Fear Should Not Be the Lead in Talking About This Case

I woke up to a number of news stories in my social media newsfeed on Thursday morning. Among them, the death of Chris Cornell and the acquittal of Betty Shelby.

Shelby was on trial for shooting and killing Terence Crutcher. I was angry about injustice and systemic racism - but when I read the language of this story, anger did not really cover it, or, rather, I found a multifaceted anger.

The Root wrote a story with the headline: "White Woman's Fear Wins, But Don't Ever Forget This is The Face of a Killer."

I started to post the link to The Tangled Thread's Facebook page to illicit discussion from different perspectives. But I found when I tried to do so, I started writing my own story.

This case has, for me, always been harder to watch than a lot of other police shooting cases. Maybe it's my own privilege talking, but here is what I saw. I saw a cop who shot a black man get arrested in the blink of an eye. I saw her and the other responding officer get put on administrative leave and her then face the charges she absolutely should have faced. In the beginning, the wheels of justice were swift.

I wanted to think this was a turning of the tides. That finally all the protests, all the speaking, all the raging against the machine had changed something and every officer would now be held to a standard of swift justice. But I think I know better. This is a woman being treated differently than her male counterparts. Please do not misunderstand me. Shelby should have been arrested swiftly. She should have gone to trial, and the verdict should have been fair. That did not happen AND the way this case went down was different. What I want to see is the same swift wheels of justice apply to the male officers who face charges in police-involved shootings.

In the Root article, it notes that not only did Shelby have no remorse, she said Crutcher was responsible for his own death (Anyone who saw her interview on 60 Minutes also heard her say it from her own lips).

Let's take a moment to go over the facts in the case, shall we?

The shooting death of Terence Crutcher happened on Sept. 16. Shelby was charged with manslaughter on Sept. 22. The shooting was later ruled a homicide. Crutcher, a 40-year-old, unarmed black man was simultaneously tased by the male officer who responded as Shelby's backup. I am certain that officer was filled with the same adrenaline-inducing fear and he managed to tase the subject that Shelby thought ought to die for his crime of making her afraid.

Here is the thing that is driving me crazy, and I don't know if I will successfully put it into words here, but I am going to try.

Shelby has no remorse. She shot a man dead in the line of duty and believes herself justified, AND she has shown no remorse. I have seen multiple videos of police officers who have shot subjects - even ones of armed subjects who were about to shoot the cop - and they show remorse in having taken a human life even to save their own. So why can we not talk about that? Why because she is a woman are we focusing on her fear?

Let's consider another case of an officer-involved shooting in which the officer was acquitted for shooting an unarmed black man.

Philando Castile was shot on July 6, 2016. The police officer who shot him, Jeronimo Yanez, was charged with three counts, second degree manslaughter, and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. The time that passed between the shooting death and charges against the officer? Just over four months.

The district attorney when announcing the charges said, "I would submit that no reasonable officer knowing, seeing, and hearing what Officer Yanez did at the time would have used deadly force under these circumstances."

Sure, we need time to investigate the case. But the investigation was done on September 28, 2016. Almost two months before charges. Ok... maybe that was a really complicated case. Let's look at another.

Walter Scott was shot on April 4, 2015 while walking away from police officer Michael Slager. Charges were brought against Slager in June 2015, two months after the incident. I want to just repeat here that Shelby's arrest came six days... not weeks... not months... six days after the shooting.

Ok, one more. Laquan McDonald was shot by police on Oct. 20, 2014. Police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged in November 2015. Those years are right. It took more than a year. I realize this was a unique case fraught with the media doing its job by forcing the Chicago Police Department to release the information, but the arrest of the police officer who shot McDonald took more than a year.

I have a two-fold problem here. We treated Shelby differently, and we talk about the case differently. And the only thing I see as a difference is that Shelby is a woman.

Not only does the wheel of justice spin differently, but our dialog as a society is different. It's been an interesting journey to get to writing this piece at all. Some people I talked to said that the 'white girl fear' is the defense that Shelby herself is using. Fine. Maybe she is. So why are we continuing to allow her to? Why do we keep repeating it?

A great majority of the male cops who have shot black men and women have claimed fear too, but we did not focus on it. We focused instead on them 'doing their job' versus the systemic racism that makes them see black bodies as a threat.

Case in point. A story in The Daily Beast boasts a headline of "Michael Slager Defense: Walter Scott’s ‘Felonious Conduct’ Killed Him"

An excerpt from the story says that Slager testified "that he feared for his life when he shot Scott at the end of a foot chase. Slager said Scott overpowered him as he tried to make an arrest, eventually grabbing his police taser and charging toward him."

At no place in this story does anyone call what the police officer experienced "white man fear." In fact, that phrase is not found in any story about the case, which ended in a mistrial.

I know the historical perspective. I know that Emmitt Till was brutally murdered (read lynched) when, as it turns out, a white woman LIED. I know that we are all taught by the system that black bodies are inherently dangerous. To focus on this woman's 'white woman fear' to me perpetuates the bullshit that needs to change while not holding her accountable for her lack of remorse. What we need to talk about is the fact that women are, for a great deal of their lives, in danger of being attacked. We need to talk about how that fear shifts when you are a police officer with a gun. -- how you have a higher level of responsibility.

Here is the thing I want to be very very clear on. I am livid that Shelby was acquitted. I am livid that another unarmed black man was killed at the hands of the very men and women who are sword to protect and serve. I am livid that one officer on the call knew how to deescalate the situation by using a taser, but the other one shot Crutcher dead. I am also livid about how the treatment of an officer who killed a black man is different because that officer is a woman. I am livid that for years white and black police officers who were male and have killed unarmed black men and women have been on administrative leave for weeks, months and years while the families of the dead men and women try to find their way through grief in suspended justice.

Shelby killed Crutcher. There is no doubt that he died by her hand. I also have no doubt that Shelby was afraid. Crutcher, though, should not have had to pay for that fear with his life. And the fact that Shelby says Crutcher's death is his own responsibility means that she believes he should have.

We have to do better. We have to hold people accountable. We have to change the rhetoric around police-involved shootings to something that promotes progress, that leaves criminals alive to stand trial and police officers alive to continue to protect and serve. We have to face our pasts, individually and as a country. And we have to face the fact that systemic racism means every single one of us have to slay our own fear dragons, even if they have not resulted in death.

The root of Shelby's fear is in both the systemic racism that says a black man is more dangerous than a white man and in the fact that she lives her life in fear as a woman. But that fear is not a pass to not take responsibility for her actions. She shot Crutcher. He died. And the country has to heal again in the face of injustice.

#terencecrutcher #BettyShelby #blacklivesmatter