Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

In a civilized country, an officer’s inability to tell the difference between an eighteen-year-old Black kid and a demonic giant on steroids would be grounds for immediate dismissal from the force. In a just world, an officer who shot and killed an eighteen-year-old unarmed kid and then admitted in sworn testimony that he briefly thought he was fighting Hellboy would be tried and convicted of manslaughter. But when it comes to police violence against Black people, justice, civility, and basic common sense are thrown out the window. The police have a license to kill Black people, as long as police argue that they were so afraid they wet themselves. Police are the only people whose own cowardice and hysteria can be used to justify an objective misreading of the facts. When and how much force a police officer is entitled to use is left almost entirely to the discretion of the police officer, which means my constitutional rights and physical safety hinge on whether a guy like Darren Wilson is afraid I’ll use my big lips to suck in his soul from ten yards away. That rule comes directly from the Supreme Court, in a 1989 case called Graham v. Connor. There, the Court ruled that a police officer’s use of force must be judged from the perspective of an officer at the scene of the crime or altercation. Graham v. Connor is why police officers always claim they “feared for their life” after they shoot somebody to death. Graham v. Connor is why those claims, no matter how ridiculous, m...