An Open Letter to Stephen Bittel

This Juneteenth I had hoped to publish a different post on race and the social contract, but in light of Florida Democratic Party Chair Stephen Bittel's comments calling black lawmakers "childish" and his subsequently inadequate apology I could not delay my response:

Mr. Bittel:

I hope you remember me. We met at a luncheon for College and Young Dems in Hillsborough County a couple months ago. If you don't remember, I was the tall black guy with the hair. I must confess that your comments at the Leadership Blue Gala deeply disappointed me. They turned what ought to have been a celebration for the party into a controversy. As Chair of the party, I hope you understand and take responsibility for that.

As I wrote my reaction to the story to share on Facebook, I questioned whether or not I should call for your resignation. Ultimately, I decided against doing so. However, the first comment on my post did call for you to resign your post and I have since seen others make the same call. I have nightmares about a solidly red Florida and do not think that your resignation would help prevent my fears from manifesting. Furthermore, I believe in forgiveness.  In your apology you said that "you will do better" so I believe in giving you the opportunity to do so.

Had your comments been directed at white lawmakers or lawmakers in general, your apology would have sufficed and we could move forward. People sometimes say things they that they shouldn't and in and of themselves, your comments were not too egregious. However, context matters. Throughout our history in this country, black people have been treated like property, children or beasts, not with the dignity and respect they deserve as men and women. That your comments came between people mourning the verdict of the Philando Castile trial and Juneteenth - when many African-Americans celebrate the emancipation of their ancestors - further exacerbates the pain felt. Any adequate apology must address the peculiar history of African-Americans.

While your comments opened up racial wounds, I want to be clear that I am not calling you a racist. Rather, I fear that your comments are another micro-aggressive straw that will eventually break the camel's back. As their cries of injustice at the hands of the police state go unheard, the souls of black folk feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one side, with their Southern Strategy, the GOP has done everything to dissuade the African-American from supporting them. Today, they pass laws designed to make it more difficult for African-Americans to vote and gerrymander their districts to weaken the representation of those who do vote. On the other side, African-Americans increasingly feel that their vote in bloc for the Democratic Party is taken for granted. Rep. Shevrin Jones echoed this sentiment when she that "[African-Americans] are considered an afterthought," and that "[African-Americans] are only brought in to deal with issues when it's election time."

I am convinced that if fulfilled, the Democratic agenda is better for African-Americans than that of the Republican Party. However, an increase in the minimum wage or access to affordable health care does nothing for a man if he is arbitrarily slain at the hands of the police. I have come to the conclusion that African-Americans should only vote for a candidate if and only if police reform is at the forefront of his or her campaign, even if that means voting for a Republican or not voting at all. Their support for Democrats can no longer be a foregone conclusion. You can raise all the money in the world Mr. Bittel, but Democrats cannot win in Florida without the turnout and support of black voters. With 20 years of Republican leadership in the Governor's Mansion, I believe African-Americans can endure four more years, but we are coming to the point where we cannot wait any longer for the end of the tyranny of the police state or to be taken seriously by the Democratic Party. Rather than turn police reform into a partisan issue, I do believe reigning in the police state can be argued from the ideologies of both sides of the aisle. These reforms must include body cameras, citizen review boards and more training for law enforcement, as is often discussed. However, in addition we require laws explicitly limiting engagement and the use of force by police officers, so that if and when people are arbitrarily deprived of their life at the hands of law enforcement, they can at the very least expect justice in the court of law. With or without the Democratic Party, we will have justice.

Chickens come home to roost Mr. Bittel and in context your comments were more offensive than Frank Artiles referring to six senators of the GOP - all of whom are white - as n***as. In your apology, you said you "respect all of our elected officials." But, your comments were not directed at "all" of our representatives; rather, you explicitly targeted "black lawmakers" in general and also specifically Sen. Oscar Braynon. I hope you will, as you promised, "do better," and use this opportunity as a teachable moment. Furthermore, come November 2018 I hope we can celebrate Democratic victories across Florida. However, a house divided cannot stand, and this party cannot win if its black base continues to feel dismissed by party leadership.

Sincerely yours for the cause of liberty and justice for all,

Michael "Crunch" Cardwell II

The Tyranny of the Thick Blue Line

As the news broke out about the verdict regarding the shooting of Philando Castile, I am surprised by how many are surprised that officer Jeronimo Yanez went free. A lot of people, for example here, seem to think Yanez would have been found guilty if Castile was white. While you could certainly argue that racial bias led to Yanez shooting Castile, even if Castile was white, the verdict would remain the same. In our country, it is very hard to convict a law enforcement officer of brutality or homicide. The Supreme Court gives officers broad freedom in determining when and to what extent they may use force. It does not matter if the victim is actually a threat. As long as the officer merely perceives him or her as a threat, the officer may use as much force as they deem necessary. Over the past year as we have talked more about police brutality and racial bias, much of the discussion of solutions has centered on body scanners, citizen review boards, and more training for law enforcement officers. All of these things are great. In practice they should reduce the number of deaths at the hands of the police, which is ultimately the goal. However, in the event of a police officer using questionable force, he or she will still most likely walk away innocent in the eyes of the law.

I was looking at old Facebook posts from a year ago trying to find an article for this post, and I said then that Castile's killer would probably go free. In order to convict an officer of homicide, the prosecution would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he or she knew the victim was not a threat. Because Castile informed Yanez he had a license to carry, and Yanez did originally instruct to pull out his license words like "murder" and "cold blood" have been thrown around. However, Yanez told Castile to stop moving once he became aware of the weapon. It's easy to see that Yanez overreacted and escalated a situation that should have ended much differently. However, in the court of law, all Yanez had to say was that someone who was armed, and pulled over for the investigation of a bank robbery, disobeyed a direct order, so he therefore perceived Castile as a threat. This argument would have been the same if Castile was white.

While Castile's race did not play a role in the verdict, Yanez may have acted differently if Castile were white. Racial bias in our country and law enforcement specifically is well documented. Researchers have shown that black men are seen as larger and more threatening than equally sized white men. Another study has shown that black boys are viewed as older and less innocent than white boys. In simulations, police officers are more likely and quicker to shoot black targets. If an officer must simply feel threatened to legally justify the use of force, and he views black people as more threatening, it follows that officers would shoot black people more often. Our law enforcement officers shoot and kill far more civilians than in other industrialized countries, and racial bias causes them to disproportionately shoot black people.

The Fifth Amendment states that nobody should be deprived of life, liberty or their property by the state without due process. After the killing of Tamir Rice, which looked more like a Grand Theft Auto mission than how police should interact with a child, I read an article with a very interesting take on due process. I can't remember where I read it to provide a link. But, the author argued that due process is not just a list of laws and procedures that must be followed in the courtroom, that it means that the government may not follow just any arbitrary process. In his Second Treatise, John Locke writes that people join together to form a civil society in part because they want "an established, settled, known law." If someone were to rob my apartment, I cannot say with any acceptable degree of certainty that the police would respond in the same way if they arrived on the scene to see me or my white roommate. This level of uncertainty, and the extent to which black people are disproportionately shot and killed by the police, should be seen as a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Whenever one of these high profile shootings take place, apologists argue that police officers have to make snap decisions in stressful situations, as if anyone disagrees. That law enforcement officers make difficult choices does not absolve them from the consequences of those choices. Quarterbacks also make quick decisions under stress, yet Monday morning we still criticize them for throwing a pick six instead of taking a sack. Obviously, the decisions of law enforcement officer are much more consequential, and because their decisions are quite literally sometimes between life and death, they should be held to the highest of standards, not the lowest.

As I stated earlier, much of the discussion of police reform centers on reducing the number of police shootings. However, convicting police officers for their use of force is a separate matter. If you scroll through the comments section of an article about one of these police shootings of an unarmed or innocent person - past the apologists, racists, Nazi accusations, etc. - you will find someone from the military say something to the effect of "I would have been court martialed if I fired my weapon in that situation." I have asked friends who have served, if this guy or that guy was an insurgent in Iraq, could you have shot him? Their answer is always unequivocally, "No." I think black people in the United States ought to be treated by our law enforcement officers with at least as much respect as our military gives terrorists.

Our military has very strict rules of engagement in order to minimize civilian and illegitimate casualties. Every soldier carries an "escalation of force" card that determines when and to what extent they may use force. If they violate these rules can be punished in military court. While law enforcement agencies across the country do have their own procedures for when their officers may use force, these procedures are not law. For example, the NYPD prohibits its officers from choking suspects, however their officers continue to put suspects in choke holds, and the officer who choked Eric Garner to death walked out of court free.

In order to ensure all people are given due process when dealing with the police, and are not arbitrarily killed, we should have legally mandated rules of engagement for law enforcement officers. While police reform is largely a state and local matter, I do believe the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments grant the federal government the power to set these standards at the national level. I'm not an expert in law enforcement so I don't know what exactly these rules would be, but de-escalating situations and preserving life should be the chief goal of these rules. This would mean officers would not approach drivers with their guns drawn like with Philando Castile. This would mean officers would not choke suspects like with Eric Garner. This would mean officers would not drag women out of their cars for not putting out their cigarette like with Sandra Bland. This would mean officers would not shoot a man pinned to the ground like with Alton Sterling. This would mean law enforcement officers would treat all civilians with the dignity and respect they deserve.

I said in a post before that I judge people by their ability to use logic. I cringe whenever someone responds to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter." It's not that I disagree with the sentiment; but rather, the phrase has quickly turned into a thought-terminating cliche. The statement "black lives matter" says nothing about whether or not all lives matter, but there is nothing about affirming black dignity that suggests denying it to others, as if it were some zero-sum game. In their Guiding Principles, the #BlackLivesMatter posits. "To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others."

The phrase "blue lives matter" also irks me, again not because I devalue the lives of the men and women who serve in law enforcement. The Supreme Court gives law enforcement officers such freedom to determine their use of force because their lives are valued. Whenever a police officer is shot a manhunt ensues and the perpetrator will likely never see a courtroom because we recognize blue lives matter. Sheriff Grady Judd of my neighboring Polk County is famous for saying his officers fired 110 bullets at a cop killer because they ran out of bullets. Currently in Florida, a District Attorney is facing criticism because she refuses to seek out the death penalty for a cop killer. It is so clearly obvious that our country values blue lives that the phrase is unnecessary to say.

It is the thin blue line that "separates us from anarchy." The men and women who risk their lives to protect and serve deserve the utmost respect. However, when they can arbitrarily kill civilians with impunity, the blue line has thickened into tyranny and suffocating black people as they yearn for justice.