Boycotting the NBA playoffs in the wake of Kenosha, Wis. resident Jacob Blake’s shooting by seven-year veteran officer Rusten Sheskey Sunday, Aug. 23, the Milwaukee Bucks decided they couldn’t play basketball. Other teams in the NBA, Major League Baseball and National Hockey Assn. [NHL] followed suit. Shooting Blake in the back seven times has not yet returned a arrest warrant or charges for what looks like to any reasonable person egregious police abuse. Ofc. Rusten Sheskey approached Blake, grabbed his shirt before Blake tried to enter his car where his three children sat waiting. When Sheskey’s Taser didn’t subdue Blake, Sheskey opened fire hitting Blake seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waste down in intensive care. Recorded on a cell phone, Sheskey’s excessive use of force went viral, sparking riots and looting for three straight nights in Kenosha.
Wisconsin’s Department of Justice said it would take 30 days before rendering a verdict on whether or not Sheskey used his firearm illegally. For most people seeing the video, it looks like Sheskey used excessive force, exercised bad judgment and failed to use proper police procedure in Blake’s arrest. “WE DEMAND CHANGE. F-K THIS MAN!!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT,” tweeted 35-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, echoing the views of most NBA players. Over 80% of NBA players are African American, taking responsibility to deal with racial issues and unrest since George Floyd’s May 25 chokehold murder by former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. Racial protesting isn’t new in professional sports but received renewed interest when 32-year-old former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee in 2016 during the National Anthem.
No one in the United States wants to see its citizens brutally gunned down by the police. Law enforcement is an imperfect profession, subject to vulnerability of its employees in protecting-and-serving the public around the country. If mistakes are made, it’s not “systemic racism” as claimed by the national groups claiming that regrettable every officer-involved shooting is due to racism, not poor training or mental health issues for officers in the field. Why the national media mirrors the political agendas of various groups is anyone’s guess. Citizens deserve to know the truth about policing, requiring more funding for better training and support services to employees facing the most stressful jobs in society. Professional athletes have a right to respond to widely publicized police killings. But they must stay informed what happens administering justice around the country.
When national icons like LeBron James tweets out his disgust about inexcusable policing shootings or killings, he needs to know that officer-involved shootings are not generally due to racism but to poor training or too much job stress. “I commend the players on the Bucks,” said 58-year-old former President Barack Obama, encouraging black NBA players to boycott. Obama contributed to the same misunderstanding that led to nationwide riots when high-profile police shootings went viral on TV and social networks. Obama tweeted out a clip of Los Angeles Clippers basketball coach Doc. Rivers expressing his exasperation on national TV. “We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot,” Rivers said with tears in his eyes. Rivers may not know that more white citizens get shot by police than blacks, yet those incidents don’t make it to the headlines.
Swept up in the emotion of the moment, Rivers has a right to his feelings but must get the facts before jumping to conclusions or turning cynical. “We’re the ones that are deemed to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung, we’ve been shot. All you do is keep hearing about fear,” Rivers said. “It’s amazing to me why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.” Putting Rivers words on the Internet, Obama essentially echoes his sentiments, something that led to racial unrest during his administration when Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Alton Sterling were killed by vigilantes or police. What Rivers doesn’t recall is when five Dallas police officers were gunned down July 7, 2016 by black militant Michah Xavier Johnson, a result of hyping the spate of police shootings of black citizens. Rivers doesn’t know whether the recent police violence was racially motivated.
Policing in the nation’s inner cities is not an easy feat for the law enforcement community, especially in a country with 330 million citizens. With about 17,985 law police departments and 686,665 full-time police officers in the U.S., there’s a lot of room for error. Focusing on high-profile but infrequent police killings hypes the problem in the country, prompting calls by Black Lives Matter to de-fund police department around the country. Police departments need more funding for better education, training and mental health services to police officers when jobs stresses get the better of them. When Kenosha, Wis., police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back Sunday, Aug. 23, it was clearly either failed policing or a mental health issue. More training and better mental health services should help avoid unacceptable incidents from occurring in the future.
