Louisville Police Have Killed Another Black Man

Responses from the Community Indicate Very Different Points of View

by Theresa Fritz Camoriano

Louisville Police shot and killed a man last week as he was using his vehicle to crush a policeman.  The incident occurred as police were trying to find a suspect who had assaulted a police officer a few days earlier.  The man who was killed was driving the suspect’s car but was not the person police had been looking for.  News reports and talk radio call-in shows indicate that views of the incident differ widely.  Some see this as part of a concerted effort to attack and victimize blacks and say that the police should not have been trying to stop this man in the first place.  Others say that the man who was killed had his fate in his own hands.  All he had to do was cooperate with the police, who were just doing their jobs, and he would be fine.  How can people living in the same community read and hear the same news reports and come away with such different impressions?

While we can blame some of the “black as a victim” mentality on race baiters like the Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Louis Coleman, who see everything as proof of prejudice and hatred towards black people, we must also recognize that there must be some difference in experience between people in the West End and people in other parts of Louisville that causes them to see the same news reports so differently.  Could it be that people in the West End of Louisville have been living in a war zone and have found themselves and their community to be caught in the crossfire in the war on drugs, in which many of their friends and neighbors are hurt, and in which the police appear to be the enemy, rather than the protectors of the peace?

The war on drugs has had the same effect as alcohol prohibition, with gangsters using violence to protect their turf, with innocent bystanders being killed in gang-related drive-by shootings, and with police invading private property, looking for contraband materials.  The police seem to be unable to stop the violence, but they do regularly invade people’s homes and send people to prison for the crime of engaging in mutually agreeable trade.  No wonder people in the West End feel abused by the police!

When the law says that it is a crime for two people to engage in mutually agreeable trade, where there is no victim to come forward and ask for the help of the police, then police must become invaders in order to enforce the law.  Because there is no victim to come forward and cooperate with police, the police must engage in no-knock raids of homes, in telephone taps, and in other forms of snooping and invasion of people’s privacy in order to enforce the law.  Because there are no victims to come forward and cooperate with the police, the police also take extreme measures, such as confiscating entire properties, including homes, vehicles, and farms, simply based on an accusation that they were used in illegal trade in an attempt to enforce the law.  And the better job the police do of enforcing these victimless crime laws, the more they drive up the price of the illegal products, and the more the drug traders engage in violent behavior to protect their profitable businesses.  So the innocent people in the community are harmed both by the drug traders, who engage in the violence to protect their turf, and by the police, who invade homes and confiscate property as part of the war.

It should come as no surprise that people whose community has become a war zone are not particularly fond of the soldiers conducting the war, even when the soldiers are very well-intentioned and are doing their very best to uphold the letter and the spirit of the law.  We cannot realistically expect to see an end to the anger, pain, and suspicion until this war is over. 

Perhaps it is time for peace.  Put the drugs into the drug stores, allow consenting adults to engage in mutually agreeable trade, and leave innocent people at peace in their homes and communities.  If adults choose to harm their own bodies by taking drugs, it is a shame, but they should have the right to harm themselves if they so choose.  We should not be willing to turn entire communities into war zones just to try to protect people from themselves.