No one can be surprised by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s decision not to charge a fired police officer for shooting Dontre Hamilton, a mentally ill black man, since it’s the same decision that’s been repeated over and over in this city and elsewhere when police shoot black men.
But that won’t stop the growing protests in Milwaukee and nationally over the business-as-usual treatment of the criminal justice system, which routinely clears police officers for ending black lives, no matter what the circumstances.
Taking nearly eight months of investigation to reach the predictable conclusion that African Americans have come to expect did little to reduce anger over a criminal justice system the black community views as a weapon used against them rather than a tool for justice.
Neither does Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s recycling of ridiculous clichés from opponents of the civil rights movement, as he did when he attacked demonstrators over Hamilton’s shooting as outside agitators.
Just because demonstrators nationally are beginning to stand up to the pattern of unpunished black deaths at the hands of white police doesn’t mean decent people everywhere, black and white, need any outside agitation to be upset when it happens in their own community.
There’s no question demonstrations have escalated surrounding the death of Hamilton, a black man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia rousted and shot 14 times in Red Arrow Park by since-fired officer Christopher Manney last April.
Seventy-four people were taken into custody Friday in mass arrests by sheriff’s deputies and city police after they participated in a major demonstration Downtown shutting down both northbound and southbound lanes of I-43 during the evening rush hour.
Continuing local demonstrations coincided with protests in other cities over other unarmed black men killed by other white police officers, specifically the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the choking death of Eric Garner in New York City.
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But you can’t really call this particular series of white officers killing unarmed black men simply a coincidence. It’s really a pattern since exactly the same story is repeated over and over, month after month, year after year in U.S. cities.
Only minor details and circumstances vary. But one fact hardly ever changes. Rarely is a white police officer ever punished for killing a black man in any situation. The reverse, of course, is punished severely as it should be.
Cops Fail to Respect Black Lives
Chisholm may feel he has little choice not to prosecute Manney because of laws regarding self-defense and the difficulty of convicting police officers on duty.
Hamilton was unarmed when two other police officers checked on him sleeping in the Downtown park and decided he wasn’t breaking the law. But Manney, who came later, began using his nightstick to try to forcibly remove Hamilton and Hamilton took it away from him and fought back.
That’s why Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said he fired Manney. Flynn said the officer failed to follow department protocol in dealing with the mentally ill. He said Manney provoked the aggressive confrontation from Hamilton that led to Manney drawing his gun and shooting.
Recently Mayor Tom Barrett and Flynn went even further and announced that every member of the department would receive intensive training or retraining on how to treat the mentally ill in crisis situations.
But police departments also need to deal with the larger racial issue of officers treating the lives of black citizens much more cheaply than those of whites, as demonstrated repeatedly by the pattern of unarmed blacks being shot by police.
You can cut the irony with a knife when public officials and law enforcement seem more upset about boisterous tactics by public demonstrations over killings by police than by the frequent lack of justification for the killings themselves.
It is certainly proper for public officials to join many of the leaders of the recent demonstrations in urging protesters not to resort to violence. But that’s not the same as trying to stop public demonstrations from bothering anybody.
The use of civil disobedience to call attention to society’s injustices is most effective when it can get the attention of people who otherwise wouldn’t care.
That can be difficult when many of those who are indifferent about issues of racial justice in America are more annoyed by inconveniences to themselves than they will ever be about matters of life and death affecting black or brown people.
People who had difficulty getting out of the city Friday night because freeway traffic was shut down for more than an hour had it pretty rough.
But life’s not so easy either for those citizens left behind in cities when police departments and criminal justice leaders fail to enforce specific policies requiring police to show the same respect for the lives of black citizens as they do for the lives of white citizens.
