The public execution of No. 558
We should all be appalled at the police killing of a restrained black man in Baton Rouge, Alton Sterling. But we should be equally appalled that America has done nothing to reduce its worst-in-the-world rate of police killings.
No. 558 never had a chance.
The next moment, No. 558 wasn't treated like a human being, or a number...or even a beast of burden on some dusty bayou farm. Two white police officers were slamming his black body against the trunk of a car and then down hard on the asphalt. Then, shockingly, as a bystander continued to film with his smartphone, the shout came: "He's got a gun!"
No. 558 had a 15-year-old son named Cameron, who wailed uncontrollably as his mother spoke on national TV. He had a partner named Quinyetta McMillon who described Sterling's life struggling to get by as a cook and as Baton Rouge "CD Man," and who told the cameras: "As a mother, I am forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father. That, I can't take away from him."
Most importantly, No. 558 had a name, Alton Sterling.
America is terrible at making radical change, but pretty darn good at reactionary change. The most forceful response by lawmakers since the summer of 2014 has been not to tackle police killings so much as to find ways to reduce the influence of Black Lives Matter calling attention to the killings. In Louisiana, just a month before Sterling was gunned down, a new Democratic governor signed a "Blue Lives Matter" who makes it the first state in the nation to make killing a police officer a "hate crime."
Look, we've been through this drill a lot now, and there are certain things we can all stipulate. The majority of police officers are good public servants doing a hard-as-hell job under difficult conditions. Those conditions include an epidemic of gun murders in struggling neighborhoods like the one where Alton Sterling died, the poorest zip code in Baton Rouge. Here in Philadelphia, the 300 or so folks who attended a vigil this week for 16-year-old murder victim Asir Brown are a testament to that ongoing tragedy.