in pursuit of a carjack thief. (Keivom/News)

Les Payne

May 31, 2009

“The greatest fear I had as a police officer on duty was being shot by a white cop,” said a NYPD veteran over lunch in Harlem Friday. His fear had just been realized once again by the overnight shooting of Omar Edwards on 125th Street.

The 25 year old officer was chasing a thief caught rifling through his car when a plain-clothes sergeant and his partner arrived. “Even a black cop running with a gun,” said the veteran officer, “is all some of these hot-heads need to start shooting.” Such a sight moved Andrew Dunton to squat behind the door of his unmarked anti-crime car and squeeze off 6 shots.  

The rookie officer likely never realized that his stalkers were cops. A fatal bullet struck Edwards in the back, two others in the left side and arm. He died in his Police Academy T-shirt, his shield and identification in his pocket.

The white cop-shoots-fellow-black officer scenario is all too common. It recalls: the ’94 case of Desmond Robinson, shot in the back 4 times by Peter Del-Debbio; the ’98 incident of Sgt. Dexter Brown wounded in the back by Louis Lopez, a white Hispanic; and the ’06 incident, in which Alfredo Toro was shot dead in the Bronx.

It is impossible to eliminate race/ethnicity as the prime factor in these cop shootings. There is no record of a black NYPD officer similarly killing a white cop. Yet, in a city predominantly non-white, an African-American officer has been shot by white cops every 3.75 years during the last 15. One police source who keeps score reportedly recorded the number of black officers downed by such hostile fire as 30 over the years.

With an election coming, Mayor Bloomberg and his police chief are working mightily to filter any facts bearing on this sharp racial divide that might hurt his chances of returning to office. Official details will be slow and whitewashed.

As with all cases of cops gunning down the black innocent, the NYPD will paint its stonewalling blue.

What message does the Omar Edwards killing send to young, African-American boys who want to become cops?

This particular twist on police misbehavior, I submit, is a scare tactic designed to suppress any affirmative increases in black enrollment on the force. Why would a service-minded cadet pursue a career where, in addition to the normal challenges of street policing, he faces the ever-present threat of hostile fire from his white colleagues?

This suppression of the black presence serves the privilege of hyphenated, white immigrants who have long dominated the NYPD.

Instead of drawing from local, high-potential, city talent, for example, the department continues to fill its ranks from faraway, exclusive white enclaves. Nothing in the sterile upbringing of recruits from such hinterlands as Long Island prepares them for patrolling the diversity of a city where whites constitute less than 38 percent of the population.

The cop who killed Officer Edwards, for example, this Dunton, resides in Ridge, Long Island, some 68 miles from Harlem, with a commute of one hour and 27 minutes in good traffic. More than 90 percent of the 13,000 residents of Ridge are white, a dominance reinforced daily to the black population of less than 4 percent.

So it is with the Edwards killing that—in the “post racial” Obama era--sustains the same old NYPD policy. Law enforcement, by way of street practice, is protected as a preserve for white power and prerogatives in the City.

Even Harlem’s Congressman Charles Rangel throws up his hands, before washing them of the Omar Edwards affair.

Referring to the fatal shooting in his district, this most powerful lawmaker said: “Whether it’s me. Whether it’s [U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder], or indeed, whether it’s the President of the United States, running for a bus can jeopardize you—just because of your color—in a community like ours.”

Is this not a shameful admission of the high crime of political neglect by a black leader who has presided over an admittedly oppressed district for 38 years?

What other emperor at the height of his power would acquiesce to the brutalizing and periodic killing of his own people as a police instrument of control and ethnic cleansing?

Just as curious is reaction of a consortium of “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care,” but won’t let on to exactly what it is they truly care about.

In a public meeting at Abyssinian Church, I once suggested that these quasi-Centurions organize within the NYPD to eliminate brutality and racist behavior, if not racism by their white colleagues. Such action, I argued, would convert their token presence to genuine service to a city that is at least 35 percent African-American (counting black Hispanics).

My thinking here is that token representation breeds token behavior on the police force. All too often black cops tend to imitate the entrenched behavior of the institution. A lone cop who seeks to make sergeant in a precinct that vamps on blacks and Hispanics would, for reasons of personal ambitions over group values, opt to look the other way when an Abner Louima is brutalized in the station bathroom, or when an Omar Edwards is shot dead.

The “100 Black” officers group, I proposed could improve City policing immensely by (a) sensitizing their fellow white cops on racial fairness, and (b) improving their presence beyond the token stage to, say 20 percent.

The president of the African-American group, as did his comparable group leader in New Jersey, opposed both of my modest proposals as if they were seditious. They even opposed the idea of confronting racism directly within the quasi-military ranks of the department. Such appalling cowardice in the precinct enables white tribal policing of the sort that occasionally sacrifices the life of an Omar Edwards.

Meanwhile, the citizenry concerned about fairness and justice is at the mercy of a campaigning billionaire mayor and his commissioner, a media in denial about race, and a preacher with his hands out.

The gaggle of black leaders in the City, and yes, even Rep. Rangel, must somehow find their voices and muster the courage to act.

Otherwise, God help us all.