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Opinion
Teen Who Destroyed Police Car Sits In Jail; While Police Charged With Killing Freddie Gray Are Freed
BALTIMORE, MD -- To fully understand the racist, socioeco- nomic politics alive and thriving in Baltimore, look no further than Allen Bullock.
The 18-year-old was arrested after he and several other teens brutally beat a Baltimore police car with an orange traffic cone. In the end, the vehicle looked like it went toe to toe for 12 rounds with Iron Mike. The windows were bashed, the hood was destroyed and the wind- shield hammered. For a mo- ment, those teens did to that police car what many through- out the nation believe six police officers charged in Freddie Gray's death did: They mur- dered it.
Only in the NutriBullet mix of Baltimore, racism, poverty, police and a dead young black man would you have an 18-year- old who helped destroy a car facing more jail time and a higher bail than any of the offi- cers charged with Gray’s death.
#PoliceCarsMatter.
And here is the kicker ... wait for it. ... It was Bullock’s mother and stepfather who en- couraged him to turn himself in, believing that they were doing the right thing. Now, since that
day, Bullock has been in jail awaiting trial for the destruction of a car, and I don’t know how someone can sit on the outside looking in and not see the fuzzy math of Baltimore logic as this:
Police cars > black lives.
How are the residents of Bal- timore supposed to believe in a system that values a police car more than a Black man’s life? Currently Bullock is charged with eight misdemeanors— ranging from malicious destruc- tion to rioting, which can carry a life sentence. His parents can’t afford to pay the $500,000 bail to get him out of prison, so he waits.
Just so the optics are clear on this:
Bullock beats a police car and his bail is $500,000.
Officer Caesar R. Good- son Jr., the driver of the police van, who faces the most serious charge of second-degree de- praved-heart murder in Gray’s death, has bail of $350,000.
And this is why the black mom who found her son in the street during the unrest and beat him back into the house has been hailed as “mom of the year” in some Black circles: be- cause there are those of us who
know that throwing a rock at a police car can get you killed. Just as selling “loosies” on a New York street corner can get you choked to death, or walking inside a Wal-Mart with a toy gun that is sold at that Wal- Mart can get you fatally shot. That Black mom wasn’t going to turn her son in to the authorities or let the police sort it out; she went out of her house and brought hers home.
Bullock’s parents
stated that they wish they had never told him to turn himself in.
“By turning himself in, he also let me know he was grow-
have
Allen Bullock’s parents convinced him to turn himself in after he was photographed destroying a police car.
ing as a man and he recognized what he did was wrong,” Bul- lock’s mother, Bobbi Small- wood, told The Guardian. “It is just so much money.”
Maybe he smashed the car because he was upset about Freddie Gray’s death. Maybe in the moment he raged, he lost it, saw a traffic cone, picked it up and slammed it through the win- dow. Maybe the crowd behind him cheered when he was done.
It’s all speculation at this point, but what isn’t up for de- bate is that when faced with the option of bringing more heat on himself and his family once the police found out, he chose to
turn himself in. And that to me is the saddest part of all. Black young men and women don’t get to make mistakes. There are no do-overs, no apologies in this cli- mate; just a lot of bullets, dead black bodies, families grieving and social media eruptions. And then we wait like a movie on pause, hoping for a morsel of justice, because that’s how starved we are.
Which is what makes the case of Allen Bullock so bizarre. With all eyes trained on Balti- more as the injustice and killing keep spreading as if they’re on a 50-city tour, the police still saw fit to charge the kid with every- thing imaginable. Normally, when the world is watching, you straighten up, fix your tie, comb your hair over a bit and act as if you aren’t who they say you are.
But it’s hard just to look at the visuals on this knowing that a young man is dead, six officers have been charged and the only one who sits in jail is Bullock— who destroyed a car. And as far as Baltimore is concerned, for that crime, he must pay.
Stephen A. Crockett Jr. is associate editor of news at The Root. Follow him on Twitter.
PAGE 4-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015