When it comes to the topic of the recent civil rights injustices in America, it is important to not be irrational.
Cornell Brooks, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, recently spent a day at Cabrini as part of Nerney Leadership Institute’s Executive in Residence program.
At the Executive in Residence’s evening fundraiser Brooks made an extremely thought-provoking statement. Verbatim, Cornell said, “I do not know whose decision it was to make those young boys into angels and make every cop out to be evil.”
In a sea of sound bites all suitable for quotation, this is the one that blatantly stood out. Granted, the majority of these boys killed by police over the last year did not deserve their fate, but why has the public assumed these false facades for many of the men?
Michael Brown robbed a store, Eric Garner was illegally selling cigarettes and Andrew Gayneir was verbally abusing women and charged the cop that shot him. None of these are reasons for a police officer to kill, but obviously they are in no way, shape, or form the angels the public tended to make them out to be.
But the facts are that some officers are unsuitable for their positions as law enforcers. Timothy Loehmann killed a 12-year-old who wielded a fake pistol, Bron Cruz gunned down an unarmed man, and Mark Rine shot someone who only held a pill bottle–these officers were wrong for what they did.
It would be irrational to let the actions by a small percentage of young black men be the way the public views all men of color. Thus, why allow a select few police officers to be the poster children for how the public views the rest of those in blue?
We believe that everyone should be treated equally and with that, a final consensus on who should be deemed as right, wrong or indifferent should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
