Posted: Monday, 01 February 2010 10:48AM
In Scranton, Malcolm X Need Not Apply
Steve Corbett Reporting
Monday, February 01, 2010
Last May four white male Scranton police officers shot and killed Brenda Williams, a 52-year-old, mentally ill black woman and Air Force veteran. The woman held a knife as she stood naked in her apartment.
Cops shot Williams five times.
After reviewing results of a state police investigation, the Lackawanna County district attorney called the shooting justifiable and said he would authorize no charges.
Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty offered pious sentiments and assigned Public Safety Director Ray Hayes to head up a task force to look into what went wrong. The challenge involved finding out what might be done to decrease the odds of mentally ill people in Doherty’s city from dying in a hail of city police gunfire.
I suggested to Doherty on “Corbett” that he might want to appoint an African-American to the panel that had already been appointed. He said her would consider doing just that.
But I still don’t know if panel members heard a black voice took on the commission. I also don’t know what the task force concluded. I don’t know if the city will do anything differently the next time the life of a sick person might be saved or lost.
Although Doherty said the task force findings would be released at the end of last year, he has not publicly commented on the matter in the month that has passed in this new year.
Public Safety Director Hayes has retired to devote more time to teaching police science.
When I called a few weeks ago to find out the status of the report, a Doherty assistant said she would check. Although retired from the city, Hayes still leads the task force and returned my call from his home. He said he was putting the finishing touches on the report.
He mentioned a suggestion I had made on the radio about how city officials should look to Memphis, Tennessee as a model in dealing with emotionally distressed people. He said the “Memphis Model” is referenced in the report.
Still, the report does not seem to be a priority to Doherty.
Running for governor seems to be a priority for Doherty.
When I got home from work Friday night, I settled down in my Scranton living room and watched the end of a debate in Harrisburg that included the four Democrats who aspire to be governor.
Doherty anchored one the end of a long table and spoke with the exuberance of a college debate captain about how well he has represented the people of his city. He even stressed how “progressive” he is to the liberal audience that sponsored the debate by pointing out the important positions on his staff held by women, including an “African-American.”
Right on, brother.
Clearly playing to African-American populations in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia in the debate that was televised state-wide, Doherty all but promised change we can believe in. But I wondered how black voters in the state’s biggest cities would respond to the shooting death of their sad sister, Brenda Williams, at the hands of four white male Scranton cops.
Doherty doesn’t have to worry about black voters in Scranton because there aren’t that many black voters in Scranton. Polish-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans comprise the core voting blocks in this hard coal region city.
Doherty‘s prep school demeanor is Bobby Kennedy, not Martin Luther King.
In Scranton, Malcolm X need not apply.
Sitting in front of the television set Friday night, I wondered what liberals across Pennsylvania will think when they find out that the affable man who supported gay marriage during the debate and promised a veto if abortion rights are threatened in the Commonwealth sees no urgency in talking responsibility for the death of Brenda Williams.
It’s bad enough that Doherty is perceived as anti-union in state-wide political circles, but to be perceived as insensitive to blacks is seriously self-destructive.
If Doherty justifies the shooting death of Brenda Williams, he must say so publicly. If, however, he believes that police had other options they failed to use to save Williams’ life, he must be brave enough to take responsibility for his “men.”
Doherty’s lack of big-city sophistication is showing. When it comes to minority matters, Scranton politicians lack solid experience in dealing with race. They usually tell you that race doesn’t matter because, to them, race doesn’t matter.
Brenda Williams might be alive to day if city officials understood that race always matters – especially in cities where white, ethnic rivalries still regularly surface, as they do in Scranton.
Doherty can get away with ignoring black voters at home.
But Pennsylvania is a big state where Doherty’s gubernatorial aspirations can come to a crashing halt in neighborhoods where black power and urban social consciousness is alive and well and aggressive.
Unlike Scranton, black voters in the cities Doherty needs to win the governor’s job do not consider the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick to be an acceptable affirmative action program.
In those places, there’s more on the political plate than ham and cabbage.
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