The Paranoid Style of American Policing

When I was around 10 years old, my father confronted a young man who was said to be "crazy." The young man was always too quick to want to fight. A foul in a game of 21 was an insult to his honor. A crossword was cause for a duel, and you never knew what that crossword might be. One day, the young man got into it with one of my older brother's friends. The young man pulled a metal stake out of the ground (some work was being done nearby) and swung it wildly threateningly. My father, mother, or older brother- I don't recall which- told the other boy to go inside our house. My dad then came outside. I don't remember what my father said to the young man. Perhaps he said something like, "Go home," or maybe something like, "Son, it's over." I don't recall. But what I do recall is that my dad did not shoot and kill the young man.

That wasn't the first time I'd seen my father confront the violence of young people without resorting to killing them. This was not remarkable. When you live in communities like ours--or perhaps any community--mediating violence between young people is part of being an adult. Sometimes, young people are involved in scary behavior--like threatening people with metal objects. And yet the notion that it is permissible, wise, moral, or advisable to kill such a person as a method of de-escalation, to kill because one was afraid, did not exist among parents in my community.

The same could not be said for those who came from outside of the community.

This weekend, after a Chicago police officer killed her 19-year-old son Quintonio LeGrier, Janet Cooksey struggled to understand the mentality of the people she pays to keep her community safe:

"What happened to Tasers? Seven times my son was shot," Cooksey said.

"The police are supposed to serve and protect us and yet they take the lives," Cooksey said.
"Where do we get our help?" she asked.

LeGrier had struggled with mental illness. When LeGrier attempted to break down his father's door, his father called the police, who arrived to find the 19-year-old wielding a bat. Interpreting this as a lethal threat, one of the officers shot and killed LeGrier and somehow managed to shoot and kill one of his neighbors, Bettie Jones. Cooksey did not merely have a problem with how the police acted but with the fact that the police were even called in the first place. "He should have called me," Cooksey said of LeGrier's father.

Read the full column at The Atlantic.