BRATTLEBORO — For me, one haunting detail - amid so very many - stands out from the video of Philando Castile's shooting by a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota on July 7.
Not only did Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, watch him die in front of her eyes, she did so all the while maintaining measured, neutral, calm affect with the officer who was holding the gun and screaming at her.
She still called him “sir.”
And even so, she was still arrested, handcuffed, and detained, separated from her young daughter.
Stop a minute, and picture this: Amid her grief, her terror, her trauma, she still managed to speak to that officer respectfully and with total deference.
And she was calmly discussing how the officer shot her partner, bleeding to death in front of her eyes.
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Over and over last Thursday, I was confronted with this video and the heartbreaking stories of how the death of Philando Castile unfolded. My blood ran cold that day at the wrenching sobs of a 15-year-old, whose father, another victim of a similar shooting at the hands of police, died at point-blank range while multiple officers had already subdued him.
And as I was writing those words, late that same night, I had no idea that the day's events had become even more heartbreaking with a veritable slaughter of police officers at a protest in Dallas.
I had thought that maybe, just maybe, after the two police shootings of civilians, that we all could just stop, pause, think, and finally start looking seriously at what was going on here. Instead, things got even more complicated.
Reasonable people will disagree. But I don't think most people do disagree as much as we are made to think we do. I recently read about the psychological phenomenon of “illusion of truth,” where people are likely to believe a false or unproven assertion if they hear it repeated enough.
And there's a lot of noxious stuff out there.
People of color upset about these patterns no more incited a mass shooting of police officers than a hatred of runners incited the Boston Marathon bombing or a grudge against grade schoolers incited the Sandy Hook tragedy.
People who are concerned about these issues aren't arguing that people shouldn't be stopped for broken tail lights or for speeding or for petty theft, or that the rule of law should apply only to white people.
The idea that we are not supporting law enforcement if we react negatively to the behavior that we all saw with our own eyes last week is absurd. The idea that police officers are so brave that they deserve unqualified praise yet too fragile to tolerate any public scrutiny or criticism is an insult to the brave and heroic professional cops who wear that uniform with integrity and well-deserved pride.
Whether we use “blue lives matter” and “all lives matter” to shut down a conversation, or when we start flooding social media with victims' perceived or actual rap sheets, that all diverts from what should be a simple, nonpartisan point: that so very many of these crimes do not merit deadly force.
We can still be grateful beyond measure for the multitude of good cops we all know, the people who do right and do good. We can still be good citizens who speak up about this matter.
People of color are dying at the hands of those who should be implicitly trusted to protect us - and that means all of us, not just those of us with white skin.
And we must confront this crisis not because we don't support law enforcement, but because we do. Everyone in positions of power, at all levels, simply has to acknowledge that something is very broken, very wrong.
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“Please, Officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him,” Reynolds says on her video. “You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.”
Sir.
I still can't get over that.
Is it white privilege to be able to lose it and have a meltdown?
Even if Diamond Reynolds were numbed by shock and trauma, the deference is chilling. I wonder if she felt she had no choice.
Under these circumstances, would she not have believed that her own life - and the life of that little girl, in the back seat, watching this tragedy unfold - depended on maintaining that mechanical compliance and subordination?
Enough. Is. Enough.