Issue #245 OpEd February 6, 2023 (Warning: There is some strong language in this post.)
Once upon a time long, long ago when I was in high school ( I attended a prep school on the East Coast), I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who was from Detroit. He told me about a time when he was walking home late one night from a party and was stopped by the police for no apparent reason. My recollection of what he told me is that they tried to force him to admit that he didn’t know the correct spelling of his middle name, which is Spence. They insisted that it was ‘Spencer’, except that it wasn’t. It was - and is - Spence.
Didn’t matter. When he refused to lie and say he didn’t know how to spell his own middle name, they beat him viciously. They took off his shoes and beat him on the soles of his feet with their batons so that he would have painful difficulty walking the rest of the way home.
He said that there was this special police unit in Detroit called STRESS and that they were known for ‘beating the shit out of nigguhs’. They were the ones who had employed that special skill set on my friend that night.
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I was from Denver and had never heard of anything like that. Not that Denver’s police were all “Officer Friendly” because they damned sure weren’t. But because of the predominantly white upper-middle-class neighborhood where I was raised - and the predominantly white private school I had attended since the 4th grade - I wasn’t acquainted with the sheer brutality exhibited by the police toward so many Black people who lived in Black neighborhoods.
I once even bought a Christmas present of after-shave lotion for a police officer who was directing traffic outside a shopping center when I was only about 6 or 7 years old. I’ll never forget the look of shocked appreciation on his face as my mother slowed down as we got close to him and I leaned out the window to hand him his gift.
In the best of worlds, the world I’d like to be living in, this small gesture made a difference to this police officer in how he interacted with Black people. And maybe it did. But then again, maybe he viewed me as the ‘exception’, a nigger who ‘wasn’t like the others’. Who knows?
But one thing I do know now - that we should all know by now - is that there is a serious problem with the relationship between Black people and the police. This is not by accident, nor is it anything new. It is more by design.
When I was a journalism intern at The Los Angeles Times in the mid-80s, I remember hearing a story of how the notoriously brutal LAPD actually went out of their way during the ‘60s to recruit what we would call Cracker Cops from Down South.
The “Cracker Cops” would come on over to LA where they would be assigned to Black neighborhoods and they could crack all the Black skulls they wanted. Just like home. Now, what self-respecting cracker could resist an invitation like that?
Because prior to his death, as many from Tyre’s neighborhood were able to attest, the now-disbanded SCORPION unit was already known for ‘beating the shit outta nigguhs’ as my friend would say years earlier when describing Detroit’s STRESS unit.
So Tyre had to pay with his life before SCORPION, which had previously been so strongly praised by the city’s mayor and others for taking a bite out of crime in Memphis, began to finally attract the sort of negative attention it should have attracted long ago.
But when it comes to Black people, especially young Black males, there seems to be this feeling that the only way they can be properly dealt with is with the heavy-handed assistance of specially-trained police officers whose sole duty is to terrorize and brutalize.
And yet, perversely enough, whenever they decide upon a name for these so-called ‘elite’ police teams, they always adopt the wolf in sheep’s clothing approach. Because what did STRESS stand for? Why of course it stood for Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets.
What’s not to love, right? Except what they meant to say was Stop Black Folk From Robbing Innocent White Folk So Those Poor Innocent White Folk Can Enjoy Their Safe Streets (SBFFRIWFSTPIWFCETSS…?).
As for SCORPION, which stood for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, once again they forgot to identify which neighborhoods had been designated to have their peace restored.
Because obviously ‘our’, as in ‘our neighborhoods’, did not mean ‘our’ Black neighborhoods. Because if peace had been the SCORPION objective for ‘our’ Black neighborhood in Memphis, then SCORPION wouldn’t have acted like SCORPION.
But I’m quibbling, because who really cares when those names are just so cool, right? I mean, if you were a cop, wouldn’t you rather say that you were a member of SCORPION, or STRESS, or were one of the Big Four than just to say you were a beat cop? Aren’t those exactly the kind of killer acronyms you need to incentivize a young hot-headed cowboy-type fresh out of the Academy?
Or maybe it’s even the perfect goal for a young kid to dream of, right? Because why not? Aren’t we always saying how these kids need more positive role models?
And what’s more positive than being the biggest and baddest predator in the jungle? The one who strikes fear in all the other predators?
“What do YOU want to be when YOU grow up, Bobby?”
“I wanna be a SCORPION!”
“That’s my little rascal!”
And then the little rascal grows up…
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