With All Deliberate Speed
By Albert B. Kelly
As we put the finishing
touches on the month of May and head into June, it has been 6 months since the
police-involved shooting that resulted in the death of Jerome Reid at the
corner of South and Henry this past December 30th.
At that time, in the
immediate aftermath of that incident, I urged restraint and encouraged our
community to withhold judgment about the case so that the legal process could
run its course. I thought that was the right position to take then and I still
believe it’s the right position now; but what I’m not so sure about is the pace
of that process.
Six months may not seem
like a long time if you’re in the Office of the Prosecutor handling multiple
cases; nor would it seem a long time if your view is one taken from the perch
of the Office of the Attorney General.
But it is an eternity if
you’re the grieving widow and part of a grieving family wanting some sense of
closure. It’s also a stunningly long time if you and your family are waiting
around day after day to find out your fate and what the balance of the rest of
your life might look like.
Beyond that, it may well
be an unacceptably long period of time for an entire community waiting to find
out what exactly happened to one of its own, for better or for ill, on a cold
December night a few days after Christmas, at what began as a routine traffic
stop.
The time involved, just
like the questions involved, is no small thing because for anyone who cares;
for anyone who knows how quickly things can go from zero to sixty in the blink
of an eye at what was essentially a routine interaction between a police officer
and a citizen- it’s about knowing where the lines are drawn and maybe where
they got crossed.
If the events at the
corner of South Avenue and Henry Street happened in some sort of a vacuum or if
they were a one-off stand-alone incident, then maybe 6 months with no answers
and no movement doesn’t seem so out of place; but given Ferguson, NYC,
Cleveland, Tulsa, South Carolina, and Baltimore 6 months can feel like an
insult.
It’s not that I doubt the
veracity of our Prosecutor’s Office nor that of the Attorney General’s Office
behind them, but maybe it’s time to lay down a marker one way or the other so
that we either have a bill of particulars here…or we don’t.
I don’t know what the
final outcome will be and I won’t pretend to guess. No matter what it is,
someone will be unhappy. But maybe like a band aid, it’s better to simply rip
the thing off in one swoop as opposed to trying to ease it off in an effort to
avoid pain.
No matter the outcome, I
will still urge caution and restraint because at the end of the day, we still
have to live and we still have to find a way to be okay as individuals,
families, and as a community. I don’t know what this will require of us or how
difficult it will be, but the burden of a prolonged process won’t help us any.
What happened that night
is not something that will simply go away and for my money, knowing is always
better than not knowing. If there are lessons to be learned, then we need to
learn them sooner rather than later. If there are changes that need to be made,
we need to get busy and make them.
“All deliberate speed”, a
phrase from a long time ago that basically means we’ll be deliberate in getting
to it when we get to it. That’s not much of an option anymore. After 6 months
and a lot of tears and anger and worry and doubt and suspicion, it’s time for
our Prosecutor’s Office to step forward and say what they think it is or what they think it’s
not…and why.
Two devastated families
and an entire community need to know; we require no less and while it is true
that time heals most wounds, additional time here won’t in any way let this
particular cup, poured on the cusp of a new year, in the heat of that moment, pass
from us.