A Day in the Life

Two Minutes Of Silence

BY LAWRENCE VON EBELER

There are instances in life when the call for “two minutes of silence” seems too standard and simple; however, that simple gesture seemed amazing a few days ago.

In fact, this past week’s event would alternately have seemed too little for the extraordinary event as opposed to a massive civil unrest. There were peaceful demonstrations across the country. Rioting never came to pass, thank God. The pleas from the mother of Tyre Nichols for peace had an enormous influence on this outcome, no doubt.

The senseless slaying of yet another young Black man - this time in Memphis – was described everywhere by the press. The most brutal scenes, which were filmed by the SCORPIAN’s own body cameras, were shown on every television channel. They also recorded the sound of Tyre’s screaming and calling out for his mother. This was the slaying of a young man on his way home to visit his mother by five officers, who beat this young man to death for allegedly driving recklessly.

So far, no evidence supports that charge.

The five officers were fired for that lack of evidence to substantiate the charge. There was no firearm on the young man, no evidence of alcohol, no reason ever to call for the subsequent beating that took his life, as he called for his mother at one point in the beating and whose family lived not far away. For an alleged infraction of a reckless driving charge of which, as stated by the chief of police, there was no evidence or substance.

The five officers subsequently beat young Tyre Nichols senselessly with their batons, their laser guns, their boots and spraying pepper spray – all while shouting vile things to the victim.

Three days later, he died in the hospital. The press gave it page one. The television stations attached equal importance to it, with their morbid description of the incident and the actual body cameras that filmed the viewing of the carnage. Many prominent people were attending a press conference, including the mother and stepfather. Led by their attorney, they bravely addressed the crowded press conference. Besides her condolences over her son’s horrible demise, the main message of the mother, who bravely spoke despite her grief, was to urge citizens to not riot. It was a very needed gesture. There have been demonstrations all over the country; however, no rioting has been reported thus far. In the meanwhile, there were front page stories by all the news organizations and the non-stop urging that any plans for rioting be struck.

The heavy weight of the entire Scorpion gang probably resented Tyre’s athleticism and proceeded to beat him senselessly, not unlike the Rodney King incident some 30 years ago.

It is startling to look like the Rodney King incident so long ago. Since then, there has been little improvement that has been made since that horrible nightmarish event took place. We seem to go from pillar to post with the same kind of horrible scenes played out over and over. Somehow, it seems that for all our good intentions, we seem to be inept to implement true police reform and racial equality that would end this kind of treatment and disregard for our Black and Brown citizens.

We can take care of the world, but we can’t seem to clean up our own act -right here at home.