Jackson
Advocate
Thursday,
Dec. 4, 2003
SEEING
IS BELIEVING – OR NOT!
Large people, beware! Avoid confrontations with
police at all cost! They might beat you to death!
News broadcasts will show the video while
reporters tell us what we see, as if we couldn’t possibly interpret what we see
without their input.
Every feeling American should be outraged about the
death of a 41-year-old Cincinnati man Sunday. Police almost immediately began
trying to justify the beating with Nathaniel Jones’ size, pointing out that he
weighed about 350 pounds.
Apparently, police believe the public will side with
their behavior because Nathaniel Jones was such a large man. The way I see it,
his size was an advantage for the police because Jones couldn’t do much
running.
In addition, coroner Carl Parrott is reinforcing
police justification attempts with rulings that Jones had a “markedly enlarged”
heart and had cocaine and PCP in his system. Though it is well-documented that
persons under the influence of drugs sometimes exhibit bizarre, violent
behavior, these are situations police officers should be trained for.
It is possible that Nathaniel Jones may have
died from a heart attack or even as a result of the drugs in his system – at
some point. However, both conditions were certainly aggravated by the beating.
The law dictates that if another person’s actions
causes the death of even a terminally ill person one second before natural
death, it is homicide.
The thing that is most disturbing about the incident
is that what is shown in the video does not correspond with what reporters are
saying. I watched the video over and over again on the Internet and I have yet
to see what they saw.
Perhaps there is something wrong with my visual perception, because what I saw was the man jerk away from one officer and fall into another, knocking him to the ground.
Then, I saw the man trying to fend off the blows of
several nightsticks. Suddenly, he was out-of-sight on the ground – behind the
police cruiser.
By that time, Jones was obviously subdued, but the
blows kept coming. One officer was punching him violently with the end of his
nightstick.
There’s no doubt in my mind that all that was left to
do after Jones went down was to handcuff him and take him to jail. But, no! The
violent blows continued. There is no excuse for that.
“They’re beating him to death,” I thought as I
watched.
It was the first time I had ever seen an officer
use his nightstick in that way. I’m certain it was improper use of a
nightstick.
Everyone should turn off the volume on their
television sets – so they can’t hear the reporter telling them what they
see – and watch the video very carefully for themselves.
And, police officers who are not capable of handling
a large unarmed person without killing him/her should find another job!