Two years ago in Mobile, Alabama, an 18-year-old white male, Gilbert Collar, was shot and killed by a black campus police officer. He was running around campus, high and naked, when he approached the officer at the campus police station. Collar was unarmed, but the officer still deemed him a threat and decided to use deadly force against him.
The officer faced a grand jury and was not indicted for his actions. Sound familiar?
Residents of Ferguson, Missouri, faced a similar situation where a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. This officer was also not indicted by a St. Louis County grand jury, which caused many in the community to feel outrage and disappointment. I’m not sure if this is how people felt about Collar’s death in Alabama because almost no media coverage was given to this similar situation, but I’m assuming they also felt a pang of injustice. Given the strong similarities between these two unfortunate deaths, you would think the reactions to these tragedies would also be similar. You’d be wrong.
When news of Collar’s death reached the students at the University of South Alabama, staged protests put into question police brutality and how unaccountable the authorities sometimes are for their actions. These protests were peaceful and allowed people to engage in their First Amendment right.
When news of the indictment decision was released on Nov. 24 in Ferguson, residents responded in the wrong way and began destructive riots, which led to many businesses being ransacked and burned, cars being flipped over and set on fire, and police being intimidated and attacked. The Constitution allows for free speech but not in the manner in which Ferguson residents responded. They simply were mad about the grand jury’s decision and decided to take it out on businesses, buildings and people who had nothing at all to do with Brown or the police officer. In the process of their ill-fated attempt to get “justice” for Brown, they demolished their own community and economy.
Their anger over the indictment decision is understandable, as it is sometimes perceived by some people that police officers get away with almost anything and face no consequences. Grand juries are known to almost always come back with an indictment against regular citizens, which inspired the phrase professing that grand juries would “indict a ham sandwich.” However, there are instances where police officers are not charged with potentially wrongful deaths or injuries and people feel police are given special treatment and go unpunished for unwarranted deaths.
This mindset is perfectly justifiable. However, I believe we should step back for just a moment. It is important that police officers answer for their actions if it is merited, but we also cannot make officers afraid to do their jobs. If we set the precedent that officers will always face prosecution for defending themselves or other citizens, we will also start to see a passive reaction from cops as they begin to neglect doing their jobs in fear of being found guilty for doing them. In neighborhoods with high crime rates, this dispassionate response from officers could lead to even more crime.
At the same time, accountability for public sector workers, such as police officers, needs to happen to allow for transparency. Just as some promote, as I do, merit pay for teachers based on student performance and other standards, we should promote a system where police officers are open to the public eye and where their legitimacy is verified. One way of accomplishing this is with police body cameras, where officers on duty wear a camera that films everything they do.
Some concerns with body cameras exist, such as citizen and police privacy, but I believe the cost-benefit analysis of a body camera system would show it to be a good idea. The Police Foundation has found that the use of body cameras on cops leads to reduced use of force and complaints against officers, which is good for everybody. It could also be used to verify if deadly police force was justified for a particular case, which could have been helpful in a situation like Brown’s where everybody’s recollection of the incident was different.
The deaths of both Collar and Brown warranted an investigation into developing policing reform, yet Collar’s death wasn’t enough. We had to wait for another death with circumstances that were more interesting to the national media to begin the dialogue. All lives matter, no matter someone’s skin color or economic background, so let’s continue to push peacefully for policing reform that could prevent potentially unnecessary deaths in the future.
Nick Eagle is a UF economics and political science senior. His columnsappear on Mondays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 12/1/2014]
[The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Alligator.]
