Teach a Child to Fear

Last Saturday, as the people of Ferguson waited for the grand jury verdict on the shooting of Michael Brown, 500 miles away, in Cleveland, Ohio, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and fatally wounded by two police officers who had been called after reports of a child playing with a gun in a playground.  The gun in question was in fact a replica ‘airsoft’ pistol.  Officers reportedly asked Tamir to put his hands up – he reached for the gun.  They fired.  He was twelve years old.

I work with 12-year-olds.  Most of them are idiots at least once a day.  Many of them are idiots for large portions of the day.  That’s ok.  They’re supposed to be idiots.  They’re kids – they’re not done yet.  I know 12-year-olds who like to break the rules and challenge authority.  I know 12-year-olds who’d think it was a bit of a laugh to wave a replica gun around and ignore a request from a police officer.  They don’t half wind me up sometimes.  But I am still happy to see them walk into the classroom every morning.  Because they sometimes ask for help with a maths problem; because sometimes they’ll reach out to help another student; because sometimes the only kind words they’ll ever hear are from teachers; and because they are so full of potential to grow out of being idiots.

Footage released today shows police officers pulling up right beside Tamir and shooting him within two seconds of arriving at the scene. It’s been reported that the officers shouted warnings as they drove into the empty park, but it appears that no attempt was made to negotiate with Tamir once they arrived.  His hand seems to go to the gun in his waistband as the police car pulls up.  I know 12-year-olds who, when in high stress situations (and one would imagine being faced by armed police officers is just a little more stressful than being asked to demonstrate something in front of the rest of the class) would not understand a simple instruction to put their hands up.  The police officers who shot Tamir Rice, we are told, however, had to make a ‘split second decision’.  What kind of world do we live in where split second decisions lead to shooting dead a child?

The unavoidable debate here is one about race.  Because Tamir Rice was black, and the officers who shot him were white.  Around 53% of Cleveland’s population is black, but blacks make up only 27% of its police force.  Over 50 years after Martin Luther King and his followers marched to Washington and with its first black President in office, the USA remains a racially divided nation, and in no area more so than the criminal justice system.  The statistics are quotable and undeniable.  Racial profiling is still rife, with blacks being twice as likely to be stopped by police in many cities in the US.  African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the USA’s 2.3 million prison population and are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.  If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.  There are almost as many black men in prison than in college.  In 2010, African Americans comprised 13% of the population but accounted for 55% of gun homicides.  Homicide is the leading cause of death amongst African-American males aged 15-24, who are 10 times more likely to die of murder than whites of the same age group.

Although disputes over racial imbalance in the justice system remain politically explosive, fuelled further by shootings such as those of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, the bigger issue here is a country where officers policing the streets shoot first and ask questions later.  Guns are glorified in the US - the right to own and use them is sanctified in the constitution and politicians and a powerful gun lobby fight passionately against laws to control them.  This is a country where over 8000 people a year are killed by guns. Its gun crime rate is comparable with some of the most corrupt and dangerous regimes in the world, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Columbia.  It’s a country where kids want to play with toy guns because they see grown-ups playing with real ones.  And it’s a country where a 12-year-old child playing in a snowy park is presumed to be a dangerous criminal, unable to be reasoned with.  How many more children have to be shot and denied the chance to ever be a wonderful idiot again before America changes the way it thinks about guns?