personally responsible for centuries of racism? To allow public opinion
polls to determine his fate? Do we do this even if he’s innocent?
Here’s what I know: I don’t! I wasn’t there. Neither were you.
Here’s another thing I know: sometimes things don’t go as you intended them to
go. That makes one unlucky, not necessarily a bigot. And still one more:
American racism is alive and well. Who can judge which actually occurred in
Ferguson? Not I. Not you.
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