By Bob Gaydos

One of the perks of being a journalist is the possibility of encountering history anytime you’re on the job. The recent White House confusion over whether or not to recognize Black History Month (the defense secretary says no, Trump says yes) prompted me to look back at my 40-plus years with daily newspapers to see if I had had the good fortune to personally bump into any of it.

I had. Several times.

    As a young reporter covering government and politics for The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y., in the late 1960’s early ‘70’s, I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing a young crusader for civil rights argue his case on the steps of the Brooke County courthouse. Julian Bond was eloquent and forceful as ever.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., was founded in 1971 with Bond as its first president. Its purpose, as its web site declares: “To ensure that the promise of the Civil Rights movement became a reality for everyone.” It is still waging that battle.

   I also was fortunate enough to be assigned to cover one of the many civil rights marches in Washington, D.C, at the time, riding on one of the buses from Binghamton.

     My next encounter with Black History was brief and totally unexpected and one for which I am forever grateful. Still in Binghamton, I was filling in as a sports writer covering some kind of special event whose details escape me. Except for one.

    Half listening to a speech from the podium, my eyes wandered around the crowd and suddenly stopped on a figure leaning casually against a sidewall. Couldn’t be. But …

    Another thing about working as a journalist — you learn to not worry about asking “embarrassing” questions. In this case, no need to be embarrassed. I was right.

    I got up, walked right over, stuck out my hand and said, “A privilege to meet you, Mr. Robinson.”

    “Thank you. Nice to meet you.” Soft-spoken as always.

     Then I went back to my seat, having shook the hand of Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. He was signed by Branch Rickey and started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ending racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.

   Robinson enjoyed a sometimes tumultuous but  successful 10-year Hall of Fame career with the Dodgers, whom I hated as a lifelong Yankees fan. To honor his memory, on April 15 each year, all players in the major leagues wear Robinson’s number 42, which has been retired for all of baseball.

     My next brush with Black History came more than a decade later, in Charleston, S.C., where I was attending a conference of editorial writers.

     Jesse Jackson was one of the speakers. The outspoken minister/politician began his seven-decades long career as a civil rights leader as a protege of Martin Luther King Jr., eventually seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination twice and serving seven years as the District of Columbia’s shadow senator in Congress. He was always a force to be reckoned with.

   Again: “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jackson” and a handshake with history.

                                 ***

    I had one other connection with Black History, which was less celebratory and more personal. Jimmy Lee Bruce died in the back of a patrol car near Middletown, N.Y., on Dec. 13, 1986. He was 20 years old. He and a group of friends from Ellenville, N.Y., had gone to a movie theater in a mall outside Middletown. The group became rowdy. There was drinking involved. Off-duty Middletown police officers acting as security guards, escorted the group out of the theater, where a scuffle ensued. An officer applied the choke hold to Bruce and tossed him in the back of a police car, which had brought two on-duty Town of Wallkill police officers to the scene.

    The police then drove around for 7 ½ minutes looking for Bruce’s friends. When they returned to the theater, a state trooper, who had also arrived on the scene, shined a flashlight in the back of the patrol car and noticed the young man was not responding to the light. Police rushed him to a nearby hospital, but attempts to revive him failed. 

     Bruce was black, the officers white. A grand jury refused to indict the police for the death because they had never been trained in the use of the hold, which was actually banned. No one’s fault.

   I wrote an editorial on the incident for the Middletown Times Herald-Record at the time criticizing police for not properly training officers to handle such situations. It concluded: “For relatives and friends of Jimmy Lee Bruce there can be only frustration and anger. But then, put yourself in their place and read a grand jury report that says your son is dead because no one knew what they were doing, but no one is responsible. Then tell them the system worked.
    Maude Bruce, Jimmy Lee’s mother, was president of the nearby Ellenville NAACP at the time of his death. She still is. Last year, she was awarded the Ulster County School Boards Association Distinguished Friend of Education Award. The annual award recognizes residents from the county’s school districts and Ulster BOCES for their dedication and commitment to students and schools.

Maude Bruce

  The announcement read:  “As president of the Ellenville NAACP, Bruce initiated a school supply distribution event that ensures all students begin the year with the tools they need. She is a constant and welcome presence on campus, inspiring voter registration and civic engagement, hosting Black History Month assemblies, and presenting student awards. Bruce also sponsors the annual Jimmy Lee Bruce, Jr. Memorial Award, named for her son, which is given to a senior who has distinguished themselves as an advocate for equality, social justice and community service.”

     Yes, Black History Month needs to be recognized. 

                                   ***

(Note: Congressman Matthew F. McHugh, a Democrat from Ithaca, who represented the Middletown area in Congress in the 1980’s, was gracious enough to read my editorial on Jimmy Lee Bruce on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 25, 1987. That entered it into the Congressional Record and makes it part of black history.) 

By Bob Gaydos

Eric Garner, moments before his death.

Jimmy Lee Bruce, meet Eric Garner. You’ve got a lot in common. You’re both black men from New York state. Both of you had an encounter with police officers over some comparatively minor matter. Neither of you had any weapon. You both gave the police a hard time and had what is described as a “choke hold” applied to you by an officer. You both died as a result of that use of official force.

Interestingly, those police officers had some things in common as well. They were all white. None of them was trained in the use of the choke hold, which was prohibited by their respective police forces. Also, none of them was indicted on any charges by a grand jury in connection with your deaths.

The only thing separating the two of you is time. A little more than twenty-seven years. …

Jimmy Lee Bruce died in the back of a patrol car near Middletown, N.Y., on Dec. 13, 1986. He was 20 years old. He and a group of friends from Ellenville, N.Y., had gone to a movie theater in a mall outside Middletown. The group became rowdy. There was drinking involved. Off-duty Middletown police officers acting as security guards, escorted the group out of the theater, where a scuffle ensued. An officer applied the choke hold to Bruce and tossed him in the back of a police car, which had brought two on-duty Town of Wallkill police officers to the scene.

The police then drove around for 7 ½ minutes looking for Bruce’s friends. When they returned to the theater, a state trooper, who had also arrived on the scene, shined a flashlight in the back of the patrol car and noticed the young man was not responding to the light. Police rushed him to a nearby hospital, but attempts to revive him failed.

Two months after the incident, an Orange County grand jury began considering whether any of the officers did anything criminally wrong in connection with Bruce’s death. It determined that none of the officers did anything criminally wrong because none of them had received any training in the proper application of what they, more benignly, referred to as the “sleeper hold,” nor in what could result from improper use of the dangerous hold. It was an accident.

Which brings us to Eric Garner, at 43, somewhat older than Bruce and someone known to police in his Staten Island neighborhood as a familiar problem — mostly for selling loose cigarettes on the street and getting mouthy with police who tell him to stop. On July 17 of this year, Garner, the father of six, got mouthy and maybe more with a police officer who told him to stop selling the cigarettes. The officer applied the choke hold. Garner went down. A witness taped the incident on a cell phone and caught Garner, an asthmatic, exclaiming, “I can’t breathe!” A coroner ruled the death a homicide.

A Richmond County grand jury this month determined — despite the video — that there was no criminal wrongdoing on the part of the police officer. This ruling, coming on the heels of a similar case in Ferguson, Mo., and in the wake of a number of deaths of young black males at the hands of white police, has spurred large, public demonstrations across the country and, in fact, around the world. Justice! is the cry.

But what is justice?

For sure, it means eliminating any doubt of conflict of interest in the future by having special prosecutors, not local district attorneys, handle cases involving deaths of unarmed civilians at the hands of local police officers. This would protect police, prosecutors and the public.

But that’s not nearly enough.

Shortly after Garner’s death, William Bratton, New York City police commissioner, told the New York City Council that he was calling for a “fundamental shift in the culture of the department” in the wake of the chokehold killing of Garner. That “shift” will include three days of annual training for every police officer who works patrol on:

• How to talk to the public
• How to de-escalate tense situations
• How to use force.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Nearly three decades ago, I wrote an editorial for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown about the grand jury ruling on Jimmy Lee Bruce’s death: “Your son’s death resulted because the police didn’t know what they were doing, not because they intended to kill your son. Case closed. The system worked. Do you buy that …?”

Yet today, the head of the largest police force in the country tells us that men and women going through New York City’s Police Academy are not trained on how to talk to the public. Not taught how to de-escalate tense situations. Aren’t instructed on how to properly use force.

How then are they supposed to do their job? Police work can be  dangerous. Many officers handle it daily with sensitivity and professionalism. But justice, it would seem to me, would begin with preparing all officers to deal with what they are likely to encounter on the streets, not simply giving them firearms training. And certainly not arming them with military-grade weaponry that creates an us-versus-them situation. This can lead some police officers to forget that they, indeed, are also us.

To protect and serve is the mission of police. That must begin with a certain mindset. It astounds me that Bratton still has his job after his admission before the City Council. Not only did he say his officers aren’t trained to deal with tense situations and how to properly use force, he actually asked for 1,000 more officers and $25 million for instructors and overtime to cover posts while patrol officers are receiving three days of annual training. If it were up to me, I’d provide the department with the money and the positions and get rid of the commissioner, who all of a sudden realizes he needs to change the “culture” of his department.

The pressures of policing in Ferguson, New York City and Middletown are different, but the answers are the same. Justice for all must begin with an emphasis on diversity in police recruiting, so that minority populations can feel they at least have a voice in their own protection. The diversity of the crowds demonstrating in response to the Garner case give credence to that. Justice also means providing the training Bratton acknowledges his officers need today — the training the officers in Middletown needed on Dec. 13, 1986.

The outrage expressed by demonstrators over the grand jury decision in the Garner case is magnified for me by having known the story of Jimmy Lee Bruce. Have we learned nothing in all that time? Should Jimmy Lee Bruce have reacted differently when confronted by police? Hindsight would suggest yes. The same goes for Eric Garner. But being rowdy in a movie theater, selling loose cigarettes and being confrontational with police are not capital crimes.

rjgaydos@gmail.com