Then I remembered my painting "Birds Eye View." I realized that was the precise angle I could provide. This white middle class momma in the burbs has sat with both sides of this debate. "Birds Eye View" is a painting of the areial view of a prison from the perspective of both the armed guards in the towers, as well as the geese that inhabited the open yard inside the wall each season after they returned from the south.
I went to college with uniformed Police Officers in Utah, so you can best bet most of them, heck, all of them, were white. I earned a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice, and went up against hundreds of men and a few other women for a position at the city police department. I made it through the written and physical exam, to the panel interview. And bombed. My #rebelyell must have shown through just a little too strong. I was ranked somewhere in the 50's for possible candidacy. Whittled down from a few hundred applicants. Many that wanted to serve and protect, some that wanted a paycheck and the gun that went along with it.
I went on to accept a position working inside a prison outside Boston as an instructor for a rehabilitation/reintegration program for violent and repeat offenders. I facilitated groups with inmates which came from many of the different urban neighborhoods inside and surrounding Boston. I worked with all races, and ethnicity, but just like most prisons the black population was heavily represented. It was then I got my education in the disparity between our communities. Not their prison community, but the ones they were coming from outside the wall, and the ones I had been raised in.
Us vs. Them. It is ingrained. Community Policing, cohesion and cooperation between the citizens and the cops was a pipe dream. And both sides were to blame. It was then that I realized that I wasn't there to rehabilitate, I was there to give them a different perspective, a hope. I was this college educated white girl who would listen, and shut down the drama. I would cut to the chase, and call them on their shit. I wouldn't allow them to blame the cops, or turn victim during the relaying of their arrest. I couldn't allow for the group to become a forum for excessive use of force by police. But I did not minimize. I think I gained some cred the day I looked an inmate in the eye, and said something to the effect of, "I know arrest methodologies by the force are not clean cut and innocent. But, you and I, we only have today, and we can't change that. Today, we can only change you." I saw it in his eyes, recognition that I wasn't here to minimize or allow exaggeration of his plight. I was there for their future. My respect was hard earned.
Excessive force is a reality. Police policing communities that they have no inside investment in, that is a problem. What would be your take if you weren't seeing the picture from the birds eye view but the ground level. Everyday, from your infancy. If us vs. them was all you knew, and no one really demonstrated otherwise?
I am not saying Darren Wilson was guilty. I am not saying Michael Brown deserved what he got. I am saying members of the black communities are overly represented in the prisons. I am saying that is a problem. I am saying police officers should be able to do their job without fear of retribution. I am saying police officers should NOT have immunity. I am saying racial profiling is a problem. I am saying indictments happen on a lot less evidence then was brought to the grand jury in this case. I am saying a trial isn't a conviction. I am saying that I want progress. I would hope I would have raised my voice from my cozy southern house back in the 1960's during the race riots. So, I do so now. There is a disparity. I am saying it is a cluster. Conversations need to occur. Take a "birds eye view", a different perspective, preferably one that isn't behind your screen. If you look closely at the painting there is a lot of darkness on the ground level, but some windows of light shine through.
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| "Birds Eye View", 16x20, Acrylics on Canvas, 2012, Janelle Jensen Fritz |
