Where Was Dad?
Ignoring the obvious in Cincinnati.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
April 16, 2001 11:25 a.m.

ngela Leisure was much in the news last week. Ms. Leisure is the mother of Timothy Thomas, the unarmed 19-year-old whose death at the hands of a Cincinnati police officer touched off days of rioting in the Ohio city. Leisure was shown on television leaving her son's funeral, escorted by NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, and she was quoted widely in the press, calling for an investigation into the shooting and urging those protesting her son's death to refrain from violence. Conspicuously absent from the coverage was any mention of a Mr. Leisure or a Mr. Thomas or whoever might have been the man who helped bring the ill-fated Timothy Thomas into the world.

I have never visited Cincinnati, but I suspect police work there is very much like police work in Los Angeles. Whenever I arrest anyone under the age of 18 I am obligated by state law and department policy to notify his parents of the detention. There is a good deal of paperwork involved, and the names and addresses of both parents must be included in all of the reports. Years ago I began reflexively writing "Unknown" in the space provided for the father's information. "Who do you stay with?" I would ask the young miscreant. "My momma," was the usual reply. "Where's your father?" I would ask. "I don't know," they would say. If they did know, it was usually because the father was in prison.

There's been much discussion of the 15 black men killed by Cincinnati police officers since 1995, and when that figure is cited it is usually accompanied by a thinly veiled implication that these killings were somehow unjustified. There are those who would have America believe that the greatest threat to blacks in this country is the one posed by racist white cops indiscriminately gunning down young black men. Even if it were shown that not a single one of those 15 police killings was justified (and that has not been shown), that number would pale in comparison to the number of murders committed by fatherless young black men in Cincinnati during the same period. And most of those murder victims were themselves young, black, and fatherless. Timothy Thomas was himself the father of a three-month-old son, though he hadn't found the time to marry the child's mother. (A wedding was planned, according to an AP story, but with 14 arrest warrants Thomas's schedule must have been a bit tight.) How sadly ironic it was that it was Mfume who escorted Angela Leisure from the funeral: As a young man he fathered five illegitimate children.

Stephen Roach, the officer who shot Thomas, remains on paid administrative leave, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting are being investigated by local and federal authorities. But I feel safe in speculating about this much: If Thomas hadn't run from Roach he would not have been shot, and if he had not committed the various offenses that resulted in those 14 arrest warrants he would not have felt the urge to run. And if he had had a father to teach him how to behave he might not have been in trouble with the law in the first place.

In my twenty years as a cop I've been through no less than ten incidents in which I was only a split second away from shooting someone. Fortunately for all concerned each of those incidents ended peacefully. In his four years with the Cincinnati Police Department I'm sure Officer Roach had some close calls as well. I doubt that when he went to work the day of the shooting he said to himself, "Today I hope I kill a black man." It is far more likely that as he prepared for that day's shift he said a prayer similar to the one I say every day as I put on my uniform: "Dear God, please let me go home in one piece tonight. If someone has to get hurt, please let it be the bad guy."

And for the last several years I have added another petition to my pre-work supplication: "And, God, if I have to hurt someone today, please let it be a white guy."

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)