Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
Those fighting for racial justice have long advocated for a police force that mirrors the communities that they purport to serve. Sadly, getting more Black & Brown cops may not have the effect we’d hope for. Anecdotal and empirical evidence show that Black & Brown folks can and should take no comfort when seeing melanin clothed in blue. In fact, in my own personal experience, Black cops I’ve encountered here in Connecticut tend to be more aggressive than their white counterparts.
A recent controversial study found that “black police were more likely to kill black civilians than white civilians.” While the study drew well-deserved criticism for both its methodologies and conclusions, the raw data did support the fact that Black cops were just as eager to kill Black people as their white comrades. Of course, there’s no great mystery as to why that is the case. We’ve all been socialized to devalue Black lives.
Given the history of policing in this country, it was with some excitement that I read of the appointment of Michael Cox as the new Police Commissioner for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The new commissioner has a very interesting history, one that gives me confidence that he just may be the right man for the job.
Cox suffered through an attack by fellow officers who mistook him for a murder suspect in 1995, the new commissioner noted that he remained on the force because he believes in the mission of policing. Cox brought a civil lawsuit against the department, but eventually settled.
None of his colleagues faced criminal charges over the incident of what he describes as “unconstitutional policing.”
“The reality is, I was a victim of that, but that's not who I am," he told reporters Wednesday.
“I spent 24 years in the Boston Police Department after that incident, and in that time, I've gone to school multiple times and, got multiple degrees, focused a lot of concern and effort around making the police department better so we can serve the public in ways that are make us more effective and efficient.”
Yes, back in 1995, Officer Michael A. Cox was in the act of apprehending a murder suspect when members of Boston Finest “mistook” him for the criminal and beat the living daylights outta him leaving him unconscious. It would take him 6 long months to recover from the beating. He knows firsthand what his police departments are capable of. What gives me hope is that despite the unified front against him — the intimidation, harassment, lies, and coverup — he kept on fighting for justice. He fought in state and federal courts and while he fought, he was going to school even as he continued to serve in the force. Let’s put some respect on his name.
I’m under no illusion that there’ll be revolutionary/transformational changes in the standard operating procedures of rank and file police officers in Boston. The system is too corrupted for that...and the bad, rotten apples are solidly entrenched. For example, some of the same folks who savagely attacked Commissioner Cox some 30-odd years ago, along with those who conspired to cover up the attempted murder, are still on the payroll.
In his own words:
Cox said his vision and values for the city are in line with the mayor’s.
“When we talk about things like diversity, equity and inclusion that is very important for the police department. The police department needs to look like the communities in which we serve,” Cox said.
(snip)
“The reality is I was a victim of that, but that is not who I am. I took on public service because I wanted to help the public. I wanted to give back to the communities of which I lived,” Cox said. “After this incident happened, I had a choice — either quit, leave or stay, and I chose to stay because I believe in policing in a community-friendly way, and I know the men and women that I work with believe in that, too.”
No, I do not believe that we are on the way to a sophisticated, empathetic, 21st-century police force in Boston. But from his history, I don’t think the culture and the gatekeepers of the corrupt system will be gobbling him up and spitting him out as they are wont to do. We will get some incremental changes. Michael A. Cox is made of stern stuff and he will be doing some good for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I think he’s the right man for the job.
I’m hopeful.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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To understand how the United States of America became a country without the constitutional right to abortion, look to the history of Black women’s long fight for reproductive autonomy.
The reproductive coercion of Black women is a thread running through American history, one that predated and presaged the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade. Enslaved Black women were forced into pregnancy to help build America’s budding economy. Pregnant Black moms are criminalized or excluded from abortion on the basis of poverty. The state takes away Black children from Black mothers at a disproportionate rate.
Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts chronicled this history in her seminal book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts defines reproductive justice as the human right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to parent your child in a supportive, humane, and just society. Her latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.
For Roberts, reproductive rights and the fight for abortion access shouldn’t just be about the existence of a choice, but about the right to live in a society that allows for the freedom to make it. “Just having a legal choice that you don’t have the means to effectuate is not true freedom,” Roberts told me.
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Squid Game’s historic 14 nominations went a long way toward buoying the diversity numbers for the 2022 Emmy acting nominees.
Nearly 20 percent (five: lead actor Lee Jung-jae, supporting actors Park Hae-soo and Oh Young-soo, supporting actress Jung Ho-yeon and guest actress Lee You-mi) of this year’s nominated actors of color (26) hail from the Netflix drama, which also makes the 74th Emmys its most Korean ever. (Sandra Oh, who is Korean-Canadian, landed her 13th career Emmy nod, for drama lead actress in Killing Eve.)
Overall, half of the nonwhite nominees came from three casts: Squid Game and comedies Abbott Elementary (lead actress Quinta Brunson, supporting actresses Janelle James and Sheryl Lee Ralph and supporting actor Tyler James Williams) and Ted Lasso (supporting actors Toheeb Jimoh and Nick Mohammed, supporting actress Sarah Niles and guest actor Sam Richardson). Brunson’s additional nominations for best comedy series and writing make her the first Black woman to receive three Emmy nods for the same comedy series in a single year, according to the Warner Bros. Television Group.
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Back in 1995, a group of Boston cops jumped a Black man dressed in street clothes in an alley in the city’s Mattapan neighborhood, a diverse corner of the city that was rife with gang violence back then, and beat him until he passed out.
The guy on the receiving end, Michael Cox, was one of their own, a cop born and raised in Boston who had cornered a murder suspect in the alley. The mollywhopping he took from his brothers in blue actually allowed the suspect to get away. Cox ended up suing the Boston Police Department for civil rights violations in the incident, which his superiors tried to cover up and the police union that he was a member of worked to protect the cops who beat him.
Today, Cox was named Boston’s police commissioner, taking the helm of the same department that did him dirty 27 years ago. He will be Boston’s third Black commissioner in history.
The second one, Dennis White, was just appointed in early 2021 but was canned by then-Mayor Kim Janey—Boston’s first Black and first woman mayor—a few days later over domestic violence accusations that he had never answered for. White had replaced William Gross, Boston’s first Black police commissioner, who served from 2018 until he retired in January of last year.
If you’re still following, it gets better. Cox was appointed by Mayor Michelle Wu, the city’s second nonwhite woman to hold that job. Wu was under pressure from inside the department and from Boston residents to find a new commissioner that the locals trusted, especially after Boston Police were caught flat-footed over the Independence Day weekend when about 100 masked white supremacists assaulted a Black man while marching through the city’s downtown. (I told y’all after that happened just how a bad look that was for a city that’s been trying for two decades to convince itself, and everybody else, that it’s not actually racist).
One last detail that’s just the icing on the cake. The man Cox was chasing back in 1995 before he got beat up by his coworkers? He was eventually arrested, tried for and acquitted of murder. But that’s not the best part: he took the stand on Cox’s behalf in the federal civil rights lawsuit that Cox filed.
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People from several groups joined the Las Vegas chapter of the National Action Network to protest near a popular Henderson mall Monday over a railroad display that had been in the mall.
The train display, done by the Las Vegas Garden Railway Society, was up at the Galleria at Sunset Mall from May 30 until July 5 when it was taken down following complaints of racism.
According to a news release from the National Action Network, “community members are outraged that a racist train display showing a Black man being prepared to be hung was tolerated and allowed at the mall for hundreds of children, families & community members to see.”
“I received this as a text from my mother and I was like, is this real? And she said yes,” said Tamika Shauntee, with the ACLU.
“I’m saddened to be here again on things we thought were over with lynching displays, Confederate flags, things that remind you of the past days of slavery,” said Bishop Bill H. McDonnell.
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