The news in recent weeks around Baton Rouge has been a mix of politics, road issues, highways, gripes about this and that, politics and more politics. On the latter, one side smiles like the major victors they are and the other has sunk into a deepening muddy pit of defeat.
But the overarching news churning in the Red Stick is about an allegedly secret (some don’t believe it was secret) location — called the BRAVE Cave — where a fraternity of Baton Rouge Police Department officers would take a select group of people and teach them a thing or two about being in custody.
As it turns out, there was nothing brave about the cave, actually a former warehouse in a Black community. News stories fueled by lawsuits allege armed officers would use physical force and other means to humiliate or get information or confessions. Only Black victims have been shown or mentioned.
Interestingly, when I was a youth, members of the Black community complained that they never got to a “cave,” or even the police station, before they were beaten by law enforcement officers. Generally, nothing happened to the officers.
There is an even more disturbing part of this. The horror of law enforcement officers beating or roughing up people, alleged to be innocent until proven guilty, is bad enough. But a lot of the information so far is that Black officers, the decendants of Black people who were mistreated by law enforcement, are now doling out brutality to Black people in their custody.
At least four BRPD officers who were part of the street crimes unit, which was at the center of the BRAVE cave, have been arrested on unrelated accusations of police brutality since the news broke.
What is happening here? How the hell can they even think of doing that? They should be making sure this doesn’t happen. Disgraceful.
Yes, it’s horrible when law enforcement abuses anyone, regardless of their race, but the horror is that Black people have suffered at the hands law enforcement for years. That makes this extra shameful.
Also, none of the news reports so far have shown examples of officers mistreating White subjects at the BRAVE Cave. Again, no one in custody should be beaten or mistreated.
Local activist Gary Chambers made a point recently about the BRAVE Cave, talking about the injustices there but also mentioning that had the reported victims been White, the local government and district attorney and all would have been enraged a lot sooner.
It’s interesting in that many years ago there was a major push by the Black community to get more minorities on the police and sheriff’s staffs here and around the country. The idea was that, with a more integrated police force, insensitivity toward and police brutality of Black people would be greatly reduced.
That may be true. But you still have horrific encounters like that in Memphis earlier this year, where Black police officers were caught on camera beating an unarmed Black man. In that case, after pulling over 29-year-old Tyre Nichols for what they said was reckless driving, Black officers in the Memphis Police Department beat Nichols, ultimately to death. They have been arrested.
But now in Baton Rouge, you have the BRAVE Cave and its little shop of horrors. The victims that have been shown publicly have been Black. And the perpetrators have been Black.
Inexcusable. It is heartbreaking, knowing the history of brutality against Black people by law enforcement officers, i.e., Rodney King, that these attackers would be Black.
There are some studies that have suggested that anti-Black sentiment in society and in some law enforcement agencies does affect some Blacks in law enforcement, resulting in the actions mentioned.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced recently that the BRAVE Cave is closed forever. Unfortunately, though, the stench from another symbol of inhumanity by law enforcement — especially Black law enforcement toward people of color — lives on.