Something I've not seen in the blogosphere, perhaps because it was local to california

[netmouse]

Last week I took a business trip to San Diego. I don't own a TV at home so while staying at a hotel I tend to turn the TV on. Last week one of the things I watched on TV was a Febuary 17 realsports piece about how a young black man, Robbie Tolan, was shot on December 31 in Bellaire by a police officer, right in front of his parents, in front of their home, after police officers followed Tolan home after allegedly having run his plates and mistakenly (the plate number was entered incorrectly) found him to be driving a stolen car. Robbie was unarmed, lying on the ground, when he was shot. According to him and his parents he had risen slightly from a prone position and called out to protest his mother's being shoved against the garage after his parents came out of their home to speak to the officers. His father was being detained up against a car by the other officer at the time. Robbie survived the near-fatal shooting though apparently the bullet will remain lodged in his liver (it entered through his chest and passed through a lung on the way there). Now, he and his parents are still waiting for results of an investigation into the shooting.

It was heart-wrenching to hear his parents tell the story of what happened, including that they were detained by the police in separate cars and not allowed to go with their son to the hospital when the ambulance came. Robert and Marion Tolan have lived in Bellaire for some 15 years. They are the only black family living in their neighborhood. A former baseball player, Bobbie Tolan is well known in the area. When the came out their front door in their pajamas on new year's eve they had no expectation that they or their son would face lethal force. They expected to be able to clear things up through discussion. That seems like a reasonable expectation to me.

Houston news coverage of this story indicates the Bellaire police department is researching their stopped car cases to look for evidence of racial profiling. The policeman who shot Tolan had a history of citations for things like using too much force. I'll be interested to see what the city investigation concludes about the incident.

However we work on race in this country in the next few years, I hope we can find a number of real and lasting ways to try and make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen any more. It's not just about race, of course, it's also about having a society that reacts strongly to evidence of police violence and abuse of power. I was saddened to watch the report on this case and to search for it afterwards in the news online and see so little coverage and so little discussion.

Comments

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

You need to look at the flip side: Have you tried being a white person in Detroit? A couple of years ago, I went down to the east side to get a picture of a house my cousins lived in from approximately 1870 until 1955 (eighty-five years in one house should count for something). I was told by a well-meaning middle-aged black woman to get off her block. It cuts both ways.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

The circumstances don't seem parallel to me at all. You don't live in that neighborhood, and the well-meaning black woman wasn't the local police, shooting at your son...

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

PS I'm curious: what did you tell the woman? Did you tell her why you were there?

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

Yes. Well, I asked her if this house was a particular address (since the houses mostly didn't have full address numbers attached) and she asked why I was there. I told her that I believed my great-uncle had built, or at least lived in, the house starting around 1870, but the family moved to the suburbs in the 1950s. I wanted a picture. She looked around nervously and told me that it really wasn't safe, that I should leave now.

It was clear that she was concerned for my safety, that she expected someone from a nearby house to start shooting or otherwise causing trouble at any moment.

[phawkwood.livejournal.com]

I grew up on the east side of detroit, and though I never experienced this myself, a friend of mine tells a story about delivering pizza for Dominos. As the story goes he knocks on the door, they take and pay for the pizza, then in conversational tones they mention to him that they don't really like white folk in this neighborhood and he shouldn't come back.

When he returned to his shop the manger apologized, saying he knew that about that area but wasn't thinking.

Who knows how accurate the story is.

Having said that I don't think it's a lack of policing, police can't be expected to be on ever street corner, watching every citizen for signs of possible harm, nor can the police control how people think about one another. If they don't like you because of the color of your skin, there is nothing the police can do unless and until they take some physical action.

This is an issue of the racism that still runs deep in our country. I hope we find ways to overcome it, but more police aren't it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Can you tell me what area that is? (like, the streets that encompass it)

[phawkwood.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a neighborhood on the east side known as Indian Village. Three streets, Seminole, Iroquois, and Burns about 10 blocks long from Jefferson to Mack Ave.

I can't honestly speak to where he was working at the time, I believe it might have been the Domino's that lived in the old NBD bank building for a time on the corner of Kercheval and Van Dyke, but again, I'm not at all sure.

And the story may be an exaggeration or an out right fabrication... I honestly can't vouch for it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Can you tell me where this was? (the address of your great-uncle's house would work)

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

The house's address is 3100 Chene. I was probably a block or so north of the actual house. It's on Chene, between Gratiot and Mack. The incident occurred in the summer of 2004.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

That has nothing at all to do with abuse of police power, does it?

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

Well, absence of police power, actually.

[(Anonymous)]

If we want to talk about abuse of police power, I could discuss the time I got a speeding ticket on US-127 between Lansing and Jackson. The cop was *screaming* at me. I got him to calm down by taking down his name, his badge number, and asking who his supervisor was. He had, just prior to that, ordered me to get out of the car, which I refused. He seemed to be upset that the van still had Illinois plates, while I was a resident of Washtenaw County. I am very glad, still, that I did not get out of the van.