Blacks in Inglewood back police despite incident
Posted on 07/13/2002 3:37:27 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Blacks in Inglewood back police despite incident
'Bad apple' on force, not racism, responsible for violent arrest, some say
07/13/2002
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Customers at Granny's House of Soul Food have been paying as much attention to the restaurant's two large TVs this week as they have to Granny's BBQ meat loaf, smothered chicken and black-eyed peas.
They have been focused on the video the violent snippet of reality TV that shows a handcuffed black teenager being body-slammed by a white policeman onto the trunk of a car, then rocked by the officer's roundhouse punch.
Like many of his restaurant customers and neighbors, 39-year-old Christopher Randle, who is black, is struggling with what he has seen. He supports the city and the Police Department. A lot of officers, he said, are regulars. And after Sept. 11, people are hesitant to criticize the police.
"I think the Inglewood Police Department is a fine department, I really do," said Mr. Randle, whose family owns Granny's. "But it has problems like any other department."
Since the video went into heavy rotation on cable news channels Monday, Inglewood's image has been tainted along with the reputation of its police.
The reality, residents say, is quite different.
Inglewood is not a racist city, they insist. Blacks make up 47 percent of the population, and the mayor and police chief are black.
No history of problems
Police in Inglewood do not have a history of using excessive force, according to federal, state and local officials who track such allegations. The violence that has plagued the city has come from gangs, not police, officials said.
At Zahra's Books-N-Things, which specializes in black authors such as Terry McMillan and Toni Morrison, owners Jim and Renee Rogers refuse to condemn their city or their police force.
"I'm more or less happy with the city," Mr. Rogers said as his wife agreed. "I'm not happy with the incident. But I think it is more of a bad apple situation."
The incident happened last Saturday during an arrest at a gas station in this city on the edge of Los Angeles. Sixteen-year-old Donovan Jackson and his father were stopped because the car they were in had expired tags.
A bystander's videotape shows Inglewood Officer Jeremy Morse slamming Donovan Jackson to the hood of the car, then punching him. Officer Morse has a streak of blood next to his ear.
Officer Morse was put on paid leave; the mayor said he ought to be fired, and federal, state and local agencies are investigating.
Officer Morse's lawyer said that the officer showed restraint in his use of force. He said Officer Morse struck the teenager after he grabbed the policeman's crotch.
The beating was just the latest problem for the city. The defense industry, which brought boom times after World War II, is all but gone. As the jobs left, so did many white residents.
The beloved Los Angeles Lakers fled Inglewood's aging Forum in 1999 along with hockey's Los Angeles Kings for the new downtown Staples Center. The Hollywood Park racetrack remains its only major attraction.
The city is trying to reinvent itself as a clean community that provides good business opportunities, progressive politics and affordable housing.
Inglewood's 113,000 residents live in neighborhoods ranging from middle-class to poor. Census data show that 20 percent of families live below the poverty level.
Diverse department
The 192-officer police force is 43 percent white, 25 percent black, 27 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian-American. Detective Neil Murray, the police union president, said racism was not what led to the incident.
"I don't believe this had anything to do with race," said Detective Murray, who is black. "The department is made up of diverse individuals with many different backgrounds and ethnicities."
Marshawn Hall, who has volunteered as a cadet with the Police Department, said Officer Morse and the officers who stood by should be prosecuted.
"I feel like it was more or less punishment, rather than detention. That boy was helpless," she said.
At a store catering to the city's growing Hispanic population, customers condemned what they saw on the video, not the city or the police.
"I didn't like it, because they had him in handcuffs," said Luis Garcia, a 26-year-old truck driver. "But the cops have to do their jobs, and we didn't see the whole story."
Truck drivers are thinkers, contrary to what the media says.
What I think reporters need to be very careful with is the language they use to describe this incident. From this article I learn that the youth was "body slammed" which to me says he was picked up and then slammed down on the car. The report also refers to the incident as a "beating" which sort of implies that the officer hit the youth multiple times.
Like I say, I don't have a TV and haven't seen the video but if I were to only go by a written account of it some articles would leave the underlying feeling that the cop was just one mean SOB who beat the daylights out of this kid and other articles leave me with the impression the cop was just doing his job. It is times like these when the media has an actual responsibility not to inflame a situation that could be near to boiling over by using overly dramatic language or wordage that is an embellishment of what actually happened.
The descriptions are fairly accurate. The kid's feet left the ground and he was slammed onto the trunk of the cruiser. The officer punched him in the face approximately 4 times.
Okay, I'll bite. Why were they surprised? Did you have hair down to your knees? 
LOL!
I understand that the kid had attacked the policeman. The police had a cut on his head.
Here is the video so you can check it out......
CLICK HERE, then scroll down about halfway
And Click on Play Video
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/09/police.beating/
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The kid says he didn't provoke it, but if you're gonna hit a cop, you're likely |
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You're right. I just watched it again. There was but the one punch. Serves me right for relying on memory. I would have sworn that there were a number of punches.
A good case in point on the relative unreliability of eyewitnesses, eh?
I doubt Maxine is around many white boys, but here in Iowa the cops will slam someone down if he is fighting with them. The difference is there's not a massive coalition around to protest, plus most of us are happy the police have arrested the jerk.
There are on any given day over a thousand serious assault cases in the United States--not someone pushing someone else, or slapping someone else--but involving at least as much violence as occurred in this case. Some of those cases may involve law enforcement officers who have been provoked, but most of course do not. Some have racial aspects, but most do not. But they involve a victim being more severely injured than occurred here. They do not become the focus of network and wire service news coverage that goes on for day after day. They do not become the focus of political attention. They do not become the subject of a mass email campaign, trying to create a "talk it up," "write it up," movement to create a cause celebre'.
The mere fact that the media would consider it newsworthy that the law abiding, working and small business Negro community in the town involved would support their police--even after this local story--tells us more about the bias of the media than anything else. Of course a man in business--Caucasian, Negro, or whatever, is going to be inclined to support the Police who protect his property and patrons. That is not news, either. It is only common sense. What is news--and it is disgusting news--is that the patronizing media has so little real respect for America's rooted, Negro communities, that it supposes them all mere pawns in the endless agitation intended to marginalize their communities, and turn them against other communities and the Police who serve us all.
This whole hoopla tells us more about the media than about either the Police or any ethnic group in America. And many of us are getting sick to the core of our beings over this sort of totally biased focus.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
One thing I find striking is the comparison many people in these articles are drawing between this incident and the Rodney King incindent. That's what I was talking about before- responsible reporting. There is no comparison between the two- Rodney King was a "beat down" by many cops. From what I can gather on this incident, it seems to have been a "rough arrest". I don't think from what I have heard that the suspect was in any way "beaten"- my dad used to whip my behind worse than what this kid got. But here what I also see- the officer was white, the kid was black. The officer lost control. I don't know what really happened because I wasn't there, but the officer could have avoided all this if he simply had kept his cool- regardless of whether the kid grabbed his crotch or not. And finally, people are blowing this way out of proportion. Maxine Waters calling on Ashcroft to do something is just a little bit too much if you ask me.
On a side note- I witnessed my dad take a "beat down" from sherriff's deputies when I was a kid. He was a little bit drunk and making a baboon of himself at the County Hospital- to complicate matters he was almost a black belt in Karate and he liked using it. When he took the first two deputies down with some cool looking flips and throws- they pulled batons and flashlights and did a nice circle stomp on him. Every one of those deputies was white and so was my dad. He didn't file any charges and eventually after talking to the sherriff a few times he got the charges against him dropped as well. I'd say he caught it a lot worse than this youth did and I would imagine that there are dozens of arrests each day in the nation where similar scenes or worse are played out- we just don't see it. I was also arrested once (driving on a suspended lisence that I didn't know was suspended) and they cuffed me and put me in the car in a nice way- because I cooperated. I think it's a two way street.
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