MILITARY STYLE RAIDS & “NO KNOCK” WARRANT CONTRIBUTED TO A DETROIT POLICEMAN KILLING 7 YEAR-OLD AIYANA JONES.  WHAT HAPPENED TO CONFLICT RESOLUTION?  WHY SHOULD BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE TRUST THE POLICE Copyright © MAY 17, 2010
 
BY Christopher C. Cooper
 
Is it every parent’s nightmare that the police will throw a grenade through the living window striking their 7 year-old and then fire a bullet into the child’s forehead? Or is it, ONLY, some parents’ nightmare?  I am willing to bet that there are communities in America in which the police would never throw a grenade into a home in which the officers have been told ad nauseum that there are children inside. You (the reader) know based on your skin complexion and socio economic class, whether or not your seven-year old needs to, and or will have nightmares TONIGHT after he\she hears about dead Aiyana Jones.
 
            Why did a Detroit Policeman have access to a grenade? Seven year–old Aiyana’s last moments on this planet involved the pain of having been hit with a grenade thrown by a Detroit policeman &  then a gunshot to her forehead fired by a Detroit Policeman on May 16, 2010.  This was no accidental discharge, but a police officer who intended to kill Aiyana Jones---he thought she was an adult.  Any experienced policeman or combat trained infantryman knows that the fatal shot should have never been fired. 
            Aiyana’s grisly death calls attention to rampant use in recent years [in the United States] of military style raids by the police compounded with their execution of “No Knock” warrants. The latter represents that men over-dressed in military attire come crashing through your home without telling you that they are the police. On September 29, 1999, a Denver SWAT team executed a No-knock warrant in the wrong house.  They ended-up in the home of Ismael Mena, a father of seven small children.  Mena, believing his home was about to be robbed and family harmed, confronted the officers with a licensed gun. The officers fired eight shots killing Mena. Mena's family says police never announced themselves, and fired at the man shortly after entry. In 2000, a special prosecutor's investigation into the Mena shooting held that there had not been wrongdoing on the part of the police officers.
            It is immoral and unacceptable that police leaders, members of Congress, other legislators and the U.S. Department of Justice say nothing about this increasingly occurring phenomenon of children and the elderly killed by police unnecessarily pursuant to No Knock warrants accompanied by police [improperly] dressed as soldiers carrying military armament that most don’t even know how to use. [1]
            The shooting of a 7 year-old child this past Sunday by a Detroit Police officer is the direct result of two phenomena in particular:  (1) A DISTRURBING TREND OF MILITIRIZATION OF POLICE AGENCIES (said another way:  efforts by some police departments in America to militarize their day-to-day operations; and (2) a lack of interpersonal conflict resolution held by police officers.  One other thing, before Aiyana was shot in the forehead at point blank range yesterday (May 16, 2010), she was struck by the grenade thrown threw the front living room window by a Detroit policeman.
             My 7 year-old son has taken keen interest in my tenure as a DC policeman but even more of interest in my tenure as a United States Marine assigned to 2nd Marines Division Infantry and 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion.  Therefore, I was not surprised when he learned of Aiyana’s death, he asked me why the police who went to Aiyana’s house had a grenade—not why a police officer threw a grenade into little Aiyana’s home.  My son has it right:  Why did “ANY” Detroit Police officer have access to a grenade?  That is the compelling question. (Most police officers in America have never served in the military and lack the experience or training to even handle a grenade.) We know the answer and it is most disturbing. A trend by some mayors and police administrators making their police departments more like military units.  Aiyana is not the first person to die in police grenade events.  Many remember the Philadelphia Police combat like operation that killed 5 children when the police dropped a bomb on a home.  However, many Americans are oblivious to how militaristic police have become in some geographic areas in the United States in the past 5 years. 
            Many innocent people routinely die in military style raids conducted primarily in communities of color. The elderly have died, by example Alberta Spruill in New York City.  She had a massive heart attack when an officer threw a grenade into her apartment---and it turned out to be the wrong address. Then there was 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson killed by several Atlanta police officers in 2007.  If little Aiyana Jones was not 7 but 17, I would not have written this article because I would not have learned of her death nor would you know about it.  The police narrative would say: Just another person allegedly fighting with the police who had to be killed for officer safety reasons.  We know about little Aiyana because she was 7. You (the reader) know based on your skin complexion and socio economic class, whether or not your seven-year old needs to, and or will  have nightmares TONIGHT after he\she hears about dead Aiyana Jones.
            The militarization of American police agencies is machismo run amok accompanied by young men and women who take up police careers in cities in which they have the foggiest idea about the lives led by the people they are tasked with policing.  It is no secret that some police officers fear the people they are paid to protect. I assert that the fear could be eroded if there were more interest by the those officers in positive interaction with members of communities of color.  Witnesses to Aiyana’s death warned the Detroit police officers involved (before the officers executed the raid) that there were children in the home. Yet, because of the obstacle-ridden relationship between police and citizens in that community, the officers involved ignored the warnings.  Researchers at the University of Toronto have documented that the based on one’s socialization, the brain responds to racial differences.  Aiyana Jones was likely not perceived as human, rather as a criminal---this explains the failure of the officers to consider negotiation as a way to encourage the alleged wanted man they said was in home.  In Jacksonville Florida, on March 26, 2010, five officers knew that two year-old Daniel Crichton was in a car with an alleged bank robber, yet the officers fired and shot the baby anyway.  What happened to the police officer with the gift of gab---the street corner politician with the highest degree of interpersonal conflict resolution skills?
            The shootings of children will not stop until the Department of Justice and Congress step up to the plate and reign on police departments who prey on people’s fears by suggesting that communities of color need to be policed with grenades, machine guns and armored vehicles.  
Here is the reality: communities of color need police officers that they can trust.  Police officers whose toolbox includes knowing how to talk with people—how to negotiate with people and how to de-escalate interpersonal conflict.  Police officers who set the example.  Not the officer who  discards his trash from the police car or talks on his cell phone in public view although the law bans such behavior. I recall a horrific evening -–I was on a temporary detail in Washington D.C.’s 3rd Police District  when a young black boy, perhaps 15 was kicked so hard in the face by my partner that the boy’s blood drenched by uniform shirt and splattered onto my face.  The boy had not broken any laws.  He was arrested anyway and charged with the catchall, Disorderly Conduct.  My partner who repeatedly cursed and abused Latino people would later (in the past 7 years) become an official in the Office of Professional Standards for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. 
An irate station sergeant cursed me for reporting the incident.  The boy was loosing blood fast and was soon virtually unconscious. The station sergeant shouting that the “motherF_ _ _er” [expletive] had better not die in his cellblock area.  I carried the boy from the cellblock to the lobby of the police district and gave the waiting mother her bloodied son and $5.00 to rush him to Howard University Hospital.   I ask you (the reader), why should that boy who today would be a grown man,  have “any” trust in “any” police officer?  Why should he tell his children to trust the police?
            Yesterday, Detroit’s Mayor, Dave Bing, could have used Aiyana’s death to suspend all military style and No Knock warrants raids (essentially ordering his police department to cease military operations in civilian communities); rather the Mayor was quoted as saying that the city's residents need to pull together and "do something" to curb violent crime in the city in the wake of the Sunday morning shooting death of 7-year-old girl Aiyana.  Mr. Mayor, I say to you:  Don’t blame the community.  Blame your police chief who authorized a military style raid and No Knock Warrant. Blame the commander on the scene who authorized the  a grenade to be thrown in home in which he\she knew there were children.
Rather than defining the shooting death of Aiyana Jones as intentional, Mayor Bing along, with his police chief have engaged in a frivolous and disingenuous campaign---that of describing Aiyana’s death not as a police shooting but rather as a question of “how” a weapon discharged.   This effort to remove the reckless police officer from the equation furthers black community distrust of the police.
            In July 2008, it is fair to say that Americans and people throughout the world were horrified to learn of the violent and militaristic actions of the Prince George's County, Maryland Sheriff's Office/ Police Department, in Berwyn Heights, a village in Maryland. It was there that the residence/home of the mayor of the Village, Cheye Calvo, was raided, by police dressed in full military attire, carrying M16 assault rifles.  Crashing through the home’s front door with what appears to have been a battering ram, the officers bound the mayor and his mother-in-law for more than two hours. While in the home, an officer shot and killed the family pets (2 dogs) and forced the mayor and mother in-law to lie face down next to the bleeding pet carcasses while the officers ransacked the family home.
            The officers, in their police report, described the dogs as vicious and threatening; although, the evidence is to the contrary---the dogs having run away from the military wannabes.  Within weeks, a convoluted recant by the police department occurred.  The police chief, Melvin High, publicly cleared the Calvo family of any wrongdoing.
            The distraught Mr. Calvo stated: "The deputies opened fire and executed our dogs the very second they broke down our front door… We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."
            The Berwyn Heights raid was horrific by American standards. A white, upper-middle class family.  The patriarch, the mayor of the village.  Two pets murdered.  The police having blundered.  Aiyana Jones was a person—a human being—yet the death of two dogs pursuant to a No Knock military style raid received more media attention in the first twenty fours than Aiyana’ death. I hope that  Aiyana’s death causes the media (NPR, CNN etc.) and politicians to talk about what missing from the police officers toolbox of skills and machismo rum amok in the form of police agencies being transformed into military outfits. Copyright © MAY 17, 2010
 
            Writer:  National Black Police Association member and spokesperson.  Dr. Christopher C. Cooper (PhD), Former United States Marine (& Iraq War veteran) and Washington D.C. Policeman; Now Civil Rights attorney in Chicago.  
E-mail:  cooperlaw3234@gmail.com
 

[1] MILITARY WANNABES, OFFICER FRIENDLY EVOLVES TO OFFICER KILL & DESTROY:
MILITARIZATION OF POLICE THREATENS POSSE COMITATUS by PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER C. COOPER, http://www.sulross.edu/policeforum/docs/archives/Volume_19_Number_2...
Police Forum, Volume 19, No. 2