No Justice

by Robbie Tolan

  “Anytime someone is injured, we take it very seriously,” Byron Holloway, Assistant Chief of the Bellaire Police Department, told the Houston Chronicle. “But any allegation of racial profiling, I don’t think that’s going to float.”

  I don’t think that’s going to float. Holloway didn’t even pretend that he was going to take a look into the potential of racial profiling. He just dismissed it out of hand, based on his “thoughts.”

  At least the mayor of Bellaire, Cindy Siegel, was a bit more circumspect.

  “Am I going to say there’s no racial profiling?” she asked rhetorically. “I don’t know. But if we’ve got a problem, we’re going to fix it. There’s no place in city government for treating people differently based on race or sex.”

  That said, Siegel told the Houston Chronicle that she’d never seen anyone come to her with a racial profiling allegation, even though she did remember one couple that had been accused of shoplifting at a Bellaire supermarket. Talk about having a blind spot to the lives of black people in your city. Just one anecdotal story is all you remember?

  Look, I’m not an expert on how to run a city government or lead a police department, so hey, sue me if what I’m saying is out of bounds. But wouldn’t you, as a mayor or an assistant police chief, go to a few conferences with other mayors and police departments and sit in on a few workshops devoted to the problem of racial profiling? And hey, even if you didn’t think that Bellaire had a problem, you’d be proactive by maybe conducting a study about the matter, even if it was simply to keep up appearances, right?

  To me, that would seem to be a rational way to run a city and a police department, but apparently, both Holloway and Siegel operated under the “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” philosophy as part of their public policy strategy. If you don’t go looking for racial profiling, then it must not exist.

  Fortunately, the NAACP, who actually does study racial profiling across the country, thought differently.

  “Bellaire has a perception that they are a racist community, and… that is not something we want in the Houston area,” Executive Director Yolanda Smith said at a news conference right after my shooting. “There is the perception for African-Americans and Hispanics that for whatever reason there are rogue cops… that this is a place you don’t want to go into because the police target [minorities].”

  Dr. D. Z. Cofield served as the Senior Pastor of the 144-year-old Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church and was also the vice president of the Houston branch of the NAACP.

  “While this perception is prevalent about the Bellaire Police Department, [city officials] point to the record and say they have a minimal number of complaints,” Cofield said. “The problem is the data does not support much of the perception. And we believe that people have been so intimidated that they have not filed formal complaints.

  “As I expressed to the police chief, we have some people who have come forward and indicated that they had gone to speak to police officers, and that they had been so grilled and so questioned that they were literally intimidated into not filing formal complaints,” said Cofield. “One of the commitments we want to make to citizens of Harris County is that we will contact necessary authorities and walk with them through that process.”

  The NAACP also called for complaints to be reviewed by an outside party to help determine if the department has a problem.

  “You do not allow students to grade their own papers,” Cofield said. “Inevitably they will grade themselves much higher than they deserve.”

  It was only through the pressure of the NAACP that the City of Bellaire agreed to set up a police complaint center and a 1-800 number for complaints. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Bellaire Assistant City Manager Diane K. White said the process was a “positive step” in addressing the allegations of racial profiling.

  “The City of Bellaire and the Bellaire Police Department take the allegations of racial profiling that have surfaced very seriously,” White said.

  Call me cynical, but as far as I could see, the City of Bellaire didn’t really take the allegations that seriously, at least when it came to changing the very structure of the police department. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Bellaire Police Department had forty-one members, with thirteen Hispanic officers and only two black ones. All the other officers were white, and the city and police department weren’t even addressing that.

  In 2007, when the department was accused of two incidents of racial profiling, the Bellaire Police Department immediately discounted these complaints as not credible. In my case, the Bellaire Police Department didn’t focus on how it had wronged me or what it could do to make my life better, but instead, it praised Sgt. Cotton, talking about how, despite damn near killing me, the officer was a so-called excellent ten-year veteran of the force.

  I don’t think that I’m being overly sensitive when I say that as a resident of Bellaire, the city’s main concern should have been to make sure that my welfare was the prime focus of everyone in government. Call me naïve, but I expected a statement from the city and the police department that sounded something like this:

  “We find the shooting of Robbie Tolan, a young man who’d done nothing wrong, to be an abomination. It was a complete breakdown in our procedure, and we can’t allow our residents to believe that they are at risk with people who are sworn to protect and serve the community. The police officers that were involved in this unfortunate incident were immediately fired, and we’re opening discussions with the family to make them whole. We apologize to the Tolans, and we hope that they know that we feel that they are valued members of the community who should be shown respect.”

  However that didn’t happen, and I could see what was about to occur. If the City of Bellaire and its police department had anything to do with it, I was going to be a forgotten footnote in the city I grew up in. They wanted to erase me.

  Surprisingly, there weren’t that many protest marches for me, despite the fact that in Houston we’d had many marches for black non-Houstonian victims of police violence like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland. Granted, these black people had been killed and that heightened the passions around their cases of police brutality, but even though I’d survived, I still needed that support. But the people didn’t come out for me like they did for others. I think the mindset was, “Yeah, what happened to you sucked, but you’re alive, so get over it. The others are dead. We’re speaking for them.”

  Unexpectedly, the press did a pretty good job at highlighting the issue of me being shot by the police and the issue of racial profiling. The Houston Press did a satirical piece called “It’s Easier Than You Think to Get Shot by a Bellaire Cop,” in which they pointed out five different absurd ways you could get shot, including “Drive a 2004 Nissan Xterra,” because “it’s only natural that brazenly driving around in one of these house-parties-in-an-SUV would get you labeled a car thief,” and my favorite, “Stick up for Mom,” because “when the officer roughly grabs your mother and slams her against the garage door, any movement at all on your part will of course be interpreted as an attempt to steal the officer’s weapon and use it on him. Congratulations! Enjoy your bullet wound.”

  My dad did tell me that there was support for me online. He brought me a laptop so I could go to various news websites, which is something in retrospect I don’t particularly advise.

  If you ever want to see yourself reduced to a racist stereotype, where your black skin is used in any and every possible way to dehumanize you, then my advice is to get shot by a white police officer and watch the reactions from people that post in the comments section. Yeah, I know that you’re not supposed to read the ranting of people who hide behind their anonymity, but I think it’s a human reaction to want to have other humans empathize, or at least sympathize, with your plight. Let me just say that it didn’t quite turn out that way for me.

  Some were like, “This really sucks that this happened,” which you’d think is the bare
minimum metric for getting a compassionate human reaction. Other comments basically said, “He got what he deserved,” or even more strangely, “He’s some rich kid,” as though your bank account determined whether or not the bullet you took was justified. Honestly, cooped up in that hospital, all I wanted to feel was some support as a way to connect with people, but when I read the comments, they only discouraged me. I hate having to admit that, but yeah, reading comments that had no sympathy was a real downer. However, a few weeks later, I taped an interview with HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, and that’s when things began to change.

  “Why would Bryant Gumbel want to talk to me?” I asked when I was told that he was on the phone. I soon found the answer.

  “I’m really pissed off by this,” Gumbel told me when I got on the phone. There wasn’t a lot of small talk because my lungs weren’t strong enough for me to talk for long, so Gumbel did most of the talking. “I want to feature you on my show.”

  Gumbel was the first person who wasn’t a family member to really understand the bigger picture and empathize with what I’d gone through. When we talked, I could tell that he related to the fear of having a loved one be at the mercy of the police, simply because their blackness was thought to present a clear danger to the white cop in front of them.

  He talked about how his son, Bradley Gumbel, had been harassed and roughed up by the cops. Bradley, who stands over six feet four inches, had been told that he looked suspicious and was taken to jail. Gumbel had said that the only thing that had saved Bradley from the fate that had doomed the Sandra Blands of the world was the fact that he had resources to get his son out of jail quickly.

  So I appeared on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for a segment called Black in Bellaire. The problem? I had to go back to the Woodstock house, the scene of my shooting, to tape the segment. Obviously, I wasn’t thrilled about that. David Scott, Bryant’s producer, informed me that they wanted to get shots of me on the way to the house and arriving at the house in order to give the audience an idea of what happened. David and Bryant were both very respectful of our wishes and emotions, but I also knew that if my story was going to have any impact, unfortunately I was going to have to re-enact what happened in Bellaire as accurately as possible.

  As we drove to Woodstock, I could feel myself getting more and more anxious, and as we turned onto our street, my heart began pounding. I looked up at what used to be my home to see my parents, Bryant, and three other cameramen standing outside. It was surreal. What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to do this?

  I’m not sure if my reaction would have been the same had there been no cameras, but I was almost emotionless. From the moment I stepped out of the car, my first moments back at the house were all recorded on tape. There were no cuts. Every raw second was captured. Bryant introduced himself to me as we walked up the driveway toward the house, and I was thinking we would begin the interview inside, but he started asking me questions, on camera, before I even made it onto the porch.

  Inside the house, our living room had been transformed into a studio, with all of the furniture removed and a black drape covering everything. That actually helped, because I didn’t want to be reminded of the house I grew up in that was now sullied by this incident.

  We ate lunch before the interview, and since I was just getting back my appetite, it was cool to just be able to sit down, eat, and chat with Gumbel, who I’d only seen on TV for most all of my life. I think the impression people often get of Gumbel is that he’s a bit aloof and distant, but I can say after having met him that they couldn’t be more wrong. Gumbel was not only warm and friendly, but he also cursed like a sailor, which definitely endeared him to me! We laughed and made jokes, and by the time I sat down for the interview, I was somewhat comfortable enough to talk.

  You’d think that with all of my trepidation about coming back to the scene of my shooting I’d be scared of talking about the details of getting shot by Sgt. Cotton, but you know, I wasn’t. When you’re speaking the truth, you really have nothing to be nervous about. There’s nothing you have to hide or think twice about. Just tell your story and be your authentic self. My feeling is that the story will resonate with people who see you for who you truly are and not the two-dimensional media caricature or racial stereotype they want you to be.

  Even though I’d cried plenty of tears over the physical and emotional pain I’d suffered, I was determined to not cry my way into the hearts of the viewers. I had to dig deep, but I wanted them to see my strength, how I hadn’t allowed this devastating setback to break me. That has been my attitude throughout this incident. Don’t let them see your weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

  In a curious way, I wanted to be a symbol of inspiration and motivation, one others could turn to when they went through their own challenges. Everyone was surprised that I interviewed so well, except of course my mom, who thinks her beloved son does everything well. But there was one question that Bryant asked that hit me hard.

  “What part of you feels like ‘my ship has sailed’?”

  “The part of me that has the bullet in it.”

  My answer went deeper than I had anticipated. Many people thought that I was talking about my baseball career. They were wrong. I was being literal. I wanted to make sure that people knew that even though the bullet had done a lot of damage to my body, it was still just a tiny part of who I was. It occupied just a few inches of my being, and the rest of my body was more than ready to get back to being what it could be, whether that was living up to my potential as a baseball player or just a regular human being. I wouldn’t deny that the bullet was part of me, but I refused to make it all of me.

  After the show aired, the comments began to change. Before, I was just a news report on the local news or a story in the newspaper. But after I was on Real Sports, most people saw me as a human being.

  I received hundreds of emails from people around the world saying that they couldn’t believe what had happened. I remember one letter from a woman in Holland who talked about how she couldn’t believe that America could allow this to happen to its citizens. Another woman, an American, talked about being in an interracial marriage and having to watch her black husband be harassed by the police. The public was starting to empathize and sympathize with me. I was relatable.

  I didn’t become a national symbol for police violence like many other black people who had died at the hands of police officers. There weren’t any hashtag campaigns on my behalf, but I did feel the support. People were calling me a hero, and I couldn’t really understand that. I didn’t cure cancer; I didn’t run into a burning building to save an elderly person. I was only trying to protect my mom from being roughed up. So I didn’t feel like a hero; I just felt like everyone would have done the same thing.

  I’ve learned over the years that there’s something in America’s DNA that only allows us to be shocked by racism and the violence that comes with it if we have some type of personal connection. Black and Latino people live with racism on a day-to-day basis, but white Americans always appear to be shocked every time racism rears its ugly head. I find it to be damn scary that I’ve gotta rely on your personal experience with racism for you to care. I’m pretty sure it’s the same way with sexism, where if the victim of sexism looks like a wife, girlfriend, sister, or mother, then we have empathy, but if it’s some random woman we don’t know or a systemic issue with misogyny, then we tend to be dispassionate.

  In some ways, that’s sad, mainly because I don’t want to walk this earth as a black man who depends on people having a relationship with some other black men before they can overcome their prejudices and empathize with me when something bad happens. The comments sections of the news sites showed me that many white people don’t have that empathy, and as a result, my getting shot is seen as an “oh well” in their lives. I mean nothing to them. And when you’re seen as nothing, you get death threats designed to let you know that you’re nothing.

  “I thought America would
be smart enough not to elect some Arab as president. But now ignorant niggers like you and your family want to cry wolf and try to make a buck off good wholesome, hard working Americans. I didn’t think welfare paid out enough to move into Bellaire. You people should have been happy they even let you in Bellaire. I agree that the shooting of you in front of your house was tragic. It was tragic that the cop only shot you once. You’re lucky I wasn’t there. I would have stood over you and looked you in the eye. I would have loved to see the expression on your face with a pistol pressed up against your forehead before I pulled the trigger.…”

  After the Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel interview, my mother went to the back room and brought out a trash bag full of letters that had been sent to me. I read some; some were supportive, others not so much, but it was this one that stuck out.

  “I swear to God I’m going to finish what Sergeant Cotton started. And I’m a former cop, I know how to get away with it. Just like Sergeant Cotton will. Every time I see your fucking mug on the TV I get so angry. I want to drive over to your house and blow it to the sky. Don’t worry, Mr. Tolan, you’ll be seeing me at the trial, if you even make it that long. You’ll recognize me, I’ll be the last one you see before you die!!!”

  Many people told me that I should ignore the ignorant people who wrote letters like this and that I should just concentrate on the positive people who backed my new struggle. That’s easy to say when it isn’t you in the crosshairs, metaphorically or literally. But forget about the death threat; there was something else the author of this letter wrote that struck me to the core.

  He’d be seeing me at the trial.

  No, I wasn’t worried that this nutcase was gonna show up at the trial. I was worried about something a bit more ominous. Even if we could get the district attorney to bring charges on Sgt. Cotton, which would be extremely difficult mainly because the American public and the criminal justice system give wide latitude to law enforcement to use their own judgment in using force, I’d still have to deal with a jury consisting of my Bellaire peers, and Sgt. Cotton only needed one Mr. Death Threat on the jury to win. In order for me to ultimately win justice, my case depended on the ability of a dozen people, probably mostly white, to have some sort of empathy toward me; this would require them to both see my race as it relates to why I was shot, which was the racial profiling aspect, and look past my race and the racial stereotypes they may hold.