On the home page of the National Black Police Association website are two resolutions: one in response to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the other condemning the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., three weeks earlier. On that same page is a link to a primer: “What to do when STOPPED by the Police.”
“Since I have a black son, he knows that,” Tonya Chaney says when she hears this.
When in doubt — or hurting — seek the counsel and communal wisdom in a barbershop or beauty shop. Chaney sits on a couch at Mykal Grant, her bright, airy beauty salon in Denver’s Midtown neighborhood. Son Kaleb is 12, attends a private school and, in Chaney and her husband, has two profoundly engaged parents who have schooled him in being thoughtful around police officers.
The longtime business owner takes a break between customers to talk about the still-unfolding events in Ferguson.
The St. Louis County municipality at the center of the nation’s latest race trauma is an 800-mile drive from Denver. It’s also as close as television screens and trending Twitter feeds.
Although the St. Louis suburb has its own place-specific racial history, Brown’s death has become part of the national conversation about black and white race relations. And more specifically, about how young black men are treated by police.
Ferguson has become a mirror for other cities.
We’d be foolish and foolhardy if we didn’t ask: Could the shooting of an unarmed black man by a police officer happen in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs? And because most of us know the answer is yes, even in this city with a rather remarkable history of black civic leaders — starting with former Mayor Wellington Webb and current Mayor Michael Hancock — the real question that has been in the air is if that happened, would it lead to the violence that has kept Ferguson in the news? Fueled by fury, would fires burn?
“I don’t think we have 100 percent overlap with Ferguson. But I think we have seen some of the conditions in every major city across the country — including ours,” says Pastor Del Phillips, one of the leaders of Together Colorado. The multidenominational, multiracial organization, founded by faith leaders in 1978, held a march and then a rally downtown in support of Ferguson.
“Perhaps the most prominent we’ve seen as citizens in Colorado is the use of excessive force with our law enforcement officials, the profiling in certain communities, in certain neighborhoods, that we don’t find in others. And those are ingredients that set up the tendency to create Ferguson outcomes here at home as well as in other places.”
Racial divide revisited
Does Chaney think a young black man could lose his life the way Brown did, on a street in Denver? “Absolutely,” she says. But she can’t see the same upheaval ensuing. “I think we’d protest. We have an awesome mayor who’s moving things forward, even with all the police brutality and payouts going on. At least somebody’s paying attention.”
The recent troubles with the Denver Sheriff Department suggest that Denver’s citizens and the City Council expect oversight and accountability. And high-profile events like the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the 2011 Occupy Denver protests and the 4/20 marijuana gatherings have taught the city’s police force to address crowd interaction.
Early in the most emotional midst of Ferguson’s unfolding, a Pew Research Center survey became part of the story. Conducted Aug. 14-17 among 1,000 adults, the report was titled “Stark Racial Divisions in Reaction to Police Shooting in Ferguson.”
It’s all well and good to revisit the black-white racial divide. It’s foundational. But we cannot ask questions of race in this town without at least acknowledging that at 30 percent of the population, Hispanics make up the city’s largest minority group — one with some overlapping but also divergent vulnerabilities. One of the study’s more compelling findings might be that only 18 percent of Hispanics surveyed were following the events of Ferguson.
And given the coverage of Ferguson, Pew’s assertion that “among non-Hispanic blacks, fully 54 percent closely followed news about the shooting and protests,” is rather startling. If little more than half of blacks surveyed were following Ferguson during its most volatile days, doesn’t that invite a certain amount of caution about what the story really means to that complex behemoth called the Black Community?
Chaney would like to see the sort of energy expended in protests in Ferguson focused on a city like Chicago. Last weekend, seven people were killed and 29 wounded in gun violence. That wasn’t even the city’s most lethal summer weekend.
“Instead of us being down in Ferguson upset, let’s do something.” she says. “Let’s get the right politicians in Chicago moving and shaking. I don’t know.” She takes a breath.
What would happen if people converged on Chicago for a week of protests at the shooting death of 9-year-old Antonio Smith with actions intended to target the quasi-warlords who plunge predominantly black neighborhoods into heartbreak?
This is hardly an apples-and-oranges, either/or conundrum. Both events demand a response and vigilance, and the issues of having a secure neighborhood and overwhelming evidence of an adversarial or out-of-touch police force intersect.
But the litany of names of the dead can feel like a never-changing cycle of institutional abuse and also a cycle of rehash. Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited Ferguson last week, is not the first nor will he be the last accomplished African-American man with his own story (or two) about being profiled by the police.
It’ s not just the answers that matter. It’s the very questions and the timing of them. Pew was canvassing responses based on an event with scant facts and loads of coverage and speculation. It’s a problem the Ferguson police exacerbate with the withholding of information about Officer Darren Wilson’s alleged wounds and the lack of an incident report.
Still, the media and the increasingly vital, vibrant and prone-to-error Twittersphere get ahead of facts. An impatient citizenry is made even more so. This can be good — we demand answers! Or problematic — we seek talking points but don’t have all the facts.
One of the more telling comments of last week’s news cycle came from Dr. Michael Baden, the medical examiner brought in by the Brown family lawyers. “Right now from the science point of view, we can’t determine which witness — and there are all different kinds of observations made — is most consistent with the forensic findings,” he said.
This is a declaration that should invite caution, and rebuffs the idea that murders are solved in the span of an hour TV procedural.
Signs of solidarity
Ferguson exposes divides but also fresh solidarity. There have been rallies in Halifax, London, Toronto. Turkish soccer fans held aloft signs that had a silhouetted figure with its hands up and the inscription: No Racism. Don’t Shoot. #RIP Mike Brown.
“I give a high-five to those people who aren’t black or brown who try to empathize with people of color,” says salon owner Chaney. “But the reality is that until we as a people get us together, it’s going to be like this. I need my son to understand you cannot put yourself in situations where the police are going to be that much more at your door. You don’t get to be innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty until they figure you’re innocent.”
Still, Chaney doesn’t hide her frustration when it comes to the video of Brown allegedly stealing cigars from a convenience store.
“Why are you stealing cigars?” Chaney says, slapping her hands together. “Dammit. Why?” Why did Florida State University star athlete Jameis Winston shoplift crab legs? Why did high school basketball phenom Trayvon Reed scuttle a college scholarship shoplifting an ice-cream bar? Young men do wrong — and wrongheaded — things. Most aren’t killed.
The only people who would take Chaney’s frustration as a blame-the-victim moment are those who can’t hold two ideas in their heads at the same time: Michael Brown should not be dead, and Michael Brown was no angel.
As accomplished as her young son is, Chaney reminds him that “at the end of the day, you’re still a young black man. This world was not created for you to benefit. You just happen to be at a time where we have a black president; things are moving a little bit better in that direction. But you are the Trayvon Martins, the Michael Browns. You’re still that person.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
