Racist Cops: A Different Take

Published 12/1/03

Eric Berlin has a different take on the cops in Portland who attached a stuff gorilla to their car before parking in front of a hip-hop nightclub. Whereas the folks there, among lots of other people, concluded it was clear racism on the part of the cops, Eric suggests it might just be stupidity. He writes to me:

I am not ready, based only on the Portland article, to say these are racist cops. Putting a stuffed animal in the grille of your car seems unprofessional for a policeman, but that’s about the worst that can be said of this incident. The selection of a gorilla might have been racist or it might have been a regrettable decision in the toy store: “What do you think? The gorilla or the teddy bear?” “Ah, let’s go with the gorilla.”

You may remember when Howard Cosell called a particularly agile black football receiver “a little monkey,” inciting national outrage. He certainly was not saying “Why, that gentleman down there is the same color as a monkey!” He was saying, in effect, “That guy is as hard to catch as a monkey,” something he had said before about other (white) football players.

Cosell deserved a far greater benefit of the doubt than he got. Until more is revealed about this thing in Portland, the cops deserve a benefit of the doubt, too.

I still go with my gut on this. There’s a line, somewhere, between “Whoops!” behavior (e.g., Cosell’s) and “Obviously stupid to anyone who gave it a moment’s thought (e.g., telling people to remove American flags from their desks on 9/12). I think this falls towards the latter at best, but I’m even more inclined to say it was deliberate.

Is attaching a stuffed animal to a police car a common practice, or even an occasional one? I doubt it. And the fact that a cop went out and straightened the doll (as reported in the news article) makes it obvious they were very much aware of it — it wasn’t something that was just attached for fun and forgotten.

But, as Eric says, we shall see.