Nearly five years ago, in August 2015, I wrote a column for the Shepherd Express dedicated to Tony Gonzales. A 29-year old gay Native American man, Gonzales was killed on July 16 of that year by Wauwatosa Police Officer Joseph Mensah. Gonzales, it was reported he threatened police with a sword and failed to comply when they ordered him to drop the weapon. Mensah claimed he shot Gonzales in self-defense. The subsequent Milwaukee Police Department led review of the case agreed.
Gonzales’ funeral took place weeks later. His family had demanded a second autopsy and further investigation. But to no avail. The verdict remained the same. When his burial and memorial took place, representation from the LGBTQ community was sparse. Gonzales had been a PrideFest volunteer and participated in the LBTQ Community Center’s Project Q youth program and was generally known about town as a quirky character into the queer Goth scene. Perhaps it was the delay between his death and his funeral that had people confused, despite the social media announcements of the time and place of his finally being laid to rest. Or perhaps it was the manner of his death, or a matter of our awkward discomfort with such rituals. Perhaps it was simply our remiss sense of social etiquette. Still, someone could have thought to send flowers or at least a card. We were his chosen family, after all.
At the time of the tragedy, police shootings were accepted as a fact of life. As in the Gonzales case, usually the victim took the blame. And yes, then as now, there were noticeably far more incidents, as in Gonzales’ case, involving men of color than of whites. But, again, although we asked ourselves why deadly force was so quickly employed rather than de-escalation or non-lethal means to incapacitate rather than kill, and may have questioned official reports of the encounters, we did precious little to affect change.
Violence Against People of Color
And that would have been that had it not been for the ever-growing number of such cases documented on cell phone videos and police body cameras (if they haven’t been turned off). Today it’s certainly not as easy to ignore the reality of systemic racial inequality and police violence against people of color as it once was. Now it’s captured on video and immediately distributed on social media so we can see the truth. But, for most of white America, it’s still not a situation happening to us.
But it was the passer-by in Minneapolis who had the presence of mind to start videoing and kept videoing the nearly 9-minute execution by asphyxiation of George Floyd conducted by members of that city’s finest who shook us out of the delusion of our complacency. Some LGBTQs have been marching in solidarity with Black Lives Matter ever since.
Meanwhile, Officer Mensah has shot and killed two more young men. One, Jay Anderson Jr., an African American age 25, was killed on June 23, 2016, less than a year after Tony Gonzales; the other, Alvin Cole, an African American age 17, fell in a hail of bullets fired by Mensah on Feb. 2 of this year. Protests for justice have been exercises in futility.
This week the Wall Street Journal is putting Wauwatosa in the national spotlight and publishing a story about the three killings. Perhaps now, given the circumstances of the moment, it will shed some light on new aspects of each of the cases. Perhaps we’ll learn if these three young men really had to die.
And now, given our newly woke sensitivities, it might also be fitting to acknowledge Tony Gonzales on the fifth anniversary of his death and recognize him as the community member he was.
