“The criminals in this city, who would victimize and instill fear in innocent people, who would seek to harm any police officer and rip away two promising protectors, brothers and a husband, from their families and friends—those who seek to dim the beacon of hope across these five Boroughs: Look outside. Hear our voices. See the presence in this cathedral. The NYPD will never give up this city. We will always prevail.”
—Keechant Sewell, Police Commissioner NYC
Last week, the police commissioner effectively declared war on crime in New York City. She made this announcement at the funeral of Jason Rivera, one of the officers who was killed recently while trying to settle a domestic dispute last month in Harlem.
Commissioner Sewell got a lot of credit, at least on NPR where I listened to her eulogy and subsequent analysis. She was lauded for speaking decent Spanish. She was praised for her poise. She got props for “nailing” her first moment in the limelight, and listeners were oft reminded that she is New York City’s first Black woman police commissioner.
But that last line——the one that NPR let us know drew a standing ovation no less——shook me. What does it mean to “prevail” against crime?
First, such a pronouncement suggests that crime really is in opposition to the police. As though there is some duality, good and evil, and good (the police) is going to triumph. This seems a little ridiculous mostly because “crime” cannot really be the archetypal foil of “police,” especially since the state apparatus defines crime. In a lot cases, what is declared “crime” by the justice system is a little goofy. Is jaywalking really criminal? Is smoking crack?
Criminality is not some huge organized conspiracy, a sort of super-mafia or gang. Its aims are not inherently to take down the police, or even to harm civilians. Ultimately, many crimes are committed to yield a perpetrator some advantageous position, material, monetary, or sexual. Sure, there are elements that are indeed organized, that do operate in a systematized manner that cause pain and suffering to everyday individuals in America. But on the whole, crime is comprised of disjointed, disparate factions. “Prevailing” against it seems absurd.
When you consider what the police commissioner is talking about, the killing of two officers on a domestic disturbance call, it is reasonable to conjecture that a real mental health crisis was afoot. Early reports suggest that the shooter’s mother sought mental health aid for her son. Curiously though, the words “mental health” never appear in the rhetoric offered up by the the police commissioner at Rivera’s funeral. Only bellicose language, the semantics of war.
To declare that the police will “prevail” means that, inherently, the force in blue must have an enemy. And, in too many cases, that enemy is Black men like me.
It doesn’t matter that Commissioner Sewell herself is Black, or that the officers killed were Latino, or even that a larger share than ever of NYC’s police is Black and Latinx. Great as so many of these individual officers and professionals are, they are in the aggregate merely agents of the white supremacist state. And, unless the attitude towards Black (and brown) men changes on a systemic level, folks like me are in trouble. Because, in the National imagination, doesn’t crime= Black men? Isn’t that why Ahmaud Arbery was shot? George Floyd knelt upon? Trayvon stopped and gunned down? Mike Brown left to die in public in the middle of the street? Tamir Rice shot for playing on a playground? And on and on and on and on…
I’m afraid from New York. I’m afraid for myself. I’m afraid for our future.
