A Dearborn-centered accountability group is up in arms about a March 30 video posted on The City of Dearborn (TCD) Instagram page that shows a Black man being brutalized by a Dearborn Police officer and others, according to an Accountability for Dearborn letter and Facebook post.
In the video, a white Dearborn Police Officer approaches a tall Black man wearing a red jacket on the side of a busy road. The officer begins to place the man under arrest over the hood of the squad car. The man attempts to straighten up, and the officer slams him down, prompting the man to physically resist being restrained. The continued altercation sends the man and the officer into the middle of a busy street, per the letter. Bystanders join to restrain and roughly carry the struggling man towards the squad car.
“This situation illustrates the violence of our community’s response to Blackness, poverty, and mental illness,” the letter sent to the Michigan Chronicle on Friday reported.
The caption for the video says that police were called multiple times throughout the day and the past week because people did not like the way this man was asking for resources from the community. Following the events of the video, according to the Dearborn Police Station and the 19th District Court, the man was not booked.
“The abuse shown in the video is not an isolated incident, it is part of an uninterrupted pattern,” the letter read. “When Dearborn Police perceive a person of color as disobedient they respond by escalating the use of force. Mental illness and disability compound this perception and response. The clear parallels to Luther Gonzalez-Hall, Janet Wilson, Kevin Matthews, Ali Beydoun, and Ernest Griglen can not be understated.”
The letter went on.
“This video does not show an example of public safety, it shows the many ways our City has failed to serve our communities. It shows what the police are trained to do: criminalize Blackness, criminalize poverty, and criminalize mental illness. Police response to this issue was unnecessary, and our dependence on police as the sole responders to problems in Dearborn’s communities will continue to threaten our most vulnerated community members.”
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