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Why Are Police So Afraid of Bold, Black Women Like Korryn Gaines?
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omen_like_korryn_gaines_20160805/
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Posted on Aug 5, 2016
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Korryn Gaines. (shesyourmajesty /
Instagram(https://www.instagram.com/p/BIcuBSEA2aw/?taken-by=shesyourmajesty&;
hl=en) )
The brutal death of a 23-year-old African-American woman named Korryn Gaines
has sparked yet another much-needed conversation in the United States about
the use of lethal force by police and its disproportionate impact on blacks.
Gaines was killed in her Maryland home by Baltimore County police, who had
issued a warrant for her arrest over charges stemming from a traffic
violation and her failure to appear in court. The young mother was armed
with a shotgun that she apparently pointed at police, although they fired
first. She responded with a round of shots and then police fired back,
killing her and injuring her 5-year-old son.
Videos of Gaines that document her earlier traffic
stop(http://www.bet.com/news/national/2016/08/03/video-of-korryn-gaines.html
) reveal a young woman who was angry as she told police, "You will have to
murder me, so go ahead and do that." What's most important about this story
is that, as a black woman, Gaines was expected to put up quietly with what
had happened to her, and she likely had dealt with years of the kind of
racism that most black people face from society and police. It was her very
defiance, in all its belligerent glory, that she was punished for, paying
with her life.
Despite the fact that she was armed, it is hard to understand why police had
to kill Gaines. Police across the country have managed to disarm armed white
Americans on many occasions, as this
list(http://blavity.com/11-times-police-successfully-disarmed-white-people-w
ithout-killing-anyone/) shows.
In Gaines' case, Baltimore County police were there by choice, serving a
warrant, and had the freedom to come and go. They could have waited her out,
rather than charging in and firing the first shot. If she was threatening
them with her gun, all they had to do was move out of her field of
view-after all, they had her surrounded. But they chose to fire first,
setting off a grim series of events that ended in her death. Gaines' son is
lucky to be alive. He could have been killed alongside his mother.
It is not just the police who sought to silence Gaines' defiant voice. One
of the more sinister aspects of this story is the complicity of social
media, Facebook in particular. When Philando Castile was shot by police in
Falcon Heights, Minn., recently, his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was
in the car with him at the time, had the presence of mind to start a
Facebook live stream, broadcasting instantly to the world what the police
had done and effectively protecting herself from the web of fabrication that
police have a reputation for weaving in order to justify fatal shootings.
The live stream was a powerful protective tool for Reynolds.
In the case of Gaines, who was also very active on social media, Facebook
disabled her account at the request of police as she tried to post videos of
herself barricaded in her house with her son. It is remarkable that Facebook
decided to comply with an institution that has a reputation for race-based
violence, when its founder has declared that he thinks black lives
matter(http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/25/facebook-mark-zuck
erberg-black-lives-matter-diversity/80933694/) .
Facebook has increasingly become a platform on which people are able to
share and document their experiences, but when the company makes decisions
that empower law enforcement, it clearly has sided with the police against
people of color.
I spoke this week with a young black artist from Seattle who decided to take
matters into her own hands and begin an online project titled
"Reparations,"(http://www.reparations.me) where people can request help
with all sorts of goods and services and have those requests met by people
privileged enough to do so. Natasha Marin explained to me in an
interview(http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/new-website-connects-whites-with
-non-whites-for-reparations/) that "the project is not about polarizing
people; it's about connecting people." Interestingly, her project-intended
to constructively address racial disparities on an entirely voluntary
basis-has been met with vicious vitriol and hatred. As Gaines' refusal to
comply was met with police gunfire, Marin's simple act of addressing racism
has been met with threats to her life, racist epithets, people "telling me
I'm a monkey, I need to go back to Africa, simply because I am doing what I
can do to bring about healing in my community."
It is the audacity of black women and their unwillingness to give in to the
status quo that most irks powerful institutions and privileged individuals
in American society.
Marin was traumatized by Gaines' shooting and said she had spent the morning
crying over the story. "It's absolutely horrifying to be a black woman in a
country and see that people are being hunted down and killed for little more
than not having the correct tags on your car," she told me.
Marin, who also uses Facebook to share information about her "Reparations"
project, told me she too has been on the receiving end of Facebook's
seemingly racist policies.
"Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool" that "can be used to bring people
together, and to protect people," she said. But when Marin reached out to
the company to address the threats she was receiving in response to her
project, the website blocked her for 24 hours, even though she was the
victim of the threats.
"How did the police [in Gaines' case] get to contact [Facebook] directly? No
one else can," Marin said. Apparently, law enforcement has no problem
contacting Facebook and getting it to comply with requests. According to The
Baltimore
Sun(http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-facebook-police
-deactivate-20160803-story.html) , "Data provided by Facebook about requests
for information from law enforcement shows a steady increase in requests.
From July to December 2015, the site received more than 19,200 requests for
information from law enforcement, and provided some data in more than 80
percent of those cases." That suggests that Facebook is spying on its users
in the service of the police.
It is incredible that during this time of heightened public awareness of
police brutality, cops continue to behave with impunity. In the aftermath of
Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, Mo., many police departments decided
that the solution was for officers to wear body cameras, and although many
tax dollars have been spent on that, there is, strangely, almost never
body-camera footage when we most need it. In Gaines' case, Baltimore County
officers did not, at any time during the five-hour standoff, choose to turn
on body cameras they were apparently
wearing(https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/08/03/baltimore-county-cop-a
ppears-to-be-wearing-body-cam-in-korryn-gaines-standoff-despite-police-sayin
g-there-were-none/) . First they were "not
sure(http://thesource.com/2016/08/02/police-not-sure-if-body-cameras-recorde
d-shooting-of-korryn-gaines-her-son/) " there was body-camera footage, and
then the police declared that the cameras had not been turned
on(http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/08/04/if-police-body-cameras-were-off-wh
y-forcibly-shut-down-korryn-gaines-live-stream/) .
It was in Baltimore, not far from where Gaines was killed, that Freddie Gray
died in police custody last year, setting off days of rioting. Gray, whose
only "crime" was to look at police officers, was treated so brutally during
his arrest and subsequent transport that he died of his injuries. Although
six officers were charged in his case, every single one has been exonerated
by a system that Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby
denounced(http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/27/us/freddie-gray-verdict-baltimore-of
ficers/) as a result of what she saw as "an inherent bias that is a direct
result of when police police themselves." Now Mosby, another strong black
woman who has done her best to demand police accountability, is facing a
police-led effort
(https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/08/04/attorneys-for-baltimore-police-offi
cers-say-marilyn-mosby-should-be-disbarred/) to have her disbarred.
In an apparent effort to repair their poor image, some police departments
are making vain, misguided attempts at winning people over. A video that has
gone
viral(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/02/va-police-off
icers-pulled-over-vehicles-gave-occupants-ice-cream/87948906/) shows a
white police officer in Halifax, Va., pulling over an African-American
woman, only to offer her an ice cream cone instead of a ticket. But as many
have pointed
out(http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/08/police-propaganda-icecre
am/) , "If police officers want to do something kind for black people, they
can start by not killing us."
In discussing Gaines' case with Marin on my show, "Rising Up With Sonali," I
found myself choking back tears as my guest asked the important rhetorical
questions we all need to be asking: "Who's going to make that up to her son?
What kind of reparation is he going to get for losing his mother?"
Only a few weeks ago, a white neighbor called the Pasadena police on me
after I used a dog-training audio device on his vicious, barking dog that
made my daily morning walks a stressful affair. A police officer showed up
at my door, demanding to know my name and asserting that a complaint had
been filed against me for "disturbing the peace." The officer's hostile
attitude and willingness to believe an older white man over a lone brown
woman made it very clear whom he worked for and how far he might go to get
what he needed. All I could think of was that my young son was playing in my
backyard, and that I was suddenly in a potentially life-threatening
situation with an angry, armed officer whose vocation is known for
irrational violence and being above the law. Although I am not
African-American and understand clearly that black Americans are subject to
the worst forms of racism in my society, I knew I was brown enough to
warrant undue suspicion from the snarling officer on my doorstep. I remain
traumatized by that brief brush with the law and can only imagine what a
lifetime of being in the crosshairs of a powerful institution can do to
one's psyche.
Gaines, Marin, Mosby and all the bold, outspoken, black women in American
society are seen as threats to a system designed to preserve elite power. It
is no coincidence that most of the principled leaders of the current
movement for justice against police brutality are black women, as are the
three co-founders of Black Lives Matter. Police-and American society in
general-need to stop killing and threatening black women and start listening
to them.
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