Ladies and gentlemen, I direct your attention to the Maryland's Prince George's County police department, which is, to my mind, the most brutal police department in America. You can read all about them here. But to give you some facts on these jokers--since 2000, they have paid out some $20 million in lawsuits for brutality. Now it's been discovered that one of the officers at a jail in PG county likely murdered a suspect in the killing of an officer.
I want to first say I've always thought it was arrogant and twisted that cops somehow are more outraged by the murder of a fellow officer, than the murder of some kid in the street. A cop is paid to risk his life. It's in the job description. But I digress. PG County has always been interesting to me for deeply personal reasons. First, it is home to the greatest concentration of black wealth in the country, and probably in the world. PG County is the only municipality in America to grow richer as it grew blacker. More pointedly, it's the only place I've ever seen that actually benefited, economically, from white flight. But despite this great largess, these guys have the sort of cops that swing night-sticks first and ask questions much, much later.
This is not mere theory to me. The picture you see above is of my old friend Prince Jones, fellow Howard University student, father to a baby girl, and great, great guy. People always say that, but I mean it. Me and Prince were in love with the same woman for a period of time, but he always carried it with class. Of course, you can see by the photo he was a handsome fellow, so it could be, that he just always had options. He's pictured in this post because eight years ago a PG county cop took Prince for a drug dealer, followed him from through Washington, into Virginia and then promptly shot him right outside the home of his girlfriend and baby daughter.
I am going to try to be fair about this. The cop was in an unmarked car, and wasn't wearing a uniform. According to his own testimony, he basically cornered Prince's car pulled out a gun--but no badge--and IDed himself as an officer. Prince. whose vehicle was hemmed in, rammed the cops car. The cop shot him Prince and he died. The officer was presumably in pursuit of a "suspect." But the suspect looked nothing like Prince, except that they were both black. All I could think when that happened was about what I would have done. The way we come up, if a black dude with dreads (which is how officer Carlton Jones looked) is following you and then he corners you, pulls a gun, but doesn't have a badge, you don't assume he's cop. You assume he's trying to rob you.
If people want to know why tempatures flair over, say, a Sean Bell, it's because the only denominator in all of these cases is color. The fact that Prince was doing the right thing with his life--raising a baby girl, finishing up a degree--meant nothing. He ended up in the same way as a suspected cop-killer. It was later found that the officer who killed Prince had lied in several drug cases, all of which had to be tossed out. Think Carlton Jones was tossed off the force for, essentially, malpractice? No. Dude was cleared of all charges, and as of 2006, is back on the PG County force, "protecting" your children.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
It's for his work on stuff like this that I read Radley Balko on a daily basis. It completely makes up for his banal libertarian critiques of cities based on cigarette tax levels and prostitutes advertising on craigslist.
theagitator.com
sorry about your friend. and thx for keeping the torch aloft here.
just curious about the "dreads" remark: is that b/c dreads connotes jamaicanness -- and the fearsome rep of posses? i'm very interested in (changing) perceptions and representations of jamaicans in the US (esp the kool herc --> BDP --> Busta genealogy), and i'm always looking for more grist for the mill. where'd you come up again?
I'm always sad when reminded of this story. Sounds like he was a great guy. Sorry for your loss.
thanks for this post. don't even get me started about cops. this is what "tough on crime" and "law and order" looks like.
I didn't know Prince was your friend.
It's not like the specter of his death ever left my psyche but it's always weightier when there's a personal connection.
I'm a DC native but I've been living in PG for years, and despite the benefits of better municipal services, affordable real estate and voting representation in Congress, I've had my own "protect ya neck" moments with the cops.
I too am struck by the police department's protests that the death of an officer is being lessened in importance. They're not only paid to risk their lives but they're an important cog in the wheels of justice and are critical to serving the public trust.
Couple things:
I don't know who killed the cop killer but its premature to say it was "likely" a police officer. The county jail (like all jails) is staffed by the department of corrections, not the police department. Its certainly possible that a corrections officer let a police officer into the cop killer's cell. Its also possible that the corrections officer let a member of a rival gang into the cell, or that a corrections officer simply did the deed himself. There have been other cop killers in PG County jails and none of them were murdered so lets just let the facts come out before jumping to that conclusion.
As an aside, LOL at the notion that PG County "became richer as it became blacker". It got richer as a result of its proximity to the recession proof federal government economy in Washington DC. PG County's wealth and the rate at which its increasing lags those of neighboring Montgomery, Anne Arundel, and Howard Counties, as well as neighboring counties in Northern Virginia like Fairfax and Arlington.
Point taken on your first comment. Your second--not so much. LOL is cute, but it ain't a rebuttal. Either the statement is true or it's not. PG County, quite literally, became richer as it became blacker. That this fact was tied to government jobs in D.C., that it's wealth lagged other counties doesn't make the claim false.
I'm all for context. But context isn't contradicting evidence. Furthermore the context of neighboring counties is no more valid, than the context of other municipalities that went from black to white. Indeed, given that the point of this post is an examination of how an all black economically empowered municipality dealt with police brutality, I would argue that the relative wealth of neighboring counties, and the largess of government jobs, has almost no relevance. Unless you just wanna laugh at PG County. In which case, have at it old boy. I don't think the point of this blog post was to praise PG.
I make more money than I did 15 years ago, and I have more in the bank than I had 15 years ago, but I'm not throwing a party for myself because I'm not keeping up with inflation, and I'm not keeping up with my friends. Yes, PG's wealth has grown, but I would bet that the per capita wealth in PG county is farther behind that of Montgomery, Howard, Fairfax and Arlington than it was 10 yrs ago. So, if you're talking strictly dollars (which would make no sense other than to artificially pimp PG), you're right that PG is wealthier now than it was in 1980. But if you're talking about the rate of increase of per capita wealth relative to the neighboring counties (which you should be), then PG has fared worse as it got blacker. I'll leave the cause and effect argument to others.
Oh, and I don't want to laugh at PG - I want to cry for it. I spent the first 25 years of my life there, did K-12 in PG public schools, and still work in PG. My family left (at the very end of white flight) when a black kid came into our house with the pretext of making a phone call - he was casing it. My parents bought their house in Kettering in 1972 for 43,000. At the time they bought in PG, they were looking at a similar house in Montgomery which was selling for 48,000. They sold the house in Kettering in 1990 and got 155,000. The same houses they looked at in Montgomery County in 1972 were then selling for 300,000.
So yeah, their house increased by a multiple of 3 in 18 years, but yeah, their choice to live in PG over Montgomery cost them 140,000.
Got you. You've stated that I should be talking about PG county's wealth relative to other counties, but why? The comparison is to other jurisdiction that underwent white flight--and either its true or its not. The same factors that you laid out with neighboring counties is likely true in other areas that underwent white flight. But none of them grew wealthier--in any terms whatsoever. So what we're left with is that the essential claim--PG County grew wealthier as it grew blacker--is still true with the addendum that it didn't grow as wealthy as many of the surrounding white counties. But anyone whose done even the slightest demographic analysis of race knows that while the latter claim is almost always the case, the former is almost never true.
More to the point, I'm not sure what we're debating here. I don't know how a post condemning the brutality of PG county cops gets construed as celebration of said county. I could be way off base, but this sounds like a personal beef with PG, independent of the police. That doesn't mean that the beef isn't legit. It certainly sounds like it is. I'm just not sure how it relates to the topic at hand.
I didn't know you knew Prince (shoulda guessed, though). When I was a sophomore, we ran a story in The Hilltop about the cop being reinstated. Sigh.
"But if you're talking about the rate of increase of per capita wealth relative to the neighboring counties"
He wasn't. If he was talking number of references on the Wire then it definitely got more as it got blacker, but he wasn't doing that either.
As a prototypical suburban white guy, I've had one experience with cops that leads me to distrust nearly everything they say on the subject of police brutality.
Back in college at UNLV, I worked as a stagehand for the performing arts center. Between shows, my friend Howard and I went across the street to 7-11 to pick up our end of the night six pack for the crew.
On the way back across the street, a cruiser from Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (the same guys celebrated on CSI), roars up, officers jump out and throw Howard across the hood of the car while another one pins my arms behind my back.
In the midst of my asking the cops, "What the fuck is going on here?" and generally going ballistic, I notice that Howard is being extremely docile, a bit of an unusual thing for as active, joyful, and argumentative guy as he was.
It turns out that a few blocks away an assault had taken place and suspects were being pursued.
You guessed it, the suspects were black. Of course the guy they were looking for was 5'8" and Howard was at least 6'4", but that didn't matter.
When it was all over, I asked Howard why he was so quiet. His answer, which I have never forgotten:
"I'm still alive, aren't I"?
At least to the time I left Las Vegas 10 years ago, no cop had ever been prosecuted for killing a suspect, even for the time two undercover cops took a prostitutes apartment keys, went to her boyfriend's house, opened the door and shot him when he resisted. So while Howard's reluctance to defend himself during the incident initially struck me as cowardly, I found out he was doing the smartest thing possible.
Which is why I know that walking around without the fear of the cops filling me for no fucking reason at all is another unearned privilege of being white. And why I also know that writing the above post will keep me from ever holding elective office.
Hey I'm not sure what we're debating either. That initial post ranged a little further than "PG cops are bad". My response to that would have been "Yeah, cops are bad all over". The DC Police have a reputation as bad as any. But the post went on to say the cops are "twisted" to be more upset about the loss of their own than the loss of the punk gangbanger who killed the cop. Seriously??? Is it really "twisted" that a group cares more about the loss of one its own than they do about the guy that killed one of their own?
Then he states that PG County grew richer as it grew blacker, and that it "actually benefited economically from white flight". This is quite a bit more than "PG County survived white fight better than other communities", and its patently ludicrous to anyone who knows. That's why a comparison to neighboring counties was relevant.
Peace
I remember this story (we just moved from VA last year). wow it was such an outrageous and extreme form of police brutality. that was racial profiling and straight murder.
Libations for the brother.
I know all about PG county and folks is balling out there. I wouldn't doubt, however, that 5-0 merc'ed that young man in his cell.