The New Majority: houston's minority news reader

HAS ANYONE EVER HEARD OF A MINORITY COP BEATING UP A WHITE CITIZEN? Inquiry minds want to know

By Paul Fitzgerald Bennett

Imagine that the first few verses of this editorial are a rendition of "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" sang by Burl Ives. Come on! You've all seen the famous claymation! Sing it with me now: "You've heard of White cops accused of kicking a minority's behind, And minority cops doing the same thing from time to time, But do you ever recall…a minority cop busting a White citizen in the jaw?" Okay that's enough of Rudolf.
The answer for me is no.

Surprisingly, I almost received an answer in the affirmative from a most unlikely source; Minister Deric C. Muhammad of The Nation of Islam, Mosque 45 in Houston.

"I think I've heard of a case in the Black community where a White person was being abused by a…," suddenly Mr. Muhammad pauses. "Wait a minute that officer was White also. You're right I've never heard of a case like that either."

So last month, I attempted to get information from the Houston Police Department concerning the number of times White citizens have charged minority cops with abuse and/or misconduct in interactions with one another. I asked to have the numbers broken down according to racial identity. In other words, I wanted to know how many minority citizens had accused White cops of abuse/misconduct. I wanted to know how many White citizens had accused White cops of abuse/misconduct.

You get the point.
I was told by the department's media and public information department that such information is internal and not given out to the public. (Note: Within the past two weeks, I've made a similar request but changed up my language a little bit. I'll pass on the results of this request when I get them.) Now, it's quite possible that I'm just putting water on a non-existent fire. I tend to do that from time to time. But earlier this year when I brought up this question to a former high ranking Houston police official, she/he told me they'd never heard of such an incident either.

"You know why that is don't you?" he/she said (I won't reveal the identity because we were not speaking on or off the record).
"Why?" I asked.
"It's because minorities have been conditioned not to mess with White people," she/he said.

Now when I heard this statement, it struck me as odd. Not because there weren't some elements of truth. I have a 90 plus year old grandfather who still refers to White 20 something year olds as "Mr. and Ms." while they call him Fred. But to hear a former high ranking police official say this known fact included minority men and women in blue as well definitely grabbed my attention.

Back in the day whenever a minority cop caught a white citizen doing something wrong, they had to wait for a white cop to come upon the scene before an arrest could be made (We all know that same rule did not apply to White cops in their handling of minority citizens. I bet the family of Pedro Gonzales wishes a couple of Latino cops were called to assist in the arrest of Mr. Gonzales. Maybe he'd still be alive today. But that's another story. You can read about it on page one).

So I asked myself, "Is it simply the case that the majority of White cops are uncompromising racist, who would be "outed" members of the KKK if this were 1907 instead of 2007? Read what Mr. Muhammad has to say in the next two sentences.

"We have Black officers that tell us that you have young White officers from rural areas that come in and make request to come into the ghettos of inner cities like Houston. And this is where they actually act out their racist hatred and bigotry right in our community," he said.

About two months ago, I probably would have totally agreed with Mr. Muhammad (Now I just agree about 70 percent). And then something happened in June which has given me a new perspective on the matter.

On a Tuesday afternoon, I'd just parked my car at our office location. As I walked in the building, I noticed about 4 or 5 New Majority African American teens playing in the building. I thought nothing of it. Hell! Our kids should be able to act like fools just like foolish Old Majority White teens.

About two hours later I made my way back to my car. It was at that time, I noticed someone had written unkind words on my car.

Immediately, I thought about the New Majority African American teens I'd seen earlier. Right or wrong, here's what would have happened if I would have seen them again. I would have confronted them. And if their words were not satisfactory, my friends you would have seen my police mug shot on the 10pm news on one of the local television stations. You would have seen the parents of these kids talking about what wonderful kids they USED to have.

Immediately after this incident, there was not a profane word in existence that I did not use to display my distaste for the transpired event.

And then I thought about the cops.

Every single day, they are often times confronted with the ugliest of situations. Unfortunately, the communities which are the ugliest are discovered in places of extreme poverty. And who are the people in these neighborhoods?

New Majority persons are.

Add in the fact that these communities are often times the only ones being looked at when it comes to crime and you have a distorted view of who's bad. But, we've already done that editorial.

I then recalled another incident I had as a college student at Howard University in Washington D.C. It was a Fall Friday in 1988, and anyone who's gone to Howard will tell you that "there is definitely no party like an H.U. party" (For you folks who use this phrase today, we were using it at H.U. way back in 1988).

All day, I'd had a little to drink (alcohol). I'd had a little to smoke (marijuana). And as I made my way to another gathering of friends about 2am Saturday morning, my main man Chuck Brown was blaring away to the drum beats of Washington "Go-Go" music in the tape deck of my car.

Sure, I knew that I was swerving all over the street, but hey Chuck was saying "Day light come" and baby "I didn't want to go home."

Soon I thought I was on my way to jail, when a White D.C. cop signaled me to pull over. "Damn, this weed is still strong!" I said as I quickly rolled down the windows to let the smell out before his arrival. And spilling the opened bottle of Cisco (liquid crack) on my pants and in my car didn't help matters.

When the officer walked up to my car, two things came to my "then" deviant mind; should I speed off? Or should I stay and go to jail? Suddenly a voice from "Drug Heaven" said, "Stay, and tell him the truth."

"Officer, I'm drunk. And I've been smoking marijuana. I'm wrong. I'm sorry."

Officer "Friendly" looked at me. He then spied the spilled Cisco.

"How far do you have to go son?" he asked.

"I have a friend who lives just three blocks away."

"Are you going back out tonight?"

"No sir!"

"I'll follow you in to your friend. And please don't do this again."

"No sir, I promise I want."

"MADD" mothers, that's one promise I've kept.

What that incident taught me was that even if you're in an obvious position of wrong, if you're nice to people, no matter their color, you may be able to wiggle yourself out of an otherwise "un-wiggleable" situation. Hell! Some of the biggest jerk offs I've ever came across were minority cops who continued to be jerk offs no matter how polite I was to them.

Then again that still doesn't answer my original question. Have any of you ever heard of a single case of a minority cop beating up a White citizen?

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