Originally published August 11th, 2016.
This piece more clearly encapsulates the direction I wanted my writing to take. I was struggling with understanding the political dynamics of Little Rock. I love this town. I realized after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, however, that I did not fully understand it. I don’t want to simply be a visitor here. My wife and I talk too often about buying property either in West Little Rock or out in the nearby rural counties and raising children in the metropolitan area.
“The Blue Paper Trail” is pregnant with the idea of personhood. I was angry. How could these terrible things happen to Eugene Ellison and Freddie Gray? They were free agents, yet their fates- the lack of justice- suggested an invisible pall upon their freedom. Through examining documents- the Laux Law Firm’s work was invaluable- I began to realize that the idea of personhood could be heavily evidenced through data and reporting.
Officer Donna Lesher was one of the two police that killed Eugene Ellison on that terrible night in December 2010. In reading the Laux Law Firm investigation of Ellison’s death and the Little Rock Police Department’s (LRPD) culture, I’m struck by the demonstrable lack of training she received. She was an 18 year veteran of policing who did not know how to use a baton—basically, she was not trained in basic use of a wooden stick one would use to bludgeon recalcitrant suspects. Being smacked with hard objects is not pleasant, but citizens generally walk away from such an experience. Without this tool, the only weapon Lesher had to defend herself with was her firearm. She communicated awareness of this reality. In her disposition, attorneys ask her if not having a baton “increases the level of danger in use of force incidents that you encounter?” She answered in the affirmative.
Officer Lesher is not an aberration of incompetence within the LRPD. The Laux Law Firm also discovered that, of 541 officers, 264 are untrained in Taser use; of that number, 127 are the patrolmen citizens encounter during traffic stops, outside bars, and generally through the daily places citizens go. 44 of them—Lesher included—do not know how to use the baton, a tool whose function dates back to the Paleolithic era. 29 officers are also untrained in the use of pepper spray. These are points I made in an earlier post about the community think tank at Philander Smith College, so at the very least the citizens who are most policed in Little Rock are now aware of the additional risk of police encounters.
As Jesse Williams said at his BET speech earlier this year—we have the data. Police departments know which officers are at greatest risk of using force in the line of duty. My concern is the public availability of such data. If citizens knew that Officer Lesher was woefully unprepared to use non-lethal weapons in a common police encounter, would they tolerate her presence on the streets of Little Rock? If they knew over half their police force was untrained in using police tools that leave their suspects alive, would they push for renewed police preparation and leadership
These questions about access to records also matter to citizens living a thousand miles away. A judge in Baltimore last week concluded that Freddie Gray, after he was thrown in the back of a police van by six officers and given a rough ride around Baltimore, somehow killed himself by repeatedly slamming himself into the walls of the vehicle until his neck was internally split from his body. No officer was convicted. No officer was held accountable for the nature of his arrest and transport. There are thus only two legal and illogical conclusions citizens can derive from the tragic death of Freddie Gray—that he either killed himself or he died due to an error free from human hands.
Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, however, wanted to introduce 4,000 pages of evidence on the highest officer charged, Lieutenant Brian Rice. The Associated Press noted that for months—and it took months because the Baltimore Police Department dragged their feet—the prosecution wanted to include testimony on Lt. Rice’s training. His file also contained details on his hospitalization over mental health issues; his two administrative suspensions; and, most pointedly, the Baltimore Police Department’s confiscation of his firearms after a dispute with his wife over a welfare check. Baltimore is a different city. Still, I feel questions arising that I cannot quell. What made it so difficult for the prosecution, who work so closely with the police, to get access to Lt. Rice’s record? Isn’t his history of mental struggles and disciplinary action relevant to Freddie’s death?
In Little Rock, the state would not willingly release their police data. It took the work of attorneys representing Ellison’s family to do so and to reveal the gap in Officer Lesher’s training. In Baltimore, even powerful agents of the state could not use Lt. Rice’s record for a full accounting of his character and behavior. Both officers are white, and they police in chocolate cities with predominantly white police forces; about 68% percent of Little Rock’s police force is white, with a corresponding 46% for Baltimore. Many academics and activists describe white supremacy as the control of white institutions over black bodies and lives. Hiding records and data that allows citizens to accurately assess their protectors is a key behavior of white supremacy in the 21st Century.
I am working hard not to be hyperbolic with my words. I do not believe most Americans, and most of our institutions, are hiding Klansmen in their hearts. My nation is generally good, and better intentioned than it has been in the past when it comes to the treatment of the melaninated. Yet we cannot ignore the general reality of officers killing people and walking away without accountability. We cannot ignore that Ellison and Gray are dead. We cannot ignore that their killers had records—that white dominance, embedded in American institutions, leaves quite the paper trail—and that the public did not have due access to them. If many black people live in a reality where a police encounter or arrest can alter the trajectory of their lives, then we also should push for access to the blue paper trail of our guardians.