Voices: The Highland Park shooting suspect was arrested peacefully. Jayland Walker was shot 60 times
It was infuriating to learn that a newscaster referred to the city of Highland Park, Illinois as “apolitical” after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade. The shooting left six people dead and at least 30 others injured.
There is no city or town in America that is apolitical. Certainly not in a place like Illinois, which has as rich a history of sundown towns as any state in the South. Those racial politics came to mind upon learning that the suspected shooter, Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, targeted a predominately Jewish suburb that experienced an anti-semitic incident earlier this year. It’s also been reported that he had a history of posting calls for violence online.
Crimo, who fled the scene, was considered armed and dangerous yet was peacefully arrested after hours on the loose when police spotted his car. Much as I want to focus on the issue of gun violence, I can’t help but fixate on how only a white man could get away with that. There is nothing apolitical about Crimo’s alleged crimes. There is nothing apolitical about the system that allowed him to legally purchase a gun to shoot up a parade. And there is nothing apolitical about the fact that he managed to be arrested on his terms.
You don’t even have to look far from Highland Park to see a double standard in real time. Compare the treatment of Crimo to Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man shot 60 times by police officers in Akron, Ohio last Monday. He was unarmed at the time.
At a news conference on Sunday, police released body camera videos of the pursuit and shooting. The footage raised more questions than answers. Walker’s family has called for the entire body camera footage to be released.
While there is an investigation being conducted into the shooting, what we know now tells us a lot. Walker was unarmed at the time of his shooting (a gun was recovered from inside his car; he was standing outside his car when he was shot). He had at least 60 separate wounds on his body, suggesting he may have been shot that many times. Why does anyone need to be shot 60 times? It is necessary to repeat that Jayland Walker didn’t kill anyone.
Preliminary medical examiner records reveal disturbing images from Walker’s autopsy – including multiple gunshot wounds to his face, abdomen and upper legs. News 5 Cleveland also revealed that upon closer examination of the thumbnail-size photos provided, Walker took a bullet under his left eye and below his chin. Walker was found on his back on the pavement, in handcuffs. That suggests he was handcuffed as he lay dying. What could he have possibly done to warrant such treatment?
Over the weekend, I read about how the Farmington Hills police department will conduct a legal review after photographs showing shooting targets with the images of Black men on them were taken at the department’s practice area. We never hear about white men’s faces being used as target practice by cops – even though statistically they are more likely to engage in mass shootings than men who look like Jayland Walker and me. If some can’t listen to Black people when we say law enforcement has put a target on our backs, listen to the cops.
Bobby DiCello, a lawyer for the Walker family, took issue with how Jayland had been portrayed by some media in a news conference, telling the New York Times, “They want to turn him into a masked monster with a gun.” Meanwhile, Crimo, a suspected mass murderer, is receiving the kind of favorable media narratives only afforded to white men.
In an interview with CNN, Highland Park mayor Nancy Rotering said she knew the suspect years ago when she was his Cub Scout pack leader. “Many years ago, he was just a little boy, a quiet little boy that I knew,” Rotering said. “It breaks my heart. I see this picture and through the tattoos, I see the little boy. I don’t know what got him to this point.”
These events, all happening within such a short amount of time, tell us much about the state of our nation: That it is violent, angry, and trigger-happy. That we can’t count on police to keep us safe from mass shootings and many of the angry young white men behind them. That if you are a Black man, you are still potentially just one traffic stop away from death.
My condolences to all of us who have to live in this nightmare – particularly those who have to fear cops just as much as they do mass shootings. We know that no matter where we go in the United States of America, the environment will be far from apolitical.
