Too Many Unfit for A Difficult Job
Arthur was attending a recent Black Lives Matter event in downtown Reno, and as he sometimes does, was watching from a distance at first.
Large groups of police congregated on bikes behind him, giving off a vibe of nervous laughter and waves. The Michigan native who is new to Reno says he doesn’t understand why police officers get so little training before entering police forces across the country, sometimes even less than what beauticians go through..
“You know, we sent you to school more to do hair than we do to protect and serve the lives of citizens and people. I mean, it's not an easy job. You literally have to be a superhero. Seriously. If you really want to be a cop, you literally have to act like a superhero. You got to let somebody shoot you first or shoot at you first, before you fire, you literally have to go in like a fireman,” he said of the risks involved in being a police officer.
He doesn’t believe it will be possible to get rid of police, as some activists and protesters are demanding. “People commit crimes. You know what I mean? But we do got a lot to learn about how to be police officers. We really do got a lot to learn because they're horrible at it. The way they behave towards certain cultures of people, we know the deal. We know the deal. There needs to be way more schooling before you're given the badge and the gun and given the right to be on the streets. You definitely should have a psychology degree because you deal with mentally ill patients and a lot of different people. You definitely should have a social psychology degree. And if you're willing to go through that work, you can make it there.
“This is not really an easy job,” Arthur (in center of photo, in front of the Believe sculpture, said of police. “It requires solid people. You can't have these flimsy people who might get mad one day, because the dog pissed on their shoes, because they're angry or their kid's not acting right, or their wife is cheating on them. You know, it's horrible, but it's true. You're having a bad day. You messed up. You're not cut for this job. You can't make it here. You can't cut it. You have to get rid of the ones that can't cut it.”
Avoiding Police as Best He Can
Arthur says he tries to avoid police as best he can and tells his family to do the same. “I mean, even a traffic stop could end up in my death. You know what I mean? I'm only 40 years old. I fear for my sons as they leave the house, you know, they could be in the wrong neighborhood. Just jogging, stopping to look at a construction site, you could get gunned down. It's a horrible reality. It's a very harsh reality. So yeah, I don't like the police at all.”
Is there any police officer he would appreciate? “ I'll tell you what, when I see a cop who will pull his gun on another cop and tell him to put his hands up because he just shot an unarmed man, he’s under arrest, I’ll love that cop to death. That's what a good cop is. He abides by the law in all situations. I'm with that,” he told us.
“The worst that's going to happen is you're going to leave there with your pride and dignity stripped of you,” he said of having a very low profile if ever you do have an interaction with police and giving advice to younger people. “And it's going to hurt because you're going to feel like you're nothing. And that's pretty much how they are.going to treat you. They're going to come over and slam a couple of y'all down. Probably put a couple of y'all in cuffs, detain you for a few hours and treat you like trash, really, but do your best not to provoke them because they will kill you. They will kill you and then say they fear for their life. How ironic.”
It’s a Catch-22, he says, being Black whenever you deal with police.” They have to give you the small charges,” he says anytime Blacks are stopped for whatever reason, and the endemic racism which leads to mass incarceration. “They have to give you the misdemeanors. They have to because if they don't, then it doesn't make sense with the narrative. So every time you show up in court, they hit you with a certain resistance. Now you got like six, seven of those piled on. Now I can start giving you jail time for it. It doesn’t even look like a problem.”
He says these charges and jail time you’ve had to do fit the narrative, which he says leads to excuses for police killings. “You look like a threat. So now when they do have to kill you, it's justified because you're a problem. ‘He's always been a troublemaker type.’ So they do that. It's a great jacket to put on a person that way when you're trying to describe him that way. And they can't even defend themselves. I mean, let's be honest.”
The narrative is that when a police officer shows up in court and says, I feared for my life, I have to be demonized. So I'm the only one unarmed, but yet he's afraid for his life. He's afraid for his life and in court that stands. So they have to fit the narrative.
The Kaepernick vs. Trump Example
Arthur says the trajectories of former NFL star turned civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump speak volumes.
“Kap lost his whole career for just taking the knee, a silent protest. But he was called a terrorist by this country. Our president said ‘get that son of a bitch off the field,’ literally his words. But he didn't say that when you saw this man kneeling on George Floyd's neck, he didn't say get that son of a bitch off the force. Put that son of a bitch in jail, he didn't do that. He didn't do that. So if I protest being killed or my son's being killed, or my family being killed, if I protest that quietly, by taking a knee, I'm a terrorist. When I break stuff because you didn't listen to me being quiet, now I'm a threat to society.”
In September 2017, Trump told a group of supporters in Alabama, "wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag to say, 'get that son of a bitch off the field right now.’ Out. He's fired. He's fired."
Arthur says he’s proud of Kaepernick and young leaders here in Reno leading a new charge against systemic police racism and brutality. “I'm proud of them. I thought it would take at least 20 more years before this happened. I thought I would be in my old age before this happened, but I'm proud of it,” he said.
Our Town Reno Interview, June 2020