Minneapolis has

its own 'Freddie Gray'

reckoning

What is it that police officers

fail to understand?

I call it my First Law of Journalism: Cops Lie. It was something I learned in the early days of my 40-year career as a reporter and editor at The Baltimore Sun, first witnessed during three days spent with a police squad in tactical drug enforcement half a century ago. 

That cops make false arrests, write misleading reports, plant evidence and even steal from people they arrest has long been known -- particularly by people of color in urban America. In Baltimore, that misbehavior became public in recent years through criminal acts by the city police department's now-infamous Gun Trace Task Force. To date, a dozen cops have been convicted.

Before that, five years ago, there was Freddie Gray. He was arrested as a drug suspect in West Baltimore's long-troubled Sandtown neighborhood. The only video of the arrest shows the young black man in handcuffs and leg shackles on the ground, and then being carried and pushed into the back of a prisoner van. Somewhere before the van arrived at the area police station, Gray suffered a broken neck. He died in a hospital a week later.

The anger in Baltimore built up during that week, and exploded after Gray's funeral into days of arson, looting and property destruction. The city's top prosecutor, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, brought criminal charges against six police officers involved in the arrest -- including the driver of the van on the odd count of "depraved-heart murder," in a presumption that Gray, left unrestrained by safety belts in the back of the van, was given a "rough ride."

But there was no definitive evidence, no video of him being injured. And none of the cops was convicted.

In Minneapolis, "Freddie Gray" was a burly black man named George Floyd, 46, who worked as a security guard at a bar -- and there were witnesses as three officers knelt atop his body as he lay face-down and handcuffed in the street next to a parked car. One officer kept a knee pressed on Floyd's neck as he repeatedly cried out, "I can't breathe," and even called out for his mother. A fourth officer stood watching, seeming to do nothing to intervene. Floyd was unconscious when paramedics arrived, and pronounced dead at a hospital.

At least two bystanders had cellphones and recorded video that bore witness through social media to all of Minneapolis and the world of the brutality that marked Floyd's last minutes of life.

And within a day, the rage that had simmered through years of police brutality, malfeasance, insensitivity and even racism across America exploded in Minneapolis. Last night, and into the wee hours today, the local police station -- evacuated and left unprotected -- was burning, while a block-long stretch of looted stores across the street was engulfed in flames.

 A crowd appearing upwards of a thousand strong celebrated in the street, cheering as some people set off fireworks and others hurled wooden boards and flammable debris to fuel the fire rising at the station's lobby entrance.

Fires were also set elsewhere in the city and neighboring St. Paul, and amid that chaos another demonstration some 700 miles away brought a cordon of police officers to protect buildings in the center of Louisville, Ky. Seven people were reported wounded by gunfire during the protest there related to the killing of a black woman, Breonna Taylor, by white police officers in her home two months ago. Television coverage showed a bonfire being stoked in the middle of a street near what appeared to be the courthouse.

Other demonstrations broke out in New York City, Phoenix, Denver, Memphis, and Columbus, Ohio.

Which brings us back to my First Law of Journalism. What, I wondered, would the police have reported about George Floyd's death had there been no video bearing witness. 

According to a New York Times article, the initial statement by the Minneapolis police -- issued before the videos surfaced -- "was short and sanitized. An allegation of forgery. A suspect who 'appeared to be under the influence,' who 'physically resisted officers' and who appeared to be 'suffering medical distress.'"

It took a week for Freddie Gray to die and several subsequent days of the so-called "Baltimore uprising" before prosecutor Mosby announced criminal charges against the six police officers, in what was clearly an effort to calm the city's chaos.

In Minneapolis, the timeline of events is much more compressed -- and perhaps it was surprising that authorities did not quickly lodge an assault charge that would bring at least one of the officers into custody -- the one who had his knee on Floyd's neck -- pending likely indictment by a grand jury. The city did, however, announce the firing of all four of the officers involved in the nightmarish arrest.

But early this afternoon, authorities in Minneapolis announced that the kneeling officer, Derek Chauvin, was now under arrest -- charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. "This case has moved with extraordinary speed," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. "This is by far the fastest we've ever charged a police officer."

There's really nothing new here. We have seen the chaos before, as in the Los Angeles rioting triggered by the recorded police beating of Rodney King more than a generation ago. 

There are multiple factors underlying these incidents, including an erosion of decency in some police officers as they develop a lack of respect and empathy for people as they deal daily with difficult, often tense, encounters. And in response, particularly in minority communities, there is an ever-growing mistrust of law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

In black urban America, they've talked for years about police misconduct.

What some police officers fail to understand now is that technology putting video capability in the hands of nearly every person on the street is showing evidence time after time for that mistrust.

Police could see this coming, having for years tried to prevent people from recording their activities in public view. Courts have ruled consistently that people have the right to record police activity in public, so long as they are not interfering.

And there's another matter some police officers forget -- who they work for.

An anthem from the Confederacy

Time to chuck out

Maryland's ugly state song

The murders of nine people in a historic African-American church in Charleston, S.C., brought quick demands across the nation to bring down that state's official flag -- a Confederate banner symbolizing for many its history of slavery and racism.

But surprisingly, there seems to have been no new call in Maryland to bring down its state song, "Maryland, My Maryland" -- an anthem steeped in that same ugly history.

((UPDATE JULY 10: The Frederick News Post reported this week that state Delegate Karen Lewis Young, a Democrat from Frederick County's District 3A, has submitted a bill to at least change the lyrics -- replacing them with a poem by the same title written in 1894 by John T. White, a Frederick County native.

“His poem celebrates the beauty of Maryland. The beautiful shores, the majestic mountains,” Young was quoted by the newspaper. “It is in no way controversial, and I think we want to have a song that endures over time and something that just celebrates the state beauty, is unifying and enduring, and not controversial and divisive.”)

 I took note of the song's history in The Real Muck four years ago, as Baltimore marked the 150th anniversary of its "Pratt Street Riot" when federal troops -- summoned by President Abraham Lincoln to defend Washington in the wake of the fall of Fort Sumter in South Carolina -- were attacked.

No one died in the Confederate conquest of Fort Sumter, but as the troops marched through Baltimore from the end of one rail line at President Street to another, at Camden Station close to a mile away, a southern-sympathizing mob began throwing rocks and bottles. Then came gunfire, and at least 16 deaths... the first casualties of what became a four-year war.

The riot inspired an incendiary poem by James Ryder Randall, "Maryland, My Maryland!," which was subsequently set to music (as in "O Tannenbaum") and became the official state song.

You hear the sanitary, short rendition performed by the U.S. Naval Academy chorus at the annual running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course. But there's a lot more of the song that's never sung, such verses as:

The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
“Sic semper!” 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

Interestingly, assassin and Maryland-born actor John Wilkes Booth shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" after shooting Lincoln on April 14, 1865, five days short of the Pratt Street Riot's fourth anniversary.

There are some nine verses to Randall's poem; the song we hear on Preakness Day is just the third verse, to wit:

 

Thou wilt not cower in the dust,

Maryland!

Thy gleaming sword shall never rust,

Maryland!

Remember Carroll's sacred trust,

Remember Howard's warlike thrust,-

And all thy slumberers with the just,

Maryland! My Maryland!

 
Huh?

 
The question is whether Maryland could do better.

I suggest a competition inviting Maryland's many talented songwriters to propose a better anthem, with original music -- one that sings to a brighter future rather than an ugly past.

It's about time.

Road Report, Part 14 (Bonnie Goes Blogistic)

Lawn ornaments displayed outside a Tennessee antique store. (This photo, blog posting, and all pictures below, by Bonnie Schupp)

Bonnie Plays Guest Blogger
With Her Own Top 10 List


Top 10 Reasons We Knew We Weren’t Home

David and I have been traveling in the southern mountain areas of our country – mostly small towns in the Appalachians of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. I’ve always thought them to be close to home, but this trip made me realize some big differences within my own country.

Here are the top 10 reasons I knew we were in different territory:

(1) We could guess the denomination of churches (which were abundant) before we could read the sign in front of them. Baptist! We never saw a synagogue, or even a Unitarian Universalist Church.

(2) McCain/Palin signs far outnumbered Obama/Biden signs. And McCain signs were planted on lawns in extra-large sizes. I guess something in the area provided good fertilizer for Republican signs.

(3) It was a challenge to find a National Public Radio station on the car radio. However, there was no trouble finding a religious station or a right-wing political talk show. One caller on a conservative talk show said, “It doesn’t bother me if you call me prejudiced but you can’t call me anti-American.”

(4) Drive-ins. The last drive-in restaurant I noticed must have been decades ago. When I saw the first one in North Carolina, I asked David to stop the car so I could take pictures of this retro scene. Little did I realize that it wasn’t so unusual in this area. We passed quite a few drive-in restaurants and drive-in movies in two weeks. For those of you who are too young to remember, drive-in restaurants had pull-in places for rows of cars, each spot with a menu and a speaker for ordering. When the order was ready, a waitress would bring it out to your car. Drive-in movies had places for each car with a speaker that attached to your car window. It didn’t matter, though. People (usually teens) in the cars were making out.

(5) American flags flew in many places next to the Confederate flag. If you missed it, read David’s blog posting about his conversation with Sons of Confederate Veterans members. http://ettlin.blogspot.com/2008/10/road-report-part-12-confederate.html

(6) The Ten Commandments (the first 'Top 10' list?) are prominently displayed on a large plaque next to the entrance doors of the county courthouse in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

(7) Frequent religious road signs and billboards such as, “After death what?” Or a billboard, “God please send us someone to cure Aids, cancer and all these awful diseases. - I did but you aborted them. – God.” (But David especially liked the simple roadside sign declaring, “God Bless You Enormously.”) In-your-face religion seeps into even casual encounters in restaurants.

See David’s blog about such a conversation in a low-end Chinese restaurant. http://ettlin.blogspot.com/2008/10/road-report-part-10-amazing-turns.html

(8) Assumptions that all white people think alike. In this area, strangers often think that if you look like them, you think like them. It reminds me of the time I first drove south and stopped in a restaurant in Georgia. A man with a strong southern drawl began bragging about the smart German shepherd he had... how his dog could tell the difference between white people and “colored.” And how his dog hated colored people. How he had to hold his smart dog back so he wouldn’t attack “them colored people.” He looked in my direction for affirmation that his dog was a really smart one. You would think that we’ve come a long way since the 1960’s, but David wrote in a recent road trip blog about an 81-year-old Georgia man we met at Davy Crockett’s birthplace – a man, living in the past, whose bigoted feelings about Barack Obama began with how he would “never vote for a black Muslim.” And that was about the nicest thing he had to say about the prospect of an African-American in the White House. http://ettlin.blogspot.com/2008/10/road-report-part-8-presidential-visit.html

(9) The absence of black faces. African-Americans seemed few and far between as we visited scenic areas, national parks, hotels and restaurants. We did find two, however, at Cumberland Gap National Historic Park, at a re-enactment event. They were playing roles of former slaves. Excellent, passionate acting.

David wrote about a conversation with one in a recent blog. http://ettlin.blogspot.com/2008/10/road-report-part-13-meeting-mr-lincoln.html

(10) Bathroom stall graffiti. In-your-face jingoism and proselytizing permeated our trip daily. While sitting on a toilet seat, I read this (picture) : “Dear God, Why is there so much violence in school? Signed – a concerned student.” “Dear Student, I’m not allowed in school. – God”

After our recent travels, I better understand Sarah Palin’s comment, “The election is in God’s hands.” But, as David observed, God isn’t registered to vote.