Thomas: Open letter to Gov. Bryant

Governor Bryant,

On Sunday, you wrote a column declaring “deadly conflict exists between the criminal class and law enforcement across America.” Your column was woefully ignorant of, and dishonest toward, nationwide protests against police violence. I’m writing to provide the historical, social, and empirical context your column avoided.

In it, you draw distinction between those who break the law, and those who enforce it. The irony is the very weekend your column was published, news broke of yet another police department—this time Miami Beach—under investigation for departmental racism and bigotry (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/miami-prosecutor-reviews-cases-of-police-officers-who-sent-racist-emails.html?_r=0). Also breaking was a story concerning San Francisco police department, where federal prosecutors found video evidence of officers entering residences without cause, and failing to report illegally seized items (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/05/15/us/ap-us-san-francisco-police-racist-texts.html?_r=0). Additionally, prosecutors released numerous text message exchanges between 14 officers that include racial slurs, and the repeated use of the phrase, “white power.”

Though these findings were shocking, they pale in comparison to the report on the Ferguson, Missouri, police department released by the US Department of Justice, in March (http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/department-of-justice-report-on-the-ferguson-mo-police-department/1435/). After over 100 days of on-site investigating, including ride-alongs with on-duty officers, review of 35,000 pages of police records, emails, and other materials, the DOJ found patterned violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, including arrests without probable cause, stops without reasonable suspicion, infringement on free expression, and excessive force. Importantly, these patterns of abuse were borne disproportionately by black residents, who, despite comprising only 67 percent of Ferguson’s population, were victims in nearly 90 percent of use of force cases. If we learned anything from this report on and countless investigations into civil rights violations by police departments across America, it is that, rather than the exception, racism is a mundane feature of 21st century law enforcement.

Just as I’m sure you’re aware of the DOJ report, you must be aware of the video footage of New York city police officers applying an illegal and deadly chokehold against Eric Garner in July of 2014 while he pleaded, “I can’t breath.” You must also have seen the video footage of 12-year-old Tamir Rice gunned down in less than three seconds from a still-moving police vehicle in Cleveland, Ohio, last November. Given widespread media attention toward these cases, it’s shocking you would write the chances of being in conflict with an officer are nonexistent if people don’t break the law, disobey an officer or resist arrest. In the month of April alone, 13 unarmed black men and women were killed by police officers around the country, including Walter Scott, who was shot eight times in the back by Charleston police officer Michael Slager (http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html).

While you claim criminality is achieving a celebrity status it allegedly once had in the 1930s, your historical memory is quite selective. Indeed, criminality achieved some cult status in parts of the country, but not for the reasons you suggest. Consider Elwood Higginbotham, a black resident of Oxford. In 1935, a white mob, aided by local law enforcement, broke into the Lafayette County jail, seized the terrified 28-year-old Higginbotham, and drove him to an isolated road where he was beaten and then hanged. Local law enforcement refused to identify any of the more than 100 participants.

In another instance, also in Oxford, in 1908, William Sullivan, a former U.S. senator, led a lynch mob in the murder of Nelse Patton, proclaiming to the New York Times “I directed every movement of the mob and I did everything I could to see that he was lynched.” Accounts agree Sullivan drew a pistol from the holster of the sheriff in attendance, and shot Patton dead. Of course, no arrests were made. Patton and Higginbotham are just two of the 576 black men and women lynched in Mississippi between 1877 and 1950, second only to Georgia over that same period. Many of these lynchings involved local law enforcement who helped track down the victims, participated in their torture and death, or turned a blind eye (http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf).

Gov. Bryant, you’re right, the time has come for this nation to stand, collectively, against criminal behaviors. You’re wrong, however, to draw a false dichotomy between a “criminal class” and law enforcement, as if the two are mutually exclusive. Evidence shows there is nothing inherent about law enforcement that precludes its members from participating in gross injustices. It’s time we demand mass reform for the entire criminal justice system, including law enforcement practices.

James M. Thomas lives in Oxford, where he is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi.