Racial profiling has remained active throughout the decades. The “symbolic assailant” label is still used. Consider the case of Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old unarmed African American teenager killed in February 2012 in Sanford, Florida, by a neighborhood watch volunteer.35 In policing literature, as further described by Skolnick in 1994, the symbolic assailant is a young African American male, most likely perceived to be from a family of low income.36 Of course, this stereotyping is very dangerous and can easily result in the abuse or killing of innocent black men and youth. When police officers observed Leslie entering our neighborhood, they assumed all residents were white families. Thus, only white teenagers had the privilege of unlimited access to that subdivision, in which Leslie actually lived. In fact, we lived in Shenandoah for five years before another black family moved into the neighborhood. I recall that every time I told my grandmother that we had a new neighbor, she would always ask, “Are they black people?” I think she believed that we would return home one day and discover a burning cross in our yard, our house on fire, or a brick or bomb thrown through our window. She had reasons to be nervous, because some of those incidents were occurring in neighborhoods across America. Fortunately, we didn’t experience any of those overt hateful incidents. Our experiences with hatred were more passive, until Leslie’s death.
If reported statistics are true, a significant variable contributing to Leslie’s death is the fact that he was a black male. Among some police officers, the assumption is that most black men are criminals, pimps, drug dealers, and “gangsta-thugs.”37 When police officers internalize these attitudes, and their actions, based on these views, are supported by the double standard of justice for officers, which will not hold them accountable for their actions, even if a death occurs, then we have a volatile combination that fosters and perpetuates abuse. To avoid prosecution, officers only have to say, “I felt threatened.” Those three words tend to eliminate the possibility of their being punished.
Although Leslie had experienced racial profiling in the past, clearly on January 2, 2004, he was not profiled in the sense of being deliberately targeted and harassed as an African American man. Leslie was not stopped by police officers because of the color of his skin. Citizens called the police because they saw another citizen in need. This is what was told to us by a resident who called the police. Racial profiling was not what brought police officers to Leslie on that fatal night. After they arrived, however, I still firmly believe that police brutality was used to resolve an encounter that should have had a peaceful, non-life-threatening outcome.
There is no way that I can substantiate my feelings that, as a young African American male, Leslie’s life held no value to those officers. I could be totally wrong, and I sincerely hope to God that I am. But I will always believe that, if Leslie had been an unarmed, helpless white young man in need of assistance, with everything else being equal, he would have been helped. Instead, he was the first homicide victim in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2004. I will always believe that his right to life was ignored. He was helpless, obviously unarmed, and no threat to the officers who answered the call on the early evening of Friday, January 2, 2004. In fact, someone told me that there was a similar report of an unarmed, nude white young man on the same weekend of Leslie’s death. The outcome was that this young man was helped, rather than killed. Because it was New Year’s weekend, I would imagine that the police received several calls resulting from intoxication. I asked the police chief about the report of an intoxicated nude white male that weekend but got no response from him. However, I remain tormented by the belief that Leslie’s skin color contributed to his death. One often hears the accusation that people of color “play the race card” to excuse their actions. For African Americans in the United States, however, the suspicion is that the race card is comparable to the joker in a deck of cards. It could surface at any time to wreak havoc in your life. I believe that there was no reason for Leslie’s body to have received the injuries and inhumane treatment from those officers. No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise.38
In 1992, in an effort to bring calm during the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King made a simple plea. He passionately asked, “Can we all get along?”39 Why can’t we, as members of a civilized society, respond “yes” to that question? In 2017, we are still struggling with this plague of destructive divisions. Years ago, the blueprint of “The Birmingham Pledge” provided guidance on the issue of racism. In January 2000, a joint resolution of Congress was passed to recognize the Birmingham Pledge. In 2001, President George W. Bush proclaimed September 14–21 as National Birmingham Pledge Week and encouraged all citizens to join him in renewing their commitment to fight racism and uphold equal justice and opportunity. Most people are not even aware of this pledge. Until recently, I had not heard of it. I am so pleased that Carolyn McKinstry shared the pledge in her book While the World Watched.40 The pledge is as follows:
I believe that every person has worth as an individual.
I believe that every person is entitled to dignity and respect, regardless of race or color.
I believe that every thought and every act of racial prejudice is harmful; if it is in my thought or act, then it is harmful to me as well as to others.
Therefore, from this day forward, I will strive daily to eliminate racial prejudice from my thoughts and actions.
I will discourage racial prejudice by others at every opportunity.
I will treat all people with dignity and respect; and I will strive daily to honor this pledge, knowing that the world will be a better place because of my effort.
4
Review of Police Departmental Responses to In-Custody Deaths
“I am sorry for your loss.” “Remain calm and allow us to do our investigation.” “We will conduct a transparent investigation and keep you informed.” From watching the evening news, our own experience, and experiences of others with whom I have interacted, those words, spoken by a police chief to family members after an in-custody death of a loved one, are now quite familiar. Usually, the media and community advocacy groups are told that a fair investigation will occur. “We will get to the bottom of this” are often words spoken into the microphone. How often have we heard a televised report in which the representative of a police department or a mayor’s office said, “There will be a thorough investigation conducted by Internal Affairs”? Are those words merely rehearsed sounds coming from their mouths, without any degree of sensitivity that a life has been taken? Can families have hope that those sounds represent more than empty promises?
Bearing news of a loved one’s death to the family is undoubtedly a tough part of a cop’s job. In deaths caused by police officers, however, police administrators may avoid immediate direct contact with families of the deceased. They may choose to delegate that responsibility to others or merely assume that the family will eventually find out about the death. In some situations, it may even be a television reporter who delivers the news, a health care worker at the hospital, or an extended family member. The immediate family may be among the last ones to know. I can speak factually about this, because that is what happened in our situation.
Dwight and I were visiting relatives Dot and Alvin in St. Louis, Missouri, for the New Year’s weekend. After going out for dinner and social activities on January 2, we returned to their home near midnight CST. There was a message on their answering machine from a 423 area code. I immediately recognized it as being a number from Chattanooga but initially could not identify to whom the number belonged. I felt my blood pressure immediately rising. My closest extended family in Chattanooga knew that I was in St. Louis. The call had come in near 11:00 p.m. (or midnight in Chattanooga, which is on EST), so I didn’t think they would call me just to chat. I returned the call, and my cousin Spencer answered. He said, “It is Leslie.” We both paused, which seemed like forever, but it was probably only a fraction of a second. I said, “What
is it, what has happened?” Then I heard the words that forever changed our lives: “Leslie is dead.” I just remember shouting a series of “No, No, No . . .”
Dot took the phone and got more information. According to Spencer, near midnight, a nurse came into the hospital’s waiting room and told family members that Leslie was dead. We were later told that police officials were at the hospital, but none sought contact with the family. Leslie’s aunt and cousins asked the nurse if they could see Leslie, but their request was refused. She told them that no one could see him because his body was considered a crime scene. Based on information revealed to us later, we believe we know why family members were not allowed to see Leslie. Could it be that police officials did not want the family to see the condition of his body, with bruises and other indications of physical abuse and trauma?
While still at the hospital, family members began to telephone other relatives and friends in Chattanooga. Everyone they called already knew that Leslie was dead because they had seen a report on Chattanooga’s local 11:00 news: Leslie’s name had been released to the news media, even prior to the notification of the next of kin. Leslie was not married and had no children, which meant that Dwight and I were clearly the closest relatives. Even more shocking is that the news media knew Leslie had died before any family members, including those who were still at the hospital, anxiously awaiting information on Leslie’s condition. After police department officials, followed by the mayor and hospital employees, the television-viewing audience was the next to be notified about Leslie’s death. Of course, the very first persons to know that Leslie was dead were those who witnessed him take his last breath at the scene.
At the hospital, the nurse gave extended family members a piece of paper containing a name and number to call for more information. Spen shared that information with Dot. She telephoned that contact, who happened to be a police department official, and told him that she was representing Leslie’s parents. Dot said that the officer seemed surprised that Dwight and I had a representative. Maybe he initially thought that we already had an attorney. But it was just that we were at Dot’s home and unable to talk. The officer said, “I need to talk to the parents so that information can be released to the public.” We later discovered that information had already been released to the public, including Leslie’s name. Although we literally could not talk to the officer at that moment, it should not have mattered. Anyone with common sense could anticipate that we were in shock and distressed. I still don’t understand their rush to disclose Leslie’s name to the media before any family member had been informed of his death or identified his body. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes it is days before a name is released, either to allow adequate time to locate and inform the next of kin or for other reasons. Journalists commonly report deaths on television and in newspapers without identifying the name of the victim. They usually say, “The name of the victim is being withheld until notification of the next of kin.” That courtesy was not provided to us, as Leslie’s parents, or his extended family members.
When we returned home the next day after Leslie was killed, I thought it was unusual that there were no answering machine messages from the Chattanooga Police Department. We did not have a private telephone number and could have easily been contacted on our land line connection. Surely the department had enough investigative expertise to easily locate a telephone number. Also, there was no indication that the Chattanooga Police Department had contacted the Cape Girardeau Police Department to seek a representative to go to our home to deliver the news. I know that this does happen in some instances, but probably not when police officers are responsible for the death. I concluded that there was clearly no attempt by the Chattanooga Police Department to contact us. This perceived lack of sensitivity, compounded by later actions of the police department, sent a message of caution that screamed loudly at me, “Something is very wrong with this situation.”
As I emotionally prepared to telephone the police chief, I remained perplexed as to why there was not a message from him on our answering machine. When I called the chief and introduced myself as Dr. Loretta Prater, the mother of Leslie Vaughn Prater, he was quick to express the common phrase: “I’m sorry for your loss.” He immediately followed with the promise of a thorough investigation, because they didn’t have all of the facts to know what happened to cause Leslie’s death. “We will get to the bottom of this,” he said, as though Leslie’s death was some big mystery. There was one statement he made to me that I will never forget, because it seemed very odd, so inappropriate, and so outrageous. He said, “I’m just glad that they didn’t shoot him.” I was extremely upset by his remark. Without even having to think, my reactive and angry response was “What do you mean, you are glad that they didn’t shoot him? He’s still dead; regardless of whether he was shot or not, dead is dead.” Prior to ending the conversation, he told me that Leslie’s body was at the county’s forensic center, and we could go there to identify the body when we arrived in Chattanooga the next day. After the identification, they would release the body to our chosen funeral director. That promise turned out to be a lie, among the many lies told to us, because we were denied entrance into the forensic center to identify Leslie.
During the six-hour drive to Chattanooga, I just kept wondering how I could live without Leslie. How could I possibly face all of the tomorrows that were ahead of me? Could it really be true that Leslie was dead? There was hope that there was some mistake. Relatives had already told us of the first newspaper report that Leslie was more than six feet tall and weighed more than three hundred pounds. Could someone else be in the morgue? Rationally, I knew that I was immediately in Kübler-Ross’s stage of denial,1 as previously mentioned. Maybe focusing on denial helps one to avoid shock.
Prior to realizing the authority of the chief was compromised, I contacted the forensic center upon arrival in Chattanooga. The purpose of my call was to schedule a time to identify Leslie’s body. However, the response received was opposite of the chief’s directives to us. We were informed that the center was closed. It didn’t seem to matter when I told them what the police chief had said. Obviously, there was a communication dissonance between the center personnel and the chief, and we were caught in the middle. The chief’s directives were totally dismissed.
We were asked to provide the name of the funeral home we wanted to use. It seemed odd that the forensic staff assumed that the body was Leslie’s, prior to any family member making a positive identification. There was identification in his car removed from the scene of the death, but there had not been a positive identification. Maybe I had watched too many detective stories on television, but it seemed to me that paperwork found in a car was not the same as a positive identification of a body. The forensic center staff told us that we would have to wait until Monday to see the body but would have to see it at the funeral home. This conflict of guidelines was an indication that, at least in Chattanooga, procedures in these matters were random.
With ongoing reporting of in-custody deaths, it appears that police departments create procedures at the moment the death occurs, as if there is no anticipation that their department could face such a tragedy. Many police departments have a Special Weapons and Tactics team, more commonly known as SWAT. How many departments have an established public relations’ crisis intervention team? Because of the numerous mistakes department officials make after an in-custody death, it appears that special training is needed in effective strategies of public relations to oversee a constructive response to these situations.
In the absence of such a plan, the erratic behavior of police administrators causes confusion among the public, serves to ignite a pattern of mistrust, and makes it difficult to expect predetermined actions from departmental personnel. There are a few exceptions of inconsistency. The public can expect that the police officer or officers involved will be placed on paid administrative leave, the department will seek to protect the identity of o
fficers, and that initially, pertinent information will be held in secret. While the department is busy ignoring the victim’s family members and consuming time developing defensive strategies to deflect any guilt from officers, families may be unaware of the death of their loved one. Also, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that department personnel invest a lot of energy in immediately seeking anything “bad” about the deceased to report to the public. A profile of a horrible person, underserving of life, is quickly developed as a characteristic of the victim. At least that seems to be the case of unarmed forty-year-old Terence Crutcher, among others. Terence was shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 16, 2016, by police officer Betty Shelby. She claimed fear for her life, although video footage clearly showed the victim was walking away from her. Moments prior to his death, a police officer, in a helicopter above the altercation, identified Terence as looking like a “bad dude.” After Terence was killed, details of his prior involvement with police officers were quickly investigated and exposed.2
Compared to our experience, the notification of next of kin can be even worse when the in-custody death occurs after incarceration. Unfortunately, there is no national standard regarding family notification in jail deaths. The American Correctional Association recommends that there is a process by which individuals are notified in case of serious illness, serious injury, or death. The recommendation is from their International Core Standards document, presented at their Standards Committee meeting on January 25, 2013, in Houston, Texas, and communicated on the American Correctional Association website.
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