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 ngela
Leisure was much in the news last week. Ms. Leisure is the mother
of Timothy Thomas, the unarmed 19-
year-old whose
death at the hands of a Cincinnati police officer touched off days
of rioting in the Ohio city. Leisure was shown on television leaving
her son's funeral, escorted by NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, and
she was quoted widely in the press, calling for an investigation
into the shooting and urging those protesting her son's death to
refrain from violence. Conspicuously absent from the coverage was
any mention of a Mr. Leisure or a Mr. Thomas or whoever
might have been the man who helped bring the ill-fated Timothy Thomas
into the world.
I have never
visited Cincinnati, but I suspect police work there is very much
like police work in Los Angeles. Whenever I arrest anyone under
the age of 18 I am obligated by state law and department policy
to notify his parents of the detention. There is a good deal of
paperwork involved, and the names and addresses of both parents
must be included in all of the reports. Years ago I began reflexively
writing "Unknown" in the space provided for the father's
information. "Who do you stay with?" I would ask the young
miscreant. "My momma," was the usual reply. "Where's
your father?" I would ask. "I don't know," they would
say. If they did know, it was usually because the father was in
prison.
There's been
much discussion of the 15 black men killed by Cincinnati police
officers since 1995, and when that figure is cited it is usually
accompanied by a thinly veiled implication that these killings were
somehow unjustified. There are those who would have America believe
that the greatest threat to blacks in this country is the one posed
by racist white cops indiscriminately gunning down young black men.
Even if it were shown that not a single one of those 15 police killings
was justified (and that has not been shown), that number
would pale in comparison to the number of murders committed by fatherless
young black men in Cincinnati during the same period. And most of
those murder victims were themselves young, black, and fatherless.
Timothy Thomas was himself the father of a three-month-old son,
though he hadn't found the time to marry the child's mother. (A
wedding was planned, according to an AP story, but with 14 arrest
warrants Thomas's schedule must have been a bit tight.) How sadly
ironic it was that it was Mfume who escorted Angela Leisure from
the funeral: As a young man he fathered five illegitimate children.
Stephen Roach,
the officer who shot Thomas, remains on paid administrative leave,
and the circumstances surrounding the shooting are being investigated
by local and federal authorities. But I feel safe in speculating
about this much: If Thomas hadn't run from Roach he would not have
been shot, and if he had not committed the various offenses that
resulted in those 14 arrest warrants he would not have felt the
urge to run. And if he had had a father to teach him how to behave
he might not have been in trouble with the law in the first place.
In my twenty
years as a cop I've been through no less than ten incidents in which
I was only a split second away from shooting someone. Fortunately
for all concerned each of those incidents ended peacefully. In his
four years with the Cincinnati Police Department I'm sure Officer
Roach had some close calls as well. I doubt that when he went to
work the day of the shooting he said to himself, "Today I hope
I kill a black man." It is far more likely that as he prepared
for that day's shift he said a prayer similar to the one I say every
day as I put on my uniform: "Dear God, please let me go home
in one piece tonight. If someone has to get hurt, please let it
be the bad guy."
And for the
last several years I have added another petition to my pre-work
supplication: "And, God, if I have to hurt someone today, please
let it be a white guy."
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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