A History of Violence
By: Arnav Patel
Cases of police abuse and racism are not new in the United States. They have been around for the past few centuries since the inception of police forces. Today, we know such examples of police killings as the cases of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. While these are important stories with tragic outcomes, it does not mean that police brutality solely ends in the death of victims. A whole slew of individuals are targets of police cruelty, and oftentimes, these people suffer in other painful ways. The following are two lesser-known stories of police brutality that extend through a few generations.
Ike McKinnon is a Black former police chief from Detroit. Before and while in the police force, he was abused several times by other police officers near his area. His general distrust in the police manifested at a young age. In an article for the Detroit Free Press, McKinnon wrote, “When I was 14, four Detroit officers … beat me mercilessly when I was on my way home from school.” This man was put through a grueling experience of hate and misdemeanor as a mere teenager, yet this was only the start of his troubles. Later, while serving alongside white police officers in the Detroit Police Department, his life was jeopardized in another intense moment of unnecessary violence. In the summer of 1967, a police raid on an illegal bar/drinking club sparked numerous riots throughout Detroit and in other major cities. According to McKinnon’s Detroit Free Press article, during that time of high tension, several white police officers shot at him while he was still in uniform. Even as an officer of the law, other white officers did not offer him the respect that was missing in his childhood. Even though he has long since retired from working, he still finds great importance in helping mend the modern police force by offering his ideas.
The next story is a grueling tale of a teenager and their siblings as they were all wrongfully accused of several crimes. In an anonymously written article, the teenager, now a neuroscience student at University of California San Francisco, described how they had just graduated high school and were hosting a barbecue with their two brothers. As the barbecue started, a police officer approached one of the brothers and immediately started assaulting him. Being protective of his siblings, the oldest brother stepped in to stop the officer, but that escalated the situation by tenfold. The UCSF student, being completely terrified at the time, recalled, “An officer approached me. I immediately put my hands up. Even though I did not resist, he threw me on the ground, handcuffed me, and pinned me to the ground.” After this, many more police officers arrived at the scene until all three siblings were restrained with force. From there, they were taken to the police station, where they were kept for the remainder of the weekend. This story doesn’t end there, though. In the aftermath, the family was taken to court, where their fears only escalated.
While jailed, it was revealed to the siblings that they were being charged with multiple criminal felonies. They were being falsely accused of assaulting their cousins who had also been assaulted by police officers on the same day, and they faced decades in jail. This whole debacle continued in the presence of a judge and a jury. While in the trial, the siblings felt an overwhelming sense of pressure from the guilt everyone was casting on them. Throughout the whole process, they fought for the survival of their daily lives. As time passed, more cracks became apparent in the stories of the police. When reporting the arrest, the officers had omitted the details of using excessive force or harsh language, which rendered their whole side of the story false. The judge and jury realized who was clearly in the wrong and the siblings were declared innocent. The story’s narration from the arrested person’s perspective is a truly heart-wrenching experience, and it is worth reading fully here.
Officer Ike McKinnon and the group of siblings who were assaulted were both impacted in varying ways. Both of these cases instilled distrust in the police force into the minds of the victims. Even though McKinnon later joined the police force, that unease he felt did not totally disappear. The anonymous article’s writer remarked that they now understood how George Floyd and other victims of police brutality felt when they were unnecessarily abused by the very police who were supposed to protect them. Above all of this, though, both the writer and McKinnon want to stand tall in the fight against systemic racism, and they actively offer their ideas and efforts to back the BLM movement.