Let’s say this clearly: Buffalo Police performed quickly, professionally and bravely on Saturday as a heavily armed and hate-consumed killer took the lives of 10 people. Because of them, the number of dead didn’t rise even higher.
“The Buffalo Police responded in less than two minutes after this incident began,” Mayor Byron W. Brown said on Sunday. “If not for their swift response and courageous actions, more lives probably would have been lost yesterday.”
The quick response of Buffalo Police may have prevented the death toll from surpassing the 10 victims who were slain at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue on Saturday, authorities said. But the circumstances around the peaceful surrender of the white supremacist shooter remained a sore spot among some in the Black community on Sunday afternoon.
Risking their own lives, the officers didn’t wait for backup, but immediately confronted the gunman, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and protected by body armor. The 18-year-old shooter put the weapon to his own neck but soon enough complied with officers’ instructions and dropped the gun.
For anyone who is committed to justice or who wants to limit bloodshed or who simply wants to know more about this terrible event, this was the right outcome. But some have a different point of view. In other circumstances, they believe, the accused shooter would have been shot dead on the spot, and they wouldn’t have been upset had he been shot, too. The reason he wasn’t, they believe, is because the suspect is white.
If the shooter were Black, said Betty Maclin of Buffalo, “he’d have been dead before he came out the door.”
Before the shooting, Payton Gendron wrote a racist diatribe that attempted to justify his rage to murder Blacks and Jews. In it, he acknowledges his plan to drive to Buffalo from the Binghamton area to kill people at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue. Before he surrendered, 10 people were shot dead and three others were wounded. Eleven of the 13 were Black. One was a retired Buffalo police officer working security at the store.
But within the neighborhood – and, likely, in other places around the country – Black residents see a lethal double standard.
“We don’t know how the hell he made it out of here alive,” said Jeffrey Watkins, motioning toward the Tops parking lot. “If a Black person would have had a screwdriver in his hand, he’d have been killed.”
Black Americans have earned their skepticism of police. Too often, low-grade confrontations result in injury or death. In February, a former Minnesota police officer, Kimberly Potter, was sentenced to two years in prison for the fatal shooting of Black motorist Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. Potter said she mistook her handgun for her Taser in shooting Wright as he resisted officers. It was a high price for a foolish mistake.
And that, of course, followed the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis two years ago. Floyd did nothing – not a thing – to warrant former officer Derek Chauvin from kneeling on his neck for nine minutes.
Several confrontations between Buffalo Police and Black residents have also occurred, though in one recent incident, video shows police trying hard to de-escalate a situation involving a man suffering a mental health crisis. He lunged at police with a knife before they fired. Dominique Thomas was wounded, but lived.
Police reforms have been instituted in cities around the country, including in Buffalo. They were important and, to be sure, more are warranted. There are reasons that many Blacks fear interactions with police. For many of them, police deserve criticism.
But on May 14, they did what citizens should want police to do. Not only did they prevent further bloodshed at Tops, they interrupted Gendron’s plan to continue his killing spree at an Amherst Walmart. For prompt and professional actions that risked their own lives while saving others, Buffalo Police have earned the thanks of the community.
For police critics, the goal must be to change what police are doing wrong, not what they’re doing right.
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