Black men rise to the challenge in sniper case
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As a
newcomer to Washington, D.C., I would have preferred not to have found out
about the Black male law enforcement officials in the area in the way I did.
Nearly two weeks ago, a sniper with a high-powered rifle began shooting
people at random for no reason at all.
The victims, those who lived and those who did not, ran the gamut from a
woman at a car wash, a man in a shopping center parking lot, a man standing
on the street corner and a boy at a middle school. The victims covered the
racial spectrum too: Black, White, Hispanic and Indian.
In an area where much of the madness occurs on Capitol Hill, a real mad man
was on the loose. And a majority of the shootings occurred in suburban
D.C., Montgomery County.
The television news introduced Charles Moose, Montgomery County Police
Chief. Before the week was over, I would learn, under equally tragic
circumstances related to the shootings, that the police chiefs of Prince
George’s County and Silver Spring are also Black men.
They would soon be joined in the investigation by D.C. police chief Ramsey,
another Black man, and an ATF ballistics expert, also a Black man. Even the
FBI expert that the media has used to discuss a profile of the shooter, is a
retired agent out of Houston, also a Black man.
In a world where color always matters to some, frankly, no one seems to care
that these men are Black. D.C. area residents just want them to be
successful and to stop the killings. |
