The Impact of Police Misconduct on Black Youth
By Keith Strickland
Inspiring youth to take control of their life by creating hope, giving guidance, sharing knowledge, establishing accountability, building support systems, and motivating growth.
Growing up in Atlanta, I had more than enough experiences with law enforcement officers to reinforce my belief about the role policemen played within my community. My beliefs were formed before I was born though. When my mother was 13 years old, a group of police officers saw her younger brother playing outside. The policemen attempted to arrest her brother, who was under 10 years old. The officers said that the child was being arrested for an armed robbery of a group of white adults that happened across town. My mother, who was outside watching her younger siblings, ran over to ask, “why is my brother being placed in handcuffs?”
Instead of answering my mother verbally, the police officers decided my mother should learn a lesson about questioning them. They also taught me a lesson that day. As a small child, one day I asked my mother about the scar right under her forehead. My mother, who is barely 5 feet tall, told me the story I am sharing with you now. One of the police officers was pointing his pistol at my uncle as my mother approached to ask why her younger brother was being taken away. While the officer continued placing handcuffs on her brother, who screamed and cried so loud neighbors begin to come outside, another officer hit my mother in the face with the butt of his gun.
Once my mother fell to the ground and blood started to cover her face, the officers no longer saw the need to arrest her brother. Their point had been made. They did not leave though. The officers, who were supposed to protect and serve their community, decided to stay while neighbors rushed to see if my mother was dead because she was laying lifeless in the grass. The policemen wanted to make sure everyone understood who did this to my mother and why. No ambulance was called, and no one came to officially assist my mother. She was nursed back to health by her neighbors and had to wait several hours for her parents to come home. I am reminded of this every time I look at my mother and see her scar looking back at me.
As I grew up, I saw similar acts of authority displayed by law enforcement officers. I remember watching a fellow student as he was thrown down a set of bleachers in the gym because he raised his voice after a fight was broken up. Just like the other children who watched my mother’s punishment, I learned to never raise my voice to anyone with a badge! I have watched several friends choked until they cried or struggled to breathe because an officer asked a question, and they answered too slowly. This would be a book instead of an article, if I recalled every person I watched either be beaten or roughed-up by a policeman. Instead, I will share another memory that molded my perspective for life.
As a child, I was lucky. I lived close enough to walk to both my elementary and middle schools in the mornings. This was great because I could sleep just a little longer, since I didn’t have to make it to a bus stop in time; and everyone knows how children like to sleep in. Being on the streets after most students did have its disadvantages though. Since officers who patrolled our community didn’t expect to see kids walking around freely after a certain time, it drew attention to me. At least two days a week, I was stopped by policemen with their guns drawn and searched, to make sure I did not have weapons or drugs, as I walked to either my elementary or middle school. Remember what age an elementary and middle school child is. After a few weeks, every officer knew me by name because I was polite and answered all their questions when they stopped me, but that never stopped them from pulling their guns out or throwing me against their cars while they did their routine stops. This continued for years, even though they never found anything on me. I believe one of the main reasons I started to see myself as a criminal later in life then begin to act like one was because they made sure to treat me like I was, then I finally just accepted the space they put me in.
When I finally made it to high school, the searches doubled. I would be searched in the mornings then again when I got to school. Every morning we went through metal detectors and sometimes drug dogs would randomly be walked through the school; the dogs would check our lockers and be walked through the halls with our classroom doors open. We would stand outside and wait to be searched one by one at the metal detectors, no matter the conditions; if it was raining or freezing, you were still outside until your bag was searched and you were patted down. Once I started driving to school, I could possibly be checked three times every morning before I made it to class because we had roadblocks regularly, and I was always asked to pull to the side so officers could search my car if there was a checkpoint, which would make me later for school, but they didn’t care, and the school didn’t count that as an excuse. I lived less than five minutes from my school, but you still couldn’t avoid all the roadblocks. Now that other cultures have moved into our community, I cannot recall the last time I saw a roadblock; I’m not sure if APD even does them there anymore.
I never realized the level of trauma my childhood experiences caused until one day when I was leaving my company office that I opened on Peachtree Street in Midtown. I rode the train to my office typically to avoid traffic. As I walked to the train station, an officer yelled to get my attention then started running toward me full speed. When he got close, I braced myself because I assumed he was going to hit me but instead he complimented the suit I was wearing. I looked around and noticed I was the only Black male walking in my direct area at the time. There were a few Black women around and people from other cultures, but none of them seemed to even notice the officer running toward us. Once I was calm enough to comprehend what the officer was saying to me, I responded by giving him my business card then telling him I would have my tailor make him a similar custom suit, if he’d like. The officer was so happy he called two other officers over, then they told me that each of them noticed me almost daily because of how nicely I carried myself.
A few years earlier, I was arrested for weed at a park in my old community. During the arrest, two younger officers hit me with guns until they separated my jaw. My injuries were painful, but they did not compare to what happened to my friend. After placing us in handcuffs and taking our money, the officers stomped his head onto the pavement. Instead of being taken to jail, we were held at a smaller office while the ambulance came and ran tests to determine the seriousness of our injuries. My friend repeated the same sentence to me every 10 minutes for several hours, and I would have to answer him like it was his first time asking me. He would ask what we were arrested for and I would explain, then he would notice a ring his grandmother had given him was missing and become extremely worried, but I would tell him where it was to calm him down. After about 18 hours of the exact same cycle, I thought my friend would never be the same. I helped him while spitting blood out of my mouth and struggling to dismiss the pain in my jaw.
I was paralyzed by the thought that clothing and my location was all that determined the hell I lived through all my life! One of my closest friends was shot and killed in front of his baby sister, and the police allowed his dead body to lay on the ground uncovered in the middle of the street while they talked down on him in front of his entire family for over 8 hours. I remember prison guards refusing to feed me for 32 days just because, spraying me with weed killer after visitation then laughing while they forced me to shower in front of them or making us clean up the dead body of a friend who I was incarcerated with for months as punishment after he collapsed in front of us randomly. I remember countless situations where policemen forced me to lay on the ground during the rain while they ran my name then told me to have a good day after my name was clean. They just got in their car and drove off, but I was soaking wet and had to decompress from a policeman holding a gun on me while his partner sat in his car on a computer for 30 minutes. The only difference between the boy who was treated like less than nothing and the man who was requested to speak at public safety symposiums after the United States Attorney General or to consult the United States Federal Government was clothing and my location!
While the officer ran toward me to ask about my clothing, I had a flash back of my friend sitting on the ground in handcuffs next to me when an officer ran up from the side and kicked him in the face. Once he fell to the ground, the officer jumped in the air and his boot landed on the side of my friend’s face. When I saw the blood leaking from the back of his head, I jumped up but couldn’t help because I was in handcuffs myself. The other officer pulled the barrel of his gun back to place one bullet in the chamber then placed his gun in my mouth. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he told me to sit back down and watch or he would pull the trigger because no one cared if they killed another one of us. As I lowered myself back to my knees, a mother with two small Black male children begin to walk by. The mother pushed one child, but the slightly older boy brought me to tears. He looked directly in my eyes while I spit out blood from my jaw being damaged, with the officer’s gun still in my mouth. I saw all the negative life experiences throughout my lifetime being transferred directly into this small and innocent child, repeating the exact same cycle I lived through. I was fully aware how much each experience contributed to developing the self-destructive image I had of myself, which made it impossible to value my life and almost cost me everything I had or could have had. I didn’t want any of this to happen to another child who knew nothing at all about life, but I was completely powerless and couldn’t stop him from being exposed then damaged by what he was seeing. All I could do was turn my head and slide beside a car that was between us, so he couldn’t see as the officers started to hit me also or see the amount of blood that leaked out from my mouth once I lost the ability to hold it in any longer.
Even though I never had the chance to ask the young mother who reminded me of my own mother her son’s name, he changed my life that day. He is the reason I consult police departments across the nation now. I was powerless then, but I am not any longer.
Keith Strickland is Founder of Making The Transition, Inc.