January 7th: An unarmed man, aged 22, is gunned down by BART transit police officers after being investigated in a brawl on the train. Shot at close range while face down on the train platform, the officer accused in his death has plead ‘not guilty’. According the local reports, over 100 people were arresting in the ensuing protests in the Oakland/Bay Area. The local community still works to call attention to this and other ‘crimes of passion’ by the police.

Now…a few months later- this: 3 officers dead, one in critical condition after a routine traffic stop yesterday in Oakland. The NY Times correspondent reports that at least 20 bystanders stood not idly by to support means of apprehending the suspect but to…jeer and taunt the victims. Although nothing indicates children being present, I can only imagine what children absorbed from either seeing or hearing of this experience. This last part is the focus of my concern.

My co-author chick friend writes about her early experience of learning to respect our respective ‘boys in blue’ who EVERYDAY (for the most part), put their lives on the line to protect what many of us take for granted: the freedom to navigate in this world knowing someone has our back. While I didn’t have the same experience (actually, I was cussed out by a police officer at age 9 for letting my dog run into a major street), I’ve always held a high regard for the police. I even considered a career in law enforcement until I realized I really don’t look that good in navy.  

However…[and let me interject HERE that no, I'm by NO-way-in-Midwest-hell means justifying the shooting deaths of these officers and wish to convey my serious condolences for this loss]…as I understand the sentiment (not the actions) of the bystanders, my question today is: what do we do when our means of protection turns against us? When our ‘thin blue line’ turns into the even thinner and less blue ‘barbed wire’?

Why do we feel vindicated in this violence? It’s something bigger than the feeling of ‘recouping a loss’. When do we turn to actively making amends? And in situations as relatively recent as these in the last few years (which is a lot, no matter how you cut it): here, here and here, when does it get old? Aren’t we tired of the protests, the marches and boycotts on police violence on the innocent? And a better question to bring that forward is, when the story remains the same, what do we tell our parents, our children, our neighbors and the rest of our peers to expect for the future?

One thing’s for certain-we CANNOT expect to continue to feel like in order to blur the proverbial ‘line’, we must react in ways that only bring MORE harm…just because we ‘feel like it’. Lovelle Milton, the perp, was wanted for assault with a deadly weapon. Come on, guy! Had he not been killed, not even the Blackest of the Black brigade could have saved his ass.  He shot and killed two men, presumably with family and other social connections who can’t come back to benefit their community in any fashion because…he was too selfish to just take the fall for some stuff he did on his own.

So, after that’s all said and done, I can’t call it. Who wins? No one. This is somewhat frustrating to me because in some ways, I miss the idealism seen in reality by Kane and others-when we KNEW we could count on calling 911 to have our backs, not shooting us in the back. Trusting our law enforcement implicitly and completely (or at least mostly). And at the same turn, I also miss when reason and accountability reigned supreme, when if and when one was in the wrong, they could be counted on to maybe pull some doggish move but to (eventually) pay for their actions, not others for them. Most of all, I’m longing for when our communities no longer speak to commending the destructive bullshit but to applauding the healing real.

-O