The video-taped beating of 16-year-old Chad Holley had me fuming. It's one thing when police use excessive force, but this video was startling for at least a couple of reasons. First, the kid is only 16 years old, and kids that age don't deserve this kind of treatment. While he appears to be a viable suspect for burglary (he was convicted of his crime), the truth is that we must move beyond a society that believes that any child who makes a mistake is beyond redemption. Black children tend to be the ones most likely to be sentenced as adults, and those kids who are lost at an early age can be thrown to the wolves as if they are worthless commodities with abolutely no long-term potential value. Secondly, it appears on the video that Holley does nothing to warrant any form of physical retaliation by officers. He has his hands behind his back and surrenders to the police immediately when they surround him. Yes, Holley might have broken the law, but police officers should not be the judge and jury of this young man, as well as the ones to administer his (cruel and unusual) punishment.
Here are a couple of other things to consider as the nation thinks about the Chad Holley beating by police:

1) Police abuse is not simply a black-white issue. At least one of the officers indicted is African American, and police officer behavior can be more of a gang-like loyalty to the "blue line" than an interest in trying to hurt people of color. But given that the job of police is to basically protect the rich from the poor, African Americans are more likely than whites to be caught in the grips of police abuses of authority. So, while the problem of police brutality is more of an economic and authority-based phenomenon than a racial one, race is so highly correlated with wealth and power that it continues to be a significant factor.

2) The Houston Police Department and the criminal justice system in the state of Texas need to be completely overhauled. In the book "Texas Tough, the Rise of America's Prison Empire," Professor Robert Perkinson lays out a set of facts to show clearly that Texas a) has the worst incarceration pattern in the world and b) works harder than any other state to incarcerate African Americans. In fact, the Texas prison system is the most obvious remnant of slavery in the entire United States. These abuses by the Texas justice system start in the streets, where black men are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested and incarcerated than any other group of people. The police shooting of baseball player Robert Tolan was a perfect case in point, as Tolan was stopped by officers in front of his mother's house (in a middle class neighborhood) after the police officers followed him and entered the wrong license plate into their system. Tolan was shot when the officer slammed his mother against the garage door (as she came out to see what was going on) and her son moved to help her. Tolan did nothing wrong, and in spite of all evidence that Robert and his family were law-abiding citizens, the mayor of the town attempted to insist that the officers had not broken the law. So, the attitude of racial oppression within the state of Texas is more readily reflected in the despicable corruption of its criminal justice system.

My father was a police official for over 25 years, so I've had a chance to witness both good and bad police work up close. During this period, I also saw that there are quite a few police officers who deeply desire to do what is right for their families, their departments and the community. They are as hurt as the rest of us when police abuse is uncovered, and don't deserve to be attacked every time a suspect is shot or physically injured. Being a police officer is a difficult and dangerous job, and being too weak and hyper-sensitive can get you killed by those who carry weapons in our gun-totting society.

At the same time, police abuse is rampant in cities across the country. Our society is one where we presume that anyone who's been arrested or incarcerated is undeserving of human rights or meaningful protections under the law. We believe the word of a police officer over anyone in their custody, which has opened the door to one horrific civil rights violation after another. Cases such as that of Terry Harrington, a man who spent 25-years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, are only the tip of the iceberg. For every case that is unearthed, there are literally hundreds of others that we haven't committed the resources to thoroughly investigating. The same kinds of officers who are quick to beat an unarmed 16-year old boy are the ones who might plant drugs on a suspect, present a fabricated story to the jury or torture a suspect to force him to confess to a crime that he didn't commit.

The Chad Holley beating should be an opportunity for the city of Houston to clean out it's police department the same way the LAPD was dealt with after the beating of Rodney King. It is rare that the nation has the opportunity to see police brutality at its worst, with a young kid being beaten after clearly surrendering to cops. There's nothing that the defense attorneys can say to explain this one away, and that is likely the reason they were working so hard to keep the tape from being presented to the public. Those who thirst for equity within the Houston criminal justice system deserve credit for helping the truth come to light (namely activist Quanell X, who fought to get a copy of the tape to the public), and Chad Holley's suffering will not be in vain. It is also my greatest hope that Chad will receive the guidance he needs so that he will stop robbing other people and use his talents for a more productive purpose. The best way to keep from being abused by the criminal justice system is to stay away from it in the first place, but the system must be confronted nonetheless.





Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.