Few incidents ignite more passion and outrage than deaths that result from police-citizen interaction. Sometimes, the outrage is against the officer, sometimes it targets the citizen, but all cases evoke grief.
All too often, the real truth exactly how these tragedies happen remains a mystery. That's because events of the days that police-citizen fatalities occur are not the only causes. In so many cases, the simple fact that police officers are human beings, with faults like anyone else, affects every encounter.
This is the central message of David A. Robinson, an African American attorney who has specialized in police misconduct and brutality cases for more than 40 years, in his book, "You See A Hero, I See A Human Being."
Robinson offers a perspective on police-citizen encounters and the overall culture of law enforcement because of his life experience.
As stated in the opening chapter of the book, Robinson grew up in a segregated Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s; he was an African American police officer for a largely racist Detroit Police Department in the 1970s and '80s; and since 1988, he has "remained deeply engaged in the police culture through ongoing training, knowledge and first-hand experience as an attorney. For decades, I have handled scores of police brutality and misconduct cases-on both sides-that, often, no one else would take and some of which led to major reform."
"You See A Hero, I See A Human Being" depicts an array of experiences and cases-many heart rending, many explosive-to explain the dynamic of police work in America over the last 50-plus years. In these cases, he offers solutions. He dissects why a situation exploded, and what could have been put into place to avoid it in the first place.
This first person narrative is not an autobiography, but rather a memoir of a man whose life and ability to reflect on that life offer compelling reading-and hope that things can improve.
"You See A Hero, I See A Human Being" is available at momentumbooks.com and on Amazon.
Published: Thu, Nov 21, 2019
