The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Handling of Buffalo suspect spurs talk of uneven restraint
NEW YORK » When police confronted the white man suspected of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, he was the very poster boy for armed and dangerous, carrying an Ar-15-style rifle and cloaked in body armor and hatred.
Yet officers talked to Payton Gendron, convinced him to put down his weapon and arrested him without firing a single shot. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia that day cited their training and called it “a tremendous act of bravery.”
In a country where Black people have been killed in encounters with police over minor traffic infractions, or no infractions at all, though, it’s raised the question: Where is that training, that determined following of protocol, when it comes to them?
“It’s important to emphasize this is not about why aren’t police killing white supremacist terrorists,” said Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer and satellite radio host who was among those on social media making posts about the subject. “It’s why can’t that same restraint and control be applied to a situation involving an unarmed Black person?”
He and others pointed to a litany of examples of white men taken calmly into police custody after shootings, including Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black people at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Aaron Long, who killed eight people at Georgia massage businesses last year; Patrick Crusius, who is accused of killing 23 people in a racist attack at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019; and Kyle Rittenhouse, whose attempt to surrender immediately after shooting three white people at a Wisconsin protest was rebuffed. Meanwhile, George Floyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Tamir Rice and a host of other Black people have died at police hands when the initial circumstances were far less volatile.
“There’s just a stark contrast between how a Kyle Rittenhouse or a Payton Gendron gets treated by the system versus how a Black man gets treated in general,” said Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute — a national nonprofit research and advocacy group focused on criminal justice.
Rahman said there are a lot of similarities in the public perception of the two cases. Rittenhouse walked toward police with an Ar-15-style rifle slung over his shoulder, his hands raised. He testified at trial that police told him to “go home.” He was acquitted of all charges after arguing self-defense.