Killing in Dallas and in Cameroon

Dallas Killing, “Living While Black”

I could hardly believe the story when I first read about the case of Botham Shem Jean, a black man from St. Lucia, who was shot and killed in his own apartment in Dallas, Texas.

That was on Thursday a week ago. He was killed by a police officer, Amber Guyger, his downstairs neighbor. She was off duty and returning to her own apartment in the same building.

According to her account of what happened, she had parked on the wrong floor and walked in, thinking she was on the 3rd floor where her apartment is. Instead, she was on the 4th.

More than a week after the Dallas killing, there is not a lot more known about the case. The police officer was clearly guilty of killing the man, but she was not arrested on the spot as anyone else would be.

I should say anyone black who has just killed a white person, or even another white person who had killed a white person, would be arrested right then and there.

But she was a police officer who had killed a black man. So she was not taken in and charged immediately. Not until three days later was she charged, and then with manslaughter, not murder.

“Everything else remains a mystery,” said a report in VOX news online on Sept 14.

Other issues mentioned in the article include a police search of the victim’s apartment on the day after the shooting when a small quantity of marijuana was found. There has been nothing in the news about a search of her apartment.

According to the article in VOX, “The family has also become increasingly concerned with what police are sharing about the case. . . Those reports, which came out on the day of Jean’s funeral, cited a police search warrant that had been issued in the hours after the shooting, leading [the attorney for the family] Merritt to argue that police ‘immediately began looking to smear [Jean],’ saying it is part of a pattern that has seen police departments and media position black victims as being culpable for their own deaths!”

A report from ABC News online has similar information but was updated this morning with comments from several experts on criminal law.

Another source of information is NPR’s online report which references the Dallas newspaper. I read that, “Jean was a graduate of Harding University in Arkansas and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Dallas Morning News reports.”

The Island News, KITV 4, had an article about the funeral. I found Jean’s photo there.

Bringing the Case Home

At the Unitarian Church in Westport on Sunday morning we had our usual candle-lighting opportunity. I was singing with the Women’s Choir at the first service at 9 am.

Karen, a soprano in the choir, lit a candle of sorrow. She said her sister was a friend of the man who was shot. They had attended the same university in Arkansas.

Her sister was deeply upset at the killing. Even though she hadn’t been close to the victim, she did know him. Just to learn that someone she’d known had been killed was bad enough. But to know he was killed by a police officer who shot him by mistake was devastating.

I posted a statement on TEAM Westport’s Facebook page about Karen’s candle. I said, “This morning a woman lit a candle of sorrow for her sister’s friend, the man in Dallas shot and killed in his own apartment by a police officer claiming she had entered the wrong apartment by mistake. She thought he was an intruder. His own apartment – killed “Living while Black!”

Am I sure race was an issue in this killing? No, but I am fairly certain. If the white police office had seen a white man, even a large man, in what she believed was her apartment, would she have shot him? I don’t think so!

This scourge of black men being killed by the police has to stop.

What do you think?

Adichie in The New York Times

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times. She described the travails of a friend, Theo, from Cameroon, Nigeria’s eastern neighbor.

Cameroon was a German colony before World War I. After the War, it was split between France and Britain, with the larger share going to France.

The people from the Anglophone part of Cameroon have faced discrimination for years. Adichie calls the situation, “yet another African nation’s fatal disregard of its minority population.”

Villages have been devastated and people killed. Today there are those talking about revolution. Voice of America had an article yesterday about the English-speaking people fleeing in fear, as Theo said.

Adichie says her friend, “has attended protests at the United Nations and the French embassy. His relatives have joined the stream of frightened refugees making their way into Nigeria. . .  He believes that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, visited Nigeria to marshal forces to suppress the Anglophones.”

When I wrote about Macron’s visit to Nigeria a few weeks, I had no idea that he would be accused of opposing fair treatment for the Anglophone Cameroon people.

I don’t know if the accusation about Macron is correct. But I do know that treating a minority as the people in English-speaking Cameroon have been treated is wrong.