It doesn’t make sense that Jabari Peoples is dead after a fight with a police officer.
It doesn’t make sense, because Jabari Peoples wasn’t the kind of kid who would fight a cop. Nothing in his history would lead you to believe that. Not his accolades as a track and football star. Not his educational background. Not his complete lack of a criminal record.
And yet, Jabari Peoples is dead.
A Homewood police officer says Peoples resisted arrest, knocked him to the ground and then went for a gun that was stored in the door of the car Peoples was in. At that point, the officer said he was forced to fire a shot to defend himself.
Those who know Peoples best don’t buy it even a little. They say it would be a complete departure from character. They believe something else must have gone down.
There’s an easy way to end all of the debate, all of the speculation, all of the bad things being said about the Homewood PD.
Show us the video.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) has the video. It obviously shows what went down. Peoples’ family members have requested to see it so they, too, can understand what happened.
But ALEA, in its very ALEA way, has denied that request, stating that the family viewing the video would “jeopardize the ongoing investigation.”
That, of course, is absurd.
What happened is what happened. How is it possible that showing people actual footage of the thing happening could ever be damaging to a process that seeks to get to the truth?
We have to stop this nonsense.
Over the last several years, we have been on a steady march toward near-complete immunity for police officers in Alabama. Even as dozens of officers have been caught committing some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, our lawmakers, with the public’s apparent blessing, have continued to pile on obstacle after obstacle for holding them accountable.
It has reached the point of absurdity.
I, like most people, respect the hell out of cops, and recognize fully the difficult and dangerous job they have. I appreciate them for taking it on, but I’d much rather we all show that appreciation through proper compensation and benefits instead of immunity from prosecution when they screw up.
And that starts with bodycam footage.
There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever that every police department and sheriff’s office in this state shouldn’t be governed by an oversight board that contains at least one random member of the communities they serve. And bodycam footage should be made immediately available to that board, and then to the family members of anyone involved in a deadly interaction with law enforcement.
That’s not jeopardizing the case. It’s accountability. And I’m sorry, but when you agree to a job in which you have the authority to take away people’s rights, freedoms and their lives, you should expect to be held accountable.
Instead, we have a system currently that has cops investigating other cops, and no matter how much integrity those cops might have, such a setup comes with a plethora of pitfalls and problems. Not least of which is the internal pressure applied to cops to protect each other, even when something bad goes down.
We’ve seen the results of that in so many other deadly police interactions. For example, in Chicago several years ago, following the shooting of Laquan McDonald by police, other officers not involved in the shooting actually went door to door to businesses trying to confiscate security cam video in an effort to cover up the crime.
In Huntsville a few years back, a couple of cops were essentially blackballed for refusing to pretty up a report following a cop-involved shooting. And in Decatur, following the shooting death of Steve Perkins, ALEA took the bodycam footage and turned it basically into a defense showcase on behalf of the cop.
Hopefully, that’s not what we’re waiting on in the Peoples case—for ALEA to splice together footage and insert captions that paint the police in the best possible light and the victim in the absolute worst. Because, I have to tell you, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that we’re seeking truth and honesty in these investigations, but says we are instead merely using them to rubber stamp police shootings.
The crazy thing, though, is that some folks never seem to realize that the respect and admiration that law enforcement seeks can never be found by obscuring facts and hiding videos and circling the wagons each time something questionable occurs. Instead, it comes when a department is open and transparent, when they allow public oversight with nothing to hide and they own up to mistakes.
We don’t expect our police officers to be perfect. So, stop trying to pretend that they are.
