Take action now

To the Editor: According to a 2020 story from National Public Radio, in 2019 taxpayers nationwide footed a $300 million bill for settlements and court awards in lawsuits filed over cases of police use of “excessive force,” and other civil rights violations. That may not seem like much in the aggregate, but if officers of the Ukiah police department persist in acts of violence like that perpetrated against Gerardo Magdaleno on April 2, our town may wind up paying a cripplingly high proportion of 2021’s total. How can a city that can’t properly maintain its streets and roads or deal effectively with dual crises of chemical dependency and homelessness reasonably persist in exposing itself to the liabilities that attend reprehensible and idiotic policing?

I appreciate that there’s not absolute unanimity about the ethics of brutalizing and killing our fellow Americans on our streets. I understand that what looks to me—and a majority of our fellow Americans—like sadism and berserk behavior can look to police sympathizers like good, but inelegant work. Eric Nelson, accused killer Derek Chauvin’s attorney, says that police use of force isn’t always “pretty.” I suspect that disproportionate police violence will continue to seem controversial for years to come. Nevertheless the truth is that a growing movement of racially and economically diverse Americans of all ages agrees: Unjustifiable and unjust police violence must end. As a consequence of the notoriousness of a handful of mortifying events—particularly the deaths of Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and George Floyd— consciousness of this fact has dawned on tens of millions of Americans quickly and completely. A number of hardcore dead-enders will persist in defending the most heinous police acts in the name of law and order, but their relevance is further marginalized every day. Small towns like ours don’t have years to debate a question that’s all but settled. As cellphone camera lenses have become ubiquitous and captured better and better images juries have found the pleas of victims of police violence more and more sympathetic, as demonstrated by the number and size of settlements and awards. With yet another costly legal settlement or court-decreed restitution on the horizon, the City of Ukiah needs to take immediate, sensible, and substantive steps to curb police violence that burdens our community with shame and grave monetary expenses.

It’s too late to undo the harm that police have done to Gerardo Magdaleno, and the consequent harm they’ve done to the character and reputation of our community and to the budget of our city. There’s an opportunity, though, for city officials to take decisive action to reduce the probability of such a shameful act in days to come. I am urging Chief Justin Wyatt to follow the example of Minneapolis police Chief Medaria Arradondo. Within days of the death of George Floyd at the hands of officers of his department, Arradondo fired the men responsible. All the officers, of course, had recourse to their union for appealing any decision that they viewed as unfair. The police involved in the brutal gang attack on Mr. Magdaleno will enjoy the same recourse if Chief Wyatt does what’s right and expresses our community’s abhorrence of their depravity by dismissing them. Let Chief Wyatt set an example in this case: Ukiah won’t shield gang violence with police badges. And we don’t want to pick up the tab for it.