Police Accountability from A Mother’s Perspective
By: Adrienne Gillis
It is a police officer’s job to protect and serve…Right? Does that protect and serve mean only when it is convenient or when it pertains to a certain race?
I’m a daughter, aunt, niece, cousin, friend and most importantly, a mother of two African American young men. I wonder sometimes, do people really understand how it feels to be in constant fear of your life, and your friends and families lives? Especially when the fear comes from the people who are sworn to protect and serve you. Yes, I know all officers aren’t bad but as the saying goes, “It only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch.” That is very true because in the scenario, the bad outweighs the good and we all know, there is a lack of trust about officers these days. As a matter of fact, there is a lack of faith in the entire justice system. We see day in and day out how officers can be dead wrong in a situation and the justice system just let them slide with little to no punishment.
If we plan to restore some order in this world, I truly believe that every county needs a civilian oversight board. Police officers really need to start being held accountable for their actions. The civilian oversight boards are made up of citizens who are selected from local communities. It should be when a citizen files a complaint against an officer and they were truly wronged, they are given assurance that the responsible officer will be brought to justice. Citizens should not be made to feel as though they do not matter, and regardless of what they do or to whom they talk… the wrong doings against them will not be made right.
When a citizen comes into an office with oversight authority to file a complaint, then whether the complaint has any merit or not, a file should be started on the officer to start tracking his behavior. If an officer keeps getting the same complaint, then that should raise a red flag for someone to take a deeper look at the officer. I have seen plenty of times, particularly, in the George Floyd case, where you have police officer, like Officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with killing Mr. Floyd, had 17 prior complaints filed against him. If a proper case file had been created on him, they would have noticed a pattern in his behavior, and hopefully, he would have been properly reprimanded, and if the majority of the complaints had merit, he should have been released from the force. This is how we begin to ensure that officers are held accountable for their actions. Accountability must start somewhere!
I can’t imagine something happening to one of my boys at the hands of an officer who has had multiple offenses brought against him and all of them were basically swept under the rug. If you want change, you have to be the change! It has to start somewhere and why not with us, and why not now? Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we can begin to weed out the bad police officers from the good police officers and with even greater hope, we can restore just a little bit of faith in the justice system.
Adrienne Gillis is ACRB’s Senior Administrative Assistant