San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Moms forced to grieve sons in glare of spotlight
More of America was introduced to “the talk” in 2020, which is the conversation mothers have with their Black sons about police.
After Daunte Wright’s killing in Minneapolis last Sunday, America needs to also know about “the call.” This is the phone call many Black men in this country make to their mothers when police lights flash in their rearview mirrors.
I’ve dialed my mom while getting stopped in San Francisco for driving below the speed limit. And while being stopped for driving too close to a car in front of me in West Texas. “The talk” is why Black men make “the call.”
Wright was on the phone with his mother when Minneapolis police pulled him over. His sport utility vehicle had expired license plates, and the air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror violated a Minnesota law.
Police also discovered the 20yearold had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. When the officers tried to arrest him, Wright panicked and jumped into his car. As they tried to wrestle him from the vehicle, former Minneapolis police Officer Kim Potter pointed her gun, shouted “Taser,” and fired a bullet into Wright.
His mother, Katie Wright, must now navigate her personal grief in the glare of an intense national spotlight.
The mother of Oscar Grant knows this burden intimately. “When Oscar died, we had attorneys knocking on our door as soon as it was on television. We hadn’t even thought about him being dead yet,” recalled Wanda Johnson, Grant’s mother. “Being forced into this (activist) role is definitely a hard process to navigate.”
Wright’s parents “have to remember they were parents first,” Johnson continued. “Right now they’re probably getting calls every few minutes to make a decision on what they want the community to do, and they probably have no idea right now . ... They need to find themselves first.”
Johnson lost her son in 2009 under somewhat similar circumstances. The BART officer who shot Grant in the back claimed he, too, meant to use his Taser.
“I see them saying the same thing (about Wright) that they said about Oscar — he was resisting arrest, the officer didn’t mean to grab the Taser,” Johnson told me. “This Taser and gun confusion is an excuse officers have used for far too long.”
Former BART Officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter of Grant in 2010 and sentenced to a twoyear prison term. He served 11 months and was released in 2011. Last year, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office reopened a criminal investigation into the shooting.
Potter resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department on Tuesday, two days after killing Wright. She was charged with seconddegree manslaughter on Wednesday.
As a Black man, it’s hard for me to believe a cop can confuse the feel of a Taser with the grip of a firearm. What I do believe is that an officer’s implicit bias makes them more afraid of — and likely to shoot — me more than if they were dealing with a white person.
In a 2020 study, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health examined 5,494 policerelated deaths in the United States from 2013 to 2017. The data shows Black Americans are, on average, three times more likely than white people to be killed during a police encounter. Based on the Harvard study, the more law enforcement officers stop Black men, the odds of them being killed increase. It’s a concerning connection when looking at
California Department of Justice traffic stop data.
In 2019, the San Francisco Police Department made 86,524 traffic stops. Black people account for only 6% of the city’s population, but represented 24% of the stops that year. Most of the stops were a result of “reasonable suspicion,” according to the data.
In Oakland, a 2016 report found that Oakland “officers were four times more likely to search Black men than white men during a traffic or pedestrian stop,” according to The Chronicle.
Two years ago, the department took steps to cut down on racial bias in their policing by declining to stop people for small infractions like a broken taillight or windshield.
Bay Area cities must disentangle most traffic enforcement from their police departments. Black men shouldn’t die over infractions.
The city of Berkeley is already having substantive conversations about using trained civilians to make most traffic stops. If enough cities do this, it might decrease the likelihood that more mothers like Johnson will be called into activism.
Johnson has spent the past decade crusading for police reform, including demanding antiracism training for officers. The mothers of Antwon Rose, Botham Jean, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and of other slain Black children have been drafted to that cause. So, now, are Katie Wright and Elizabeth Toledo, whose 13yearold son, Adam, was holding up empty hands when a Chicago police officer shot and killed him on March 29, according to bodycamera footage released last week. These women were thrust into this spotlight. Johnson doesn’t wish it on other mothers.
“When an officer shoots and kills someone, they’re not losing anything,” Johnson said. “The victims’ families have to grieve, they have to come up with money for a funeral, they have to figure out how to take care of a loved one the person killed left behind.”
Five minutes after hanging up with Johnson, my own mother, Natalie, called me in tears. She was struggling with the senselessness of Wright’s death. It made her wonder about the safety of myself and my two brothers in similar situations.
I wonder the same.