Ten years had passed since I’d been the target of ten cops near Beaubien and Monroe Streets in Detroit’s Greektown District. Back then, in 1994, I found myself on the ground beneath one police officer’s shoe and another officer’s knee, guilty merely of standing on the corner and watching the tourists go by as I decided where I would eat that night. Instead of the customary, “Sir, may we help you find the restaurant of your choice?” I was one of many African American men who would be profiled in that area. I was told to “move along,” or I would be issued a loitering ticket.

You know about loitering: “impeding pedestrian or vehicular traffic,” or “standing in a house of illegal activity.” I never knew it was illegal to stand on the corner of Beaubien and Monroe.

I found myself below this cop’s foot, taunted by a screaming mob of citizens who told the cops to “Lock him (me?) up and throw the key away.” I thought I had gone back in time, and that I was a character about to be lynched by the Klan in the film, Birth of a Nation, ironically enough, one of America’s Top 100 movies.

In short order, I was locked up on a $50 misdemeanor loitering charge, later dropped when the charging cops failed to show up in court. My only recompense was civil litigation. I won.

Ten years later, I once again found myself in Detroit’s Greektown. This particular night, I ran into a young Detroit African American police officer, who objected to my argument that police were “starting a war” by their insistence on continuing to use lethal force. “Ron,” said this officer, “I respect you… But how can you say that the community may start to shoot back if we continue to shoot those who place us in danger? You’re inciting the people,” he accused.

The families of police shooting victims might take issue with that. The document Stolen Lives, an ongoing publication sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild, the October 22nd Coalition, and the Anthony Baez Foundation reports 2,000 people killed by police since 1990. Even more significant, fully 21% of citizens had face-to-face contact with police in one documented year:  1996. I say one “documented” year because local police departments are not legally required to send data on police shootings that distinguishes “justified” from “unjustified” incidents, even though the Justice Department is required by law to keep those statistics (!). In 1999, 422,000 U.S. citizens aged 16 and older reported contact with the police in which violence or the threat of violence was used; and more than 40% of those reported that they were neither using illegal substances nor did they resist in any way.

I felt like Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine must have felt when they were told by the British, “Stop telling those colonists to shoot the British soldiers who are ‘protecting’ them.” I was surprised and perplexed that this young officer would suggest that I was “inciting” anything. If anything, I told him, I was merely reflecting the basic principle that people like King, Gandhi, and Christ have more eloquently stated:  violence begets violence.

“If somebody comes after me with a gun,” my officer friend continued, “I’m gonna shoot ‘em.” I responded that he had a right to self-defense, but as a police officer had been given training and discretion to control potentially volatile situations with minimal violence. I reminded him about an officer who has now served in the Department for 20+ years, who had on several occasions found himself having to disarm, peacefully, individuals with guns pointed at him. I further reminded him of the ten steps of de-escalation in the “Continuum of Force” policy in the Detroit Police Department training manual. “Only two of those ten steps mandate lethal force,” I reminded him.

By then, two or three other citizens (all of them African American) had joined this conversation we were having in the Greektown convenience store surrounded, ironically, by lottery tickets and liquor. One young man said, “Yeah, you know the police don’t have a good reputation in the community. People are starting to shoot back.” This was a totally unsolicited comment. Another young man shot back, “You know, when the cops go into some of these neighborhoods and homes, they take their lives in their hands. People just don’t respect the police.”

Then, a voice from another persuasion:  a white man, voicing a similar lament of urban frustration with a slightly different take. “I was robbed twice in the same night,” he chimed, “and when the cops arrived, they said, ‘That’s just the way it is. We probably won’t find the guy.’” He, too, wanted to be part of the chorus which looked for a communal resolution of the fight for public safety, in a city where nearly 4,500 citizens have died as a result of interpersonal violence and 60 have been killed by police officers since 1994.

I seized some opportunity to try and bring some unity to this discussion. “Honest and hard-working police officers have a tough job,” I began, “and citizens in many cases have a tough time living in an economically depressed city.

“You missed my point,” I continued with the young officer. I was simply trying to say, as Marvin Gaye so profoundly sings in his song, What’s Going On, that “We don’t need to escalate.”

“We don’t need more powerful bullets to kill people when the ones they have already serve the purpose,” I explained. I further reminded him that courage and mediation was as important as confrontation and retaliation in resolving dangerous situations. I told him that in several instances, we in the Coalition had intervened without guns to stop citizens from killing one another. I urged him to do the same, given that he represents the next generation of Detroit leadership.

He still maintained his position. “Man, I don’t know how you can say that. If they shoot at me, I’m going to shoot back.”

“Well, it’s going to be like Dodge City or Tombstone in the wild, wild west. We’ll see who has the biggest and the fastest gun,” I replied. I was trying to warn of the danger of that kind of thinking.

“I’ll have to live or die with that,” he replied, “but if a shootout comes, I’ll deal with it.”

“It’s better to trust in God and the work you do in the community than to merely trust in your guns and your bullets,” I said as a parting shot. I told him I respected his opinion, and that we’d have to get together in the future to talk more.

He left the store saying, “I respect you, too.” He said that he’d continue to read what I had to say.

As the trio of young African American men and the older white man who were listening walked out of the store still reflecting on our discussion, I thought:  Friday, ‘round midnight, Beaubien at Monroe:  a start towards peace.

Ron Scott is a spokesperson for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Inc., a long-time television producer and community activist, and a co-founder of the Detroit Chapter of the Black Panther Party. He can be reached at [email protected].

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