The Reed Report
Stop Pepper-Spraying Little Black Girls
This is a simple fix for the police and yet, here we are again
There aren’t adequate words for those who use their privilege to harm children. Even in an era as divisive as the present, the part of our social contract that dictates almost universal disdain for abusers of children remains intact. I say almost, because exceptions are too often granted to those who wear badges, as we learned most acutely in the aftermath of 12-year-old Tamir Rice’s 2014 murder in a snowy Cleveland park.
We don’t know the name of the nine-year-old girl assaulted with pepper spray by Rochester, N.Y., cops last weekend. We may never know. As a journalist, I’m writing from the difficult position of not having many facts about the case. Rochester police haven’t identified the officers involved. We don’t know their disciplinary records or whether they’ve been serially accused of using excessive force or otherwise abusing the citizens they’re charged with protecting. All that makes this difficult to write; it’s bad form, even when writing an opinion column, to convey more heat of emotion than light of fact.
But I’ve been a father almost as long as I’ve been a journalist. I’ve been Black even longer. To deny that those things shade how I view this incident…
