RACE IN AMERICA Part 1

RACE IN AMERICA

Race may be factor in police shooting of unarmed elderly man

First part written By Howard Witt |Tribune correspondent

March 13, 2009

HOMER, La.—On the last afternoon of his life, Bernard Monroe was hosting a cookout for family and friends in front of his dilapidated home on Adams Street in this small northern Louisiana town.

Throat cancer had robbed the 73-year-old retired electric utility worker of his voice years ago, but family members said Monroe was clearly enjoying the commotion of a dozen of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren cavorting around him in the dusty, grassless yard.

Then the Homer police showed up, two white officers whose arrival caused the participants at the black family gathering to quickly fall silent.

Within moments, Monroe lay dead, shot by one of the officers as his family looked on.
Now the Louisiana State Police, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department are swarming over this impoverished lumber town of 3,800, drawn by the allegations of numerous witnesses that police killed an unarmed, elderly black man without justification—and then moved a gun to make it look like the man had been holding it.

"We are closely monitoring the events in Homer," said Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. "I understand that a number of allegations are being made that, if true, would be serious enough for us to follow up on very quickly."

Yet the Feb. 20 Homer incident was not an isolated case. Across the nation, in four cases in recent months, white police officers have been accused of unprovoked shootings of African Americans in what civil rights leaders say are illustrations of the potentially deadly consequences of racial profiling by police.

In the mostly white Houston suburb of Bellaire, a 23-year-old black man sitting in his own SUV in the driveway of his parents' home was shot and wounded on New Year's Eve by police who mistakenly believed he had stolen the vehicle. The case is under investigation.

In Oakland, a transit police officer has been charged with murder for allegedly shooting an unarmed black man in the back while he was restrained and lying face down on a train platform on New Year's Day.

In New Orleans, nine police officers are under investigation in the New Year's Day death of a 22-year-old black man who was struck by 14 bullets after an undercover team stopped his car. The police say the man raised a gun and fired at them, but the man's family disputes that.

"All the anecdotal information demonstrates that African Americans are the most frequent victims of zealous, inappropriate police activity that often winds up in a shooting," said Reggie Shuford, a senior attorney with the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's a shoot first, ask questions later approach to policing."

The evidence is not merely anecdotal. The most recent national analysis from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that blacks and Hispanics were nearly three times as likely as whites to be searched by police—and blacks were almost four times as likely as whites to be subjected to the use of force.

Psychologists are stepping up research into the implicit, unconscious racial biases that may be driving such statistics and affecting police behavior.

"If in fact police have implicit biases—if they automatically associate blacks with crime—then that would be relevant to an officer in a split-second, shoot-or-don't-shoot situation," said Lorie Fridell, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida who is creating a new anti-bias police training program with funding from the Justice Department. "Is the officer more inclined to believe he sees a gun in the hand of a black person, rather than a cell phone? I think that is possible."

In Monroe's case, friends and family members say they still don't understand why the beloved neighborhood patriarch ended up dead.

Four witnesses told the Tribune that Monroe was sitting outside his home in the late afternoon of Feb. 20, clutching a large sports-drink bottle, when two police officers pulled up and summoned Monroe's son, Shawn, for a conversation.

Shawn Monroe has a long record of arrests and convictions for assault and battery, and even though he was not wanted on any current warrants, he took off running into the house. One of the officers, a new hire named Tim Cox who had been on Homer's police force for only a few weeks, chased after him, reappearing moments later in the doorway.

Meanwhile, the witnesses said, the elder Monroe had started walking toward the front door, carrying only his drink bottle, to try to intervene. When Monroe got to the first step on the front porch, the witnesses said, Cox opened fire, striking him several times as adults and children stood nearby.

"He just shot him through the screen door," said Denise Nicholson, a family friend who said she was standing a few feet from Monroe. "After [Monroe] was on the ground, we kept asking the officer to call an ambulance, but all he did was get on his radio and say, 'Officer in distress.' "

As Monroe lay dying, the witnesses said, the second police officer, who has not been publicly identified, picked up a handgun that Monroe, an avid hunter, always kept in plain sight on the porch for protection. Using a police-issue blue latex glove, the officer grasped the gun by its handle, the witnesses said, and then ordered everyone to back away from the scene. The next thing they said they saw was the gun on the ground next to Monroe's body.

"I saw him pick up the gun off the porch," said Marcus Frazier, another witness. "I said, 'What are you doing?' The cop told me, 'Shut the hell up, you don't know what you're talking about.' "

The Homer police maintain that Monroe was holding a loaded gun when he was shot, but they are not commenting further on the case.

At least one fact surrounding the shooting is not in dispute: It took place amid long-standing tensions between Homer police and the residents of Monroe's crime-plagued black neighborhood.

"People here are afraid of the police," said Terry Willis, vice president of the Homer NAACP branch. "They harass black people, they stop people for no reason and rough them up without charging them with anything."

That is how it should be, responded Russell Mills, Homer's police chief, who noted the high rates of gun and drug arrests in the neighborhood.

"If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names," said Mills, who is white. "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested. We're not out there trying to abuse and harass people—we're trying to protect the law-abiding citizens locked behind their doors in fear." ~By Howard Witt |Tribune correspondent
The reality of this case many more are indicators of a reality that people of color have had to live and die with in North America since our ancestors were dragged here.
When slavery began race was not an issue. The bottom line was money. There were many so called blacks who were free. Because slavery was not permanent a so called black person could and some did buy their freedom. There were many Irish who were servants and so was the case with the Chinese.
When certain white people felt that the slavery of blacks should become permanent they began to push the racial inequality card. To justify slavery they had to make it appear that the African's were sub human. What they did was set into motion was systematic racism. This would turn into such a complex process that it's effects are still felt to this very day.
Since the days of the slave catchers on down to emancipation and even until today there has always been the use of systematic racism, torture, brutal slayings, and racial profiling used against the African Americans (the so called Black people) here in North America.
We as a people have been subject to so many methods of instilling fear in us at the hands of whites that many of our own people have refused to feel accepted in the country. Many of us feel as if we are by design inferior, not as smart, less than, and not equal to whites and all of the other groups.
Despite the fact that President Obama is a black man many of us still feel this is some sick joke being played upon blacks. Some say that whites only allowed him to become President to place the blame of our problem on him. There are others who believe that he was placed in office to some how trick us for all sorts of silly reasons. While some of us are even believing that he is the anti-Christ. These and many more are proof of the fear that has been forced into our minds since slavery.
There is no way that any group of people can be witness to and feel the systematic injustice that we have experienced here in North America at the hands of whites, the clan, the Police Departments & Criminal Justice System of the U.S.A. and not be affected by it. It's effects are realized in the way we veiw ourselves in relation to others, in the way we have felt about voting and the election process, in our lack of trust towards whites and our own kind, and in the dispair and apathy of many of us.
Yes they have taken from many of us our will to fight back, to fight for, and strive for unlimited heights. So many of us that it is a losing battle to fight police corruption, to vote, and/or run for elected office. Those among who feel this way, look upon those of us who do these things as sell outs, so call house negroes, and 'uncle Toms'.
Former General & Secretary of Stae Colin Powell says that he teaches his grandchildren about slavery and the injustice we have experienced here in the USA. To those who ask him why when those days are over and say that there are blacks who are successful and have reach heights like himself, Colin Powell replies 'So what if some of us have become successful. It is not over until every last one of us is allowed the same equal opportunities.
Even this great black man who happens to be a Republican understands to real plight of Black people.
So in this time of change on a grand scale we must see police officers who think it is still the era where you shoot black people and plant guns on them get prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. Those who would help to cover crimes of these type should be prosecuted as well. Examples must be made of those who violate our rights to make these criminal police officers think before they shoot.
Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice said that slavery was the United States of America's birth defect. We must understand that a birth defect usually last throughout the entire life of the entity born with the defect. Yes, it is not over until this country has be reborn without this defect.