Louisville's huge police budget is the real boogeyman traumatizing Black people

Quintez Brown
Louisville Courier Journal

This is Part 2 of my 2019 column, There's a boogeyman killing Black kids in West End. And I'm told he looks just like me. 

Trauma is the boogeyman’s best friend. 

Trauma is not the phone call from a relative that your father is fighting for his life from a gunshot wound. Trauma is the emotional response as you process the inevitability of the moment. It includes the first wave of denial that drowns you in confusion, fear and shock. This can’t be real. 

Confusion clouds your mind. “What does this even mean?” I ask myself. “What am I supposed to do? Why was this not prevented?”

More questions than answers. All answers await further developments, as I sit stuck in disbelief. 

How effective is the Louisville Metro Police Department at preventing crime? At 20 years of age, I find it hard to recall a time when crime was not rampant. I can’t recall a time when there was ever mutual trust between the so-called Black community and the police?

Trauma can negatively impact recollection and memory. I almost forgot that 16-year-old Tiffanie Floyd “was found shot” more than a week ago. Passive voice as we await further developments. The suspect is usually the boogeyman.

How often were you punished for being forgetful? Maybe you were punished with bad grades for forgetting who the important people of 1776 were on a standardized test. Bad grades are traumatizing. If I am not good enough for school or my parents, maybe the streets or prison are my only alternative.

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Maybe my stories won’t be published and you will never read this article because I forget to bring your attention back to my lead story about my father. I forget because I was too busy reflecting on how various institutions in society work together to maintain the status quo of the spectacular Black death. 

My father is a survivor, not a victim, of gun violence, and unfortunately, too many survivors are often bound up with systems of incarceration and police violence. 

The constant wailing of emergency sirens and pinging of emergency alerts signifies another body riddled with bullets, and maybe another criminal soon to be riddled with guilt.

The high rate of unsolved murders hurts the legitimacy of Louisville’s police department. Is the so-called Black community to blame? 

Self-blame, the emotional abuse inflicted upon survivors of trauma, is perpetuated by the public relations arm of the police. Instead of having those difficult conversations about the root causes of violence and the socioeconomic construction of poverty, we instead spend our time consuming guilt and blame while we find individuals to point fingers at. If there is no one to be found accountable, we create the boogeyman: the Black criminal scapegoat. 

Taking responsibility:The role white people play in Louisville's fight for racial justice

I never wanted to ask who shot my father. I could only imagine it being the same omnipresent boogeyman that has forever terrorized our communities. 

My father grew up during the Reagan administration’s war on drugs. His mother, my nana, grew up during the Johnson administration’s war on poverty. I grew up during the Bush administration's war on terror. War has existed in my family for generations. Are we cursed people? Consider the answer our slave-owning Founding Fathers would give. 

The legacy of the spectacular Black death stains my American flag. Trauma is the emotional response to the countless names belonging to victims of lynching, police violence, political assassination and gun violence. It’s the guilty feeling of not being able to keep up with all the hashtags. 

Cognitive science and the media show us the faces that we attach to terror, drugs and poverty are visibly different from the faces that enact and enforce violent policies. Buzzwords like terror, drugs and poverty cover up the real-life trauma and complexity of problems that people must live with due to the ongoing war in their communities. 

We have never known peace. We have only dreamt of it. We speak of peace and democracy, yet instead of more funding going toward community infrastructure, we continue to see an increase of funding go to the police. 

As Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer plans to triple the funding of the Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods (OSHN) — a city department that uses evidence-based gun violence reduction strategies to confront the root causes of crime — from about $1.5 million to a measly $4.4 million, the Louisville Metro Police Department will maintain its $198 million budget to “reimagine” policing

Quintez Brown on Broadway and Roy Wilkins Avenue on Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The ideology of white supremacy wants you to believe that Breonna Taylor is to blame for her death. Or her boogeyman boyfriend. However, we are all a witness to the violent, racist practices of LMPD. So much so that the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether Louisville Metro Police has engaged in a pattern of abuse and constitutional violations.

Survivors of this abuse already know the answer. 

Violence is hearing the city council president and former police officer scrutinize a budget increase to violence prevention services without keeping that same energy for the overfunded police department currently battling a federal investigation.

Systemic violence begets endless trauma. It keeps you in a cyclical state of survival, but once you have found your way off the hamster wheel, you can destroy the mythical boogeyman and begin to truly understand who the true perpetrators of crime in your community are.

Quintez Brown is a community organizer and writer at The Courier Journal. He is the founder of From Fields To Arena (FFTA),  He studies philosophy and Pan-Africanism at the University of Louisville where he is an MLK Scholar. He can be reached at qbrown@courierjournal.com. Follow From Fields to Arena on Instagram @FFTA_KY and on Twitter @FFTALouisville.