"Black and Blue" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Black and Blues

The Hamilton County, Ohio, coroner reports that a black man died as a result of a struggle with Cincinnati police. That’s not very good news for a city that has had years of tumult over charges of police racial bias and brutality. This time the situation was taped, and the tape shows the man being struck by police with batons. Not a pleasant sight, regardless of the circumstances, and the family and some racial organizations are demanding an independent investigation.

Good idea. Let’s get the facts, assessed by an informed and impartial expert. No one wants to repeat the 2001 riots that tore the very fabric of the city after a number of police killings of black people. Let us, too, demand that everyone accept the impartial judgement, and not use disproven charges to foment racial division.

To some this is a matter that’s black and black, to others it’s a matter that’s black and white. Some people are jumping on one bandwagon or the other on what they consider principle. The police have their willy-nilly supporters and the family has gotten considerable support from the NAACP and local race organizations. They are squared off, ready to scrap. Both sides should back off, though, cool down and wait for the verdict.

The coroner announced that the death of Nathaniel Jones would be ruled a homicide. He added though, that that didn’t imply that the use of force by the police was inappropriate, only that the man wouldn’t have died at that time if there hadn’t been the fight. Mr. Jones, 41, weighed 350 pounds and had an enlarged heart. The stress caused his heart to beat erratically and then stop; he could not be revived.

The videotape shows Jones grabbing a policeman around the neck. He is then pounded by other officers with nightsticks, sprayed with something mace-like, and then finally handcuffed behind his back using three sets of handcuffs because of his girth.

The coroner said Jones suffered from a "potentially lethal combination of health factors," including obesity, hypertensive heart disease and intoxication with drugs. Jones had taken cocaine within three hours of his death, and PCP within five hours. He also had methanol in his body; it’s a substance used in embalming and sometimes smoked with other drugs.

Being loaded with drugs -- especially the psychosis-inducing PCP -- is extremely dangerous. Attacking police in a nominally stable society is unacceptable. The law says that police can arrest people, and that people must submit. If race was a factor in this homicide, it was not the only factor, if it was a factor at all.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.