By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Well, well…we have another incident in which two white Toledo Police Officers were caught with their race and cultural superiority pants down when they rudely addressed some minority teens in the Sylvan Street area.
The teens were not caught engaged in any reported criminal behavior and not even walking in the street but yet these two officers felt it was incumbent upon themselves to make sure these teens “knew their place.”
In essence, the two rogue officers berated the teens and mocked their living conditions, to wit: being poor. In what crystal ball did they gaze to ascertain that information?
But, no crystal ball was needed in this situation. The mere existence of the teens and their assumed “poverty” location was enough to trigger these officers in falling back onto their both acquired/taught and internalized racist and cultural memes to denigrate them for simply who they are…nothing more.
Knowing nothing of the four teens about their character, history, background or economic status, the two culturally impaired white officers decided to inflict mental and emotional damage on the teens for simply being or simply existing.
These now seemingly irrelevant teens were immediately dispatched and assigned to society’s dumpster as of being of no utilitarian value because as we all know, anyone supposedly living in poverty should be shunned.
And you wonder why many minority people distrust certain police officers who come into their neighborhoods with a nasty attitude and swagger and act out some of their mean impulses on helpless people.
Would these officers have uttered such nonsense to a group of poor looking white teenagers and told them to enjoy living in poverty? Doubt it.
Some of the proper critiques of this reprehensible conduct by these two officers were that they needed to be “retrained” in basic 101 civility to the people they are assigned to protect and serve.
Other comments were that this may not be a matter of simply retraining with
a video or 20 hours of lectures by notable sociologists or psychologists because
these two officers need a “deep dive” in their persona and history that would allow them to speak such derogatory remarks and obviously believe that they would be free from a command rebuke.
For one thing that can be done right away is to take them off of community patrol and policing and after their “reorientation”, place them in positions that preclude their vitriol from harming others.
It would be interesting to review the procedures by which the police academy inducts possible cadets as to their emotional and mental fitness to police a multi
cultural society.
No, I am not going to hit the low hanging fruit of, “If they say these things in public places, can you imagine what they say about minorities among other officers or at their homes or places they hang out?”
Their demonstrated negative cultural and racial baggage is a clear hindrance to their decision making powers if they believe that a person who is in poverty is fair game for derogatory remarks and even subject to a lesser application of fairness and justice.
When certain people on the national scene utter racial remarks and wrongfully
denigrate D.E.I. and try to spin the lie that being “woke” is an anathema, that
virus can easily mutate down the “power chain” to police officers working in minority neighborhood settings.
If these two officers cannot be rehabilitated, they need to be counseled that further or future police work may not be their best career calling.
This unwarranted stoppage and comments is an excellent example of “micro
abrasions” that people of color face during their daily lives and is vividly portrayed in the book entitled, “Weathering”…The extraordinary stress of ordinary life in an
unjust society…by Arline T. Geronimus.
It is available at Amazon Books. A great read for the Chief of Police and his supervisors.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at Lafe5x@gmail.com