CommentsMY TURN-The Dallas jury in the Amber Guyger-Botham Jean murder trial was given -- as its only options -- the task of choosing between the remedies of guilty or innocent.
But this was an inadequate method of achieving justice, because the jury members were not forced to consider the context of our overall racist society in arriving at a verdict in this tragic situation.
What's becoming more and more prevalent in various areas involving complex conflict situations is that a simplistic option of “yes or no” makes true justice impossible, unless the underlying historic context of such encounters is also taken into consideration. This was not done at the trial of police officer Amber Guyger.
Amber Guyger mistakenly and negligently walked into the apartment of an innocent man, Botham Jean, and killed him with her service revolver. Clearly, this was homicide. But are there any relevant circumstances that might explain this unreasonable and grossly negligent action on her part?
While never mentioned at the trial, the single most relevant factor that contributed to Guyger’s actions was her day job as a police officer. Given that there is a fourteen times greater rate of arrest and incarceration of African Americans and a seven and a half times greater arrest and incarceration rate for Latinos, Guyger's day to day experience had taught her that she was more likely to be in danger when confronting people of color than when dealing with whites. When she mistakenly entered Mr. Jean's apartment, this negative police-work-generated survival mentality that kicks in when Blacks were involved, was hard wired to her motor responses. It didn’t matter if she was at work or at home.
Considering that all people are created equal, what is the cause of the negative work environment and racist response that police officers like Guyger exhibit? The answer is found in our still segregated inferior public school systems, where little attempt is made to educate minorities to live up to their human potential.
Predictably, a disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos leave our schools without any skill set that enables them to make a living. Whether Black, Latino, or white, people without the education needed to make a living are more likely to commit crimes – crimes that we unreasonably expect Amber Guyger and other ill-prepared police colleagues around the country to deal with and not be distorted and destroyed in the process themselves.
Putting it together with another regrettable reality, could this also be a major factor explaining why so many police officers, given a job that is impossible to accomplish under the present societal circumstances, are committing suicide?
One must wonder whether the murder verdict would have been the same if a Black police officer had made the same mistake and for the same reason that Officer Guyger made? Should we be overly concerned that in all likelihood the Black judge and jury members who voted to find Guyger guilty of murder in some way did it as payback for the countless Blacks who have been murdered for no reason, such as, "I can't breathe" Eric Garner. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will only create a blind society where everyone ultimately needs dentures.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
