In the wake of no-bill decisions by grand juries investigating the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, we here in Michigan have our own shameful death-by-cop to examine carefully.
On Sunday, November 9, Ann Arbor police responded to a 911 call from a man regarding a domestic disturbance. A few short moments after the police arrived at a single-family home on the west side of town, a 40-year-old black woman, Aura Rosser, was dead. She had been shot by police who claimed that she was a threat, due to the fish knife she had in her hands when police arrived.
Rosser was a chef, an artist, and a mother of three. She had lived in various Michigan cities in the past few years, and had come to Ann Arbor because she wanted to get her life back on track after having some difficulties with drugs, according to an interview with her younger sister, Shae Ward.
From a follow-up story in the Ann Arbor News of 11/11:
Rosser was living at the home with her boyfriend, 54-year-old Victor Stephens, who told The Ann Arbor News that lethal force wasn't warranted in the case.
"Why would you kill her?" Stephens said on Monday. "It was a woman with a knife. It doesn't make any sense."
Adding poignancy to the outcome of the incident, from the interview with Ward:
Ward speculates that since Stephens has identified the knife as a "fish knife," and that her sister was in the kitchen before being shot in the hallway, that Rosser may have been cooking.
Rosser would cook when she was upset, according to Ward.
Why would armed police not have any other recourse than deadly force? Apparently the MI State Police are now conducting their own investigation into the circumstances of Rosser's death, upon the request of the City of Ann Arbor, and while that is in progress any efforts to FOIA relevant information have been stymied. The local ACLU discovered that when they
sought to inquire about the incident.
The Ann Arbor City Council reacted on November 17 by reiterating their support for local police and for the investigatory process underway by the MI State Police. The City Council member who is also the liaison to the city's Human Rights Commission, Sumi Kailasapathy, said
commissioners want a policy discussion to take place, and they have questions about whether the city has a shoot-to-kill policy, whether officers use Tasers, whether officers should be equipped with body cams, whether financial issues are getting in the way of greater transparency and accountability, and whether officers are adequately trained to deal with mental illness issues.
The two police officers who were involved in the incident are currently on Paid Administrative Leave. No information about the actual shooter has been disclosed, other than his gender. The last police shooting to occur in Ann Arbor happened over 35 years ago. The long stretch between police-caused deaths is no consolation now to Aura Rosser or to her survivors.
Community reaction to this killing appears to be muted. Aura Rosser and her unnecessary, unjust death were commemorated in the recent street protests that arose after the Ferguson Grand Jury decision was announced, but as far as I know other large-scale protests have not (yet) occurred. However, local community activist Alan Haber (yes, the same Alan Haberwho co-founded SDS) has attempted to engage other area activists and the Ann Arbor City Council and Mayor through a series of emails he sent out starting late last week. In them, he exhorts the council to release all the details already known, such as the 911 recording and the police report about the event.
Haber also quotes Robin D.G. Kelley from his recent article published in Counterpunch:
You see, we've been waiting for dozens, hundreds, thousands of indictments and convictions. Every death hurts. Every exonerated cop, security guard, or vigilante enrages. The grand jury's decision doesn't surprise most Black people because we are not waiting for an indictment. We are waiting for justice or more precisely, struggling for justice. We all know the names and how they died. Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, Vonderitt D. Meyers, Jr., John Crawford III, Cary Ball Jr., Mike Brown, ad infinitum. They were unarmed and shot down by police under circumstances for which lethal force was unnecessary. We hold their names like recurring nightmares, accumulating the dead like ghoulish baseball cards. Except that there is no trading. No forgetting. Just a stack of dead bodies that rises every time we blink. For the last three trayvonsgenerations, Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Eula Love, Amadu Diallo, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Malice Green, Tyisha Miller, Sean Bell, Aiyana StanleyJones, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, to name a few, have become symbols of racist police violence. And I'm only speaking of the dead not the harassed, the beaten, the humiliated, the stoppedandfrisked, the raped.
(Kelley, by the way, lived in Ann Arbor and taught Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan for several years.)
I am somewhat at a loss to explain the relative quiet with which this killing has been received. It could be an indication of how overwhelmed people are by official violence, or how intimidated, or how indifferent. (Certainly it is not a good idea to read the comment threads following any of the news stories published about Ms. Rosser's death. She has few defenders there.)
But I think that one explanation among many options might be shame. Ann Arbor is supposed to be a politically and socially advanced city, an island of progressivism and tolerance in a relatively conservative area and state. Things like this are not supposed to happen here.
Of course, that sort of thinking was wrong even before Ms. Rosser was killed. The fact of her death does give the lie to this being a comparatively safe and secure place for everyone who lives here. Ironically, even Ms. Rosser herself had some confidence that Ann Arbor would be better than the places she had lived before, a place with more resources to offer her, a place providing some measure of security. That optimism
didn't turn out very well for her in the end.
Shame is a perfectly logical and understandable response, IMHO. It IS shameful that police brutality continues at such a pace, with such a toll and so few consequences for the perpetrators. Shameful that people--especially brown and black people, men and women, and children--have not yet qualified by some awful calculus for genuine protection to be provided to them by public safety officers no matter where they live. Shameful that there is no quick and effective response on the part of the legal system to hold the police accountable. Placing them on paid administrative leave does not suffice.
Ann Arbor is no longer my city of residence; I now live nearby, in a city with its own shortcomings, its own painful history of racism and institutional violence. But I lived in A2 long enough to be discouraged about the prospects of any long-term self-evaluation process leading to greater safety for Ann Arborites of color. Ann Arbor has the chance now to distinguish itself from dozens of other American municipalities that so far, with few exceptions, have not shown any serious inclination to address the chronic racism that still flourishes within them, any rhetoric of diversity and acceptance aside. I trust you will not be surprised to hear that I am not holding my breath in expectation of an improvement on the status quo.
I do welcome comments, input, news, and other reactions to this diary. But it is also an Open Thread, so please feel free to share other topics.