A few hours ago I was at IKEA with my family. We’re moving from Atlanta to Brooklyn next week and need some cheap furniture.
I try not to check my phone when I’m out with my wife and kids, but I noticed that I started receiving an abnormal volume of alerts. First it was email, then direct messages on Twitter, then Facebook messages from friends, and eventually a barrage of text messages. Something was clearly wrong.
Finally, I gave in to the buzzes, dings, and pop up alerts. A sense of dread overcame me. I only get that many messages when something very terrible has happened.
As I glanced down at my phone and began quickly thumbing through the messages, it became evident that a grave injustice had taken place. Dozens of people had already seen what I had not — the brutal and callous slaying of 37-year-old Alton Sterling by police in Baton Rouge, La. I gathered from the messages that a bystander had filmed it from their car.
I was told that what I would see was both unthinkable and infuriating.
At that moment, knowing that I still had a few hours left where I had to be tuned in to my family, I chose not to look.
The notifications on my phone continued endlessly.
Finally, as my wife and five kids went to check out, I stayed behind to wait for a staff member to help me with bunk beds for the babies. While waiting, I pulled my phone out and clicked on the video.
You cannot un-see what those police officers did to Alton Sterling. Even though I had an idea of what I was about to watch, seeing it still somehow took my breath away.
We’ve seen a lot of police brutality these past few years, but seeing the police first tackle and manhandle Alton Sterling, mount him like a UFC fighter, then pull their guns out and shoot him repeatedly at point-blank range, killing him right there in front of his local convenience store where he was known as the “CD Man,” was equal parts devastating, infuriating, heartbreaking, maddening and overwhelming.
A part of the American madness was that I then had to somehow put my phone back in my pocket, help load furniture into our van, and try to do so with a warm smile.
What are you supposed to do — tell your whole family what you just saw and how much it shook you up? How about the 3-year-old? The 7-year-old? What do you do? Like millions have done for centuries, I put on my proverbial mask, covering up my true emotions, so that I could just get in the car and drive us to dinner.
Whatever you do, don’t try to make sense of what those police did to Alton Sterling. What they did doesn’t make sense. They killed him. That kind of killing rarely makes much sense.
The Orlando shooting doesn’t make sense. That mom who shot and killed her two daughters doesn’t make sense. These officers killing Alton Sterling doesn’t make sense.
Now, you know and I know that we will soon learn what Alton Sterling’s farts smelled like in the third grade. They’ll reach as far back as they need to find a way degrade and dehumanize him. Please don’t fall for that.
What you need to remember is how you felt when you first saw this man killed. You knew it was a grave injustice. Nothing they can say from this point forward should be able to change that.
Police are saying they recovered a gun from his pocket, but the owner of the convenience store has already said openly that he witnessed the entire ordeal and Sterling never had the gun in his hands, nor was his hand in his pocket at any point before police shot and killed him. It’s funny how that works.
In a nation fully obsessed with guns — in which we have more guns than people — a black man with a gun in his pocket, or a 12-year-old with a toy gun at a park, or a grown man with a toy gun at Walmart all get shot and killed on contact.
What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to see what they did to Alton Sterling then watch SportsCenter or sitcoms? How do we crack jokes and move on?
American police killed 15 people in the first five days of July. That’s more than police in most developed nations kill in a year. This year is now on pace to be the deadliest ever measured for police brutality in this country.
The sum total of the injustice and lack of progress has left activists absolutely exhausted. We’ve tried protesting and we will continue to protest, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough.
I don’t know where we go from here, but I know this much — I don’t like how I feel right now and I don’t like what I see brewing in the future of this nation.
