John Fountain: Tell me again what a cop would never do

Cops would never lie. Would never falsify reports. Never plant a gun on an innocent black man they’ve just shot down like a dog. Never beat an unresisting, unarmed black man to within an inch of his life or shoot him in the back as he is running away.

A cop would never shake down a drug dealer. Never call black people MF-ers or the N-word, never speak to us with incendiary hostility. Nope, that doesn’t happen.

A cop would never shoot a 17-year-old black boy 16 times then claim he was lunging at him with a knife. And his fellow officers certainly would never lie and go along with a cover-up.

Most assuredly a cop would never torture untold numbers of black men, administer electric shock to their genitals, beat us with phonebooks, strangle us.

A cop wouldn’t do that. Not in a million years. Who would you believe — the police, or the videotape? Police don’t do that.

The truth? Some police do.

That is the sobering water I tread daily as a black man in America.

When the latest case surfaces, there is too often the kind of rhetoric that reeks of racist, excuse-making gobbledygook in response to black folks’ talk about systemic, government-sanctioned murder, police brutality and harassment. (No, you do not have the right to accost me, Mr. Officer, as I am walking from my car to my daughter’s elementary school for a parent-teacher conference. “Come here?” For what?)

I face the threat of rogue police that my white colleagues and friends will never know. So does potentially every black male. Cursed at and spoken to rudely during routine traffic stops in front of our wives and children. Shot dead while telling the officer that you are reaching for your ID as he requested.

Stomped on the head while lying handcuffed. Clubbed or choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. Or dealt an endless number of other atrocities that some police commit against us. Still, some don’t see it our way.

Let the blame casting begin…

“Well, he shouldn’t have resisted,” some say.

He had his hands up.

“He should have followed the police’s orders.”

He did.

“OK, then, what about his past?”

What about yours? What does his past have to do with the present? How does that justify him being shot?

“Um, well, he would have survived if he had just dropped the gun…”

What gun? What gun did Rodney King, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald or Kajuan Raye have? Drop the gun?

That statement alone reflects a fictional construct of the “depraved black killer” embedded in too many people’s psyches about all black men.

I bear the cross. I am ever conscious of what can happen to unarmed innocent black men, even when we are compliant, even with our hands raised high — even while lying on the ground in handcuffs. We get shot.

White men considered “armed and dangerous,” even after a murderous rampage — even after shooting police — get taken alive.

Justice? It is a murky pool for us — too often filled with our own blood.

There are many good cops. No argument here. Some of my best friends are cops. Thank God for them.

But where in the hell are the good cops when the bad ones are shooting black men down in the street, torturing us in interrogation rooms, or beating us black and blue?

In too many cases, they are standing by or participating. Or filing false reports to protect their buddies. But, of course, a cop would never do that.

Laquan and Kajuan would beg to differ — if they were alive to tell their story.

Email: Author@Johnwfountain.com

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